Local stars in television show

Taio Gélinas has long been a fan of the French crime series Eaux Turbulentes. Now the 20-year-old Kanehsata’kehró:non actor is starring in it.

The third season of the show was released on the streaming platform ICI Tou.tv last month, with Gélinas starring in all six of the season’s episodes.

“It’s kind of like Law and Order: SVU, but in French,” Gélinas told The Eastern Door.

This season in particular revolves around missing and murdered Indigenous women. It’s set in the fictional town of Queensbury, opening with the discovery of an Anishinaabe woman’s body by the local police force there.

Gélinas plays Hayden Lamarr in the show, “This really sweet, really timid, 17-year-old Anishinaabe kid,” as the actor described him.

“He’s going through a lot with his mental health. His family just moved to Queensbury, and he just started going to Queensbury High, because he had to leave his old school,” Gélinas said. “As to why he had to leave his old school, I won’t say, because that’s part of the intrigue of the third season.”

It’s the actor’s first time appearing in a French series, a Quebec and Ontario based production by Radio-Canada. It was shot in and around Ottawa and Gatineau, with Gélinas joining the set over May and June of last year, that being right after the end of his winter semester at Dawson College, where he studies full time as a cinema and communications student.

He previously starred in Avatar: The Last Airbender, released last year on Netflix, appearing in episodes seven and eight of the show. The young actor was also among the cast of the 2020 film Beans, a coming-of-age story told through the eyes of those growing up during the 1990 Siege of Kanehsatake, which won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Picture.

Gélinas got the chance to audition for the show after meeting actress Eve Ringuette at a cinematography workshop at Carleton University in the summer of 2023. The Innu from Uashat plays Rubina Duquette in the show, a detective in the local police service.

“They gave me a really intense emotional scene with Hayden and this other character called Jeremy. And they were like, ‘You can either choose to read it as Hayden or as Jeremy,’” the actor said. “It was super collaborative.”

The show is directed by Jim Donovan, who Gélinas described as “very meticulous and very determined.” He would walk actors through shoots by acting out himself, like on one of his first days on set, when he took to jumping into a fish tank set in one of the scenes.

“He was like, ‘What you’re going to do is you’re going to put your face in this fish tank, and we’re going to film it. You decide when you want to come up for air,’” the actor said. “And then to show me exactly what he had in mind, he took his shirt off himself, and he put his face in the fish tank. And I was like, ‘That is a really good director.’ You know, he’s not above doing it himself, showing me the vision that he has in order to get the perfect shot.”

What made this production different from others Gélinas has starred in was the drama.

“Hayden has a really big emotional scene at the end of the series that required a lot of sensitivity. It was difficult to act, but I’m proud of how we handled it, and I’m really proud of my performance in that last episode,” he said. “I’ve been itching to do those super huge emotional scenes and have that moment. Actors love to do the most dramatic thing possible, but we don’t very often get to.”

As for what’s next for the young actor, he said you’ll have to wait and see. He’ll be starring in another production, with shooting for it coming up soon, but couldn’t share the details just yet.

In the meantime, he’ll continue working toward finishing his degree at Dawson College, where he’s also a rugby player.

[email protected]