While the battle for proper representation continues to dominate the spotlight in Hollywood, Canada is finally playing catchup by casting Vinessa Antoine as the lead in “Diggstown”, a new legal drama.
On this being the first Canadian prime-time drama to feature a black woman in the leading role, Antoine commented: “It’s been a long time coming and has been met with a little bittersweet, including from myself – it’s 2021 it shouldn’t have taken this long.
“It’s Canada playing a little bit of catchup but I’m glad it’s finally happening.”
Between being a series regular on “General Hospital”, “Being Erica” and “Haven”, the 30-something actress has enjoyed brief stints on a few other projects.
Now, she’s cast as Marcie Diggs, who moves from practising corporate law to working for a small legal-aid firm.
The anomalous move is spurred on by the death of her favourite aunt who commits suicide after the system failed her in a malicious prosecution case.
As to whether she connects with her character, she revealed: “I think we are very different, the only thing I would say I felt the most connected to is she is very kind, she has a big heart and she is pretty emotional and I am a pretty emotional creature myself.
“I think she was very emotionally connected to a lot of the cases that she took on but, other than that, she’s very different from me.”
Aside from Marcie struggling to deal with her aunt’s passing, she shed light on the other themes that surface in the series.
“We definitely are talking about a lot of the issues and injustices that are happening within the indigenous community here.
“We are shining a light on the silence that happens within families, particularly black families, when it comes to mental health.”
In the series, Marcie spends a lot of time surfing. Aside from it being her coping mechanism, it gives her solace as it was something she did with her late aunt.
The TV landscape is saturated with legal dramas.
On what makes “Diggstown”, different, she reflected: “’Diggstown’ is different from the normal procedural, we are still dealing with the normal crime of some sort and we are still dealing with a court case and having to solve that case, but we are little different in that we follow the messy lives and the personal lives of not only Marcie and her family but also the other lawyers.
“We all come from messy and interesting personal lives, so we dive a little bit more into that.”
She added: “At the beginning of the series Marcie is very much a loner and avoids dealing with very much of her dark demons.
“As the series moves on, you start to see those demons come to life and her deal with it.”
“Diggstown” airs on Universal TV (DStv channel 117) on Thursday at 8pm.
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