On Tuesday, May 22nd, Global Television debuts at new dramatic series entitled The Best Years, from former Degrassi: The Next Generation executive producer Aaron Martin. The series will make its American debut on The N on June 29.
The series captures the highs and lows of college life as seen by six freshmen, with the focus on Samantha Best, a Southie girl who earns a scholarship to the prestigious Charles University in Boston.
Recently, I had a chance to talk to Aaron about The Best Years.
Kevin Wong: Hi Aaron.
Aaron Martin: Hi Kevin.
KW: How are you?
AM: Doing pretty good, yourself?
KW: Not bad, not bad. Ready to go?
AM:AM: Yes.
KW: OK, let’s do it.
KW: What is this show about?
AM:AM: It’s not about the first time you get drunk, it’s not about sex. It’s more about these characters at the point in the life where they decide what kind of adults they’re going to be. It’s about setting up your life, it’s not about HOW you live your life.
KW: There were other shows that dealt with college or were based around university. There was 90210, Class of ’96 and even Saved By the Bell went to university. Did you take anything from those shows or did you try to go your own way things?
AM:AM: I went on my own because a lot of those shows started as teen shows and I’m not sure that they always transition themselves to a college show so what I did is I started from what I thought a college show is. A teen show has certain rules that they follow. A college show, not everybody goes to college, so that’s why I made a character who goes to this private college, if she doesn’t get through Charles University, she’d stay in South Boston.
KW: If she didn’t get this scholarship, she’d never go to university
AM:AM: Yeah. So the focus is not so much about what college is, but what they need college for.
KW: Your show is on The N in the US and Global in Canada, so are you trying to appeal strictly to the teen audience in the States or are you trying to reach an adult audience?
AM:AM: We’re trying to reach both. Degrassi did do that. I don’t see why our show won’t do the same.
KW: Did you try to incorporate your real life experiences into the stories?
AM:AM: A fraction of Samantha is based on me. I grew up in Brantford, blue collar family, and I went to Queen’s on a scholarship. But I think everybody on the writing team shared some of their own problems on the show and that’s what we did on Degrassi too – you really do look back for specific stories. The story in the pilot, what happens to Sam and her friends happened to a friend of mine who went to a different school.
KW: Did you base Charles University on any specific university? You went to Queens, and I went to U of T, and you know that the schools in Ontario aren’t the same as a private American university, so did you try to incorporate things from there?
AM: It was definitely a fictionalized university. I took some of the esthetics from Queens – it’s quite a beautiful campus and it’s very northeast. Some of the things we referenced were movies like Dead Poets Society, sort of that East Coast prep school feel. I didn’t look at Harvard and make it Harvard fictionalized. I took elements from a variety of things and tried to make a really warm, inviting school.
KW: Can you describe Samantha for us?
AM: Samantha’s a fighter, she’s had every cards dealt against her. It was important to me that she always strives to better herself and better the people around her. She’s also somebody who’s never been normal because of the fact that she was orphaned at such a young age and grew up in foster care. She’s never had a family and that’s what she’s at Charles University to find even though she doesn’t know that off the very top.
KW: So the series is a “quest” for Samantha – she’s trying to find herself?
AM: Yeah, all the characters are trying to find themselves. She’s definitely finding herself in a way she never expected. In Samantha’s mind she’s got this rigid plan – I do well in school, I get into the best university, I get a scholarship, and my life is happy. She gets to Charles University and meets Devon, she has difficulties with her roommate, she becomes best friends with a former child star she never would have met in the real world. So her experiences are broader than she ever thought they’d be.
All the characters come into school as their “high school type”. You’ve got Kathryn coming in as the bitch who has to learn that you can’t do that anymore once you leave the safety of small town Minnesota. You’ve got Devon who’s been the jock who realizes that basketball is not everything. I think that’s a lot of what people do when they get to university. They start to discard they type of person they had to be in high school and become the type of person they really are.
KW: Are we going to see people from Samantha’s past?
AM: We see her uncle who abandoned her. That’s about it.
KW: She doesn’t dwell on her past too much?
AM: She does a bit, because she did have a few years where she had a good childhood so I think Sam is always trying to recreate that.
KW: The character of Dawn, she was a star on a popular teen series. Where did you happen to come up with that?
AM: (laughs) Oh, I don’t know. Four years of working on a successful teen series. The reason I created the character is Stacey Farber, who plays Ellie on Degrassi went to college last year for the first time and tells me this horrible story about the first day, she’s all nervous about who you’re going to meet and everything and goes to a class at one of the big U of T lecture halls (note: she actually went to York University) and the first thing that happens is that someone comes up to her with this big Degrassi banner and asks “Can you sign this for me?” It just made her feel like she wouldn’t be part of that community, because she’s been on Degrassi for four years.
KW: So, it’s like everyone who’s seen the show will recognize you, but Samantha has never watched the show and…
AM: Samantha’s the first person that Dawn’s ever met that has no idea who she is. It’s freeing for Dawn, she doesn’t have to be “Dawn, the movie star”.
KW: She can be free, have a confidant.
AM: Yep.
KW: Describe Devon for us. He’s kinda like Samantha in that he’s at Charles University on a scholarship, and he comes from Buffalo.
AM: He’s like Samantha in that he doesn’t have much money, but unlike Samantha he comes from a strong and stable home environment. He hasn’t to deal with the same kind of tragedy that Samantha did. His Achilles heel is that he’s almost too reliant on that – too much into stability and too much into jumping into relationships right away. He takes things too fast sometimes.
KW: What about Kathryn? She starts off nice, trying to help Samantha out, almost treating her like a charity case. But along the way she turns on her. Why is that? What makes Kathryn, Kathryn?
AM: When I was creating her, I didn’t want her to be the bitch, I didn’t want her to be the evil cardboard cutout, and I don’t think she is. I don’t she does things maliciously, I think she does things… because she wants to do it. She always thinks that she’s right, she thinks that she knows the right way to do things, because when you defy her – because she’s used to being the queen bee –
KW: She’s not used to being told she’s wrong?
AM: Yeah. And that’s when she lashes out. She’s not a Heather. I didn’t want her to be another blonde bitch. I don’t think that she treats Samantha as a charity case. She’s doing it out of the goodness of her heart – but she has expectations.
KW: Right, so she’s doing it because she knows it’s the right thing, but at the same there’s an ulterior motive?
AM: Yeah. You can be my best friend and do whatever I want you to do.
KW: We’re introduced to Noah, the “foreign exchange student”.
AM: He’s the comic relief. He’s the best friend guy, the good guy, he’s got every Canadian quality possible. He’s always there for almost everybody on the floor. We wanted somebody who wasn’t full of trauma.
KW: We have a character in Trent. Trent is older than most of the characters, and he’s working at Colony, the club. Why is he important to the show?
AM: The way they Devon and Samantha are similar because they’re both poor, Trent is similar to Samantha in the sense that they’re both emotionally vulnerable. He had a sister who died, and he’s emotionally shut himself off, and lives in the moment.
KW: One person that Sam already has an affect on is Cynthia.
AM: Cynthia’s the sweet, almost “beta” girl to all her friends. She comes from a strict family and she’s never opened herself up to friendships beyond academic life. So she’s at Charles University, she comes to put her “nerddom” behind her and really make friends. But she has a lot of issues that haven’t come out yet, but we’ll see them in the first six episodes.
KW: Let’s talk about some of the actors. Let’s talk about Charity, who plays Samantha.
AM: She’s great. Searching for that part was really hard. Unlike Degrassi where we had 30 characters…
KW: A true ensemble cast
AM: Yeah, and you could say that Emma at the start of the series was a lynchpin character but in this show we definitely have a lead and that takes a lot – it takes flexibility, it takes acting talent, it takes “look”. She has all three, and we had to look from Toronto to Vancouver to L.A. to New York to find her.
KW: Devon is played by Brandon Jay Maclaren who some people may recognize because he played a Power Ranger…
AM: He did play a Power Ranger, and he was in She’s the Man.
Devon was a hard part to cast, and like Samantha we had to look in Vancouver, New York and L.A. and we found him in Vancouver. The thing I like about Brandon is that he’s definitely a jock and he’s a jock in real life but he’s not – he’s cocky but he’s a got a real soft side to him.
KW: Give me some idea about the other actors.
AM: Athena, who plays Dawn, the minute she came in for her first audition she blew it out of the park, she had this sort of over-the-top caricature business to her.
KW: She could switch back and forth between “Dawn” mode and “Snaps” mode.
AM: Exactly, and she knew how to do that from the get go.
Randall and Niall – Randall plays Noah and Niall plays Trent – they both were up for Noah at various times, and we went with Niall as Trent because initially he came in with a “boy next door” look and we wanted to toughen him up and see if he could come in as Trent and he did really well. And that left Noah open and there were a few people up for that part and we had to fly Randall in from Vancouver, but the thing I liked about his audition is that he didn’t try to come in and be Seth Cohen 2. He had this Chandler Bing kind of manic-ness to him which really felt fresh for that kind of funny best friend role.
Jennifer Miller (Kathryn) was one of the early contenders because she came in not playing Kathryn as a bitch. She tried to play Kathryn as somebody who meant well and then in the audition decided to play the moment where she snapped and became angry and scary.
KW: What can you tell us about the first few episodes?
AM: It’s really about establishing the relationships in the first few episodes – who’s going to be the love interest, who’s the best friend etc. But every episode has a specific storyline so episode one is about her first day at college – it’s supposed to be the best day of her life and it becomes the worst day of her life. Episode three she rushes a sorority because she thinks that by doing that she can emulate Dorothy O’Sullivan (her benefactor) who rushed the same sorority.
So every single episode follows a “what does Sam learn” story.
KW: Self contained stories.
AM: Yeah, but some plot arcs too. Dorothy’s arc goes through the whole season with Samantha.
KW: So by the season finale, if we look back we can say “wow Samantha’s grown, and Devon’s grown” etc.
AM: That would be the hope, yeah.
KW: Thanks Aaron!
AM: You’re welcome!
The Best Years debuts in Canada on Tuesday, May 22nd at 10pm on Global Television.
The Best Years debuts in the U.S. on Friday, June 29 on The N.
