Luvia Petersen hardly spoke at all onscreen during her first few episodes of the Showcase network time-travel series Continuum.
But as the show films its third season in and around Vancouver, Petersen has become a fan favourite as punky Jasmine Garza, part of a cadre of anti-corporate terrorists from the future wreaking havoc in the present day.
“The 10-year overnight success, exactly,” Petersen said on the Continuum set.
Most recently Petersen was nominated this month for best supporting actress in a series at the Canadian Screen Awards, with the winners to be named in Toronto March 9.
The nomination marks the culmination of a slow build for Petersen, who got into acting a decade ago, and still is a partner in Liquid Amber Tattoo, a Gastown shop that for years kept her going between acting jobs.
“I started booking bit parts, and spread out,” she said of the pre-Continuum days. “I wouldn’t get auditions for months.”
Continuum stars American Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, a cop from Vancouver’s future who is dragged back in time when six terrorists escape the future with a time-travel device. Cop and terrorists battle it out as they are stranded in the present day.
The rest of the cast was filled out with Canadian players, all of whom had series regular roles before, with Petersen as the relative newcomer in the crowd.
“I had a small speaking role on the last X-Files movie: ‘Dr. Scully, are you ready?’ That was me.”
It seems Petersen and Continuum were a match made in acting heaven. The show’s ongoing, politically flavoured story had the terrorists in the present day trying to alter a repressive future where oceans have risen, corporations have replaced governments, and where brilliant scientist-autocrat Alec Sadler (William B. Davis) has tailored technology to keep the population under his heel. Continuum’s story alternates between the time-travellers’ “earlier” lives in the future, and their present-day struggles.
In the present day, the teenaged version of Sadler is played by Erik Knudsen as an idealistic computer hacker. The season one finale had Petersen’s character and her team kidnap Knudsen’s character. There was some room in the script for ad-libs as Knudsen was tied to a chair, and Petersen spontaneously taunted him with the line “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Her line made the final cut, and led the writers to a season two plot turn where the Garza of the future was dispatched to meet the older Sadler posing as a high-tech escort, adding further wrinkles to the time-jumping story.
“Luvia gave us the idea for an entire episode,” Continuum creator Simon Barry said. “That really allowed us to run with something; maybe (Garza and Sadler) have met before, in the future. If in season one Luvia had been anyone else, we might not have gone that way.”
The season two episode had future cop Cameron guarding the older Sadler, with Garza forced to disrobe and be checked for weapons before being allowed near him.
“Most of those tattoos are mine,” Petersen said.
“She was a rock star that day,” actor Nichols said. “That is not an easy thing to do, to strip down in front of crew, as much as they keep it a closed set and everybody is very respectful.”
Continuum’s season two ended with another wrinkle in time, as both future cop and future terrorists were imprisoned by another group of players, aiming to stop all that time travel.
Season three, likely to start airing in mid-March, will have Petersen still in the thick of the plot, withcop Cameron and terrorist Garza in an uneasy alliance to get themselves out of that situation.
Between seasons last year, Petersen joined cast members at a science fiction-comic book convention in Atlanta, attended by 100,000 fans. Continuum airs in more than 100 countries around the world.
“I guess Garza’s a fan favourite, and just saying that out loud blows me away. It’s surreal and strange,” Petersen said.
“She’s really me, she’s an exaggerated version of me, she’s guarded on the outside, has a total chip on her shoulder, she’s a softie on the inside. Had I been from the future and a freedom fighter, I would be Jasmine Garza.”
Petersen will be taking her musician girlfriend of three years to the awards in Toronto.
“This is my first nomination — I feel like I’m part of the cool kids, part of the crowd now,” she said. “I joke that I came out as an actor 10 years ago, that moment in your life where you’re like, no, I’m not a waitress, I’m an actor. Say it, dammit.”
