A Bright New Star Lights up the Screen in a New Holiday Movie on the Hallmark Channel! See Evan Williams in "The National Tree!"
By: Susan J. Yeager
Young Hollywood should take note; there's a new guy in town and soon he's going to be generating quite the buzz. Evan Williams will be lighting up the small screen Thanksgiving weekend in the Hallmark Channel original movie "The National Tree." It's one of his biggest roles to date yet the young actor all but steals the movie from veteran thespian and 80's icon, Andrew McCarthy. Talented? Check. Crush-worthy? Absolutely! Yes, there is going to be a buzz all right, and it won't be about where he hangs out or who he hangs out with. This time it will be for all the right reasons.
What We Know About the Movie...
In "The National Tree," Evan plays "Rock Burdock," a 16 year old who has his sights set on getting out of the small town of Liberty, Oregon, just as soon as he graduates high school. Since his mother died when he was young, it's just been Rock and his Dad, Corey (McCarthy), but the two men don't really get along that well. The day that Rock was born, his Dad planted a Sitka Spruce tree for his son in their yard. Unbeknownst to Corey, Rock enters the tree in a competition that is seeking a replacement for "The National Tree" that resides across from the White House, which was destroyed by lightening.
Corey is less than thrilled when Faith Russell (Kari Matchett), whose company is sponsoring the contest, shows up in Liberty to tell Brock that he has won the contest. He doesn't trust just anyone to transport such an important tree across the country. He finally agrees to let them relocate the tree but only if he and Rock are the ones to make sure it gets there safely. Seeing this as a great PR opportunity for the company, Faith agrees and rearranges her Thanksgiving plans so she can follow the father and son on their trip. Rock is not happy that he will be stuck with his Dad for a lengthy road trip, but he longs for some excitement and at least he will get to see more of the country this way.
Check out the commercial for the movie below!
The unlikely trio encounter several setbacks along the way, including forest fires, car trouble, and vandalism to the tree. There are other surprises that aren't so bad like Rock finally gets to meet Katie, a "virtual friend" he has been talking to online for over a year. The two realize that they are more than just friends and tension builds when Rock asks her to join them on the rest of the journey but Corey refuses to let her make the trip.
The gang also becomes mini-celebrities as Rock's video blogging begins to generate a lot of interest from the public and folks start to come out to see the tree when it passes through their town. The joy is short lived though when they finally arrive in D.C., only to find that orders have been given not to replant the tree, but just to decorate it for a one-time Christmas event. It's going to take a Christmas miracle to save this special tree! Can anyone in this group save the day?
This Holiday special, sure to make you feel warm and fuzzy, debuts on the Hallmark Channel on Saturday, November 28 at 8:00PM. It repeats at 10:00PM and then again on Sunday, November 29 at 8:00PM.
Get a behind-the-scenes look at the film below!
Back to Evan...
Evan hails from Calgary, Alberta Canada and started a love of music at a very early age. "I started when I was really young. I've actually always been a musician my whole life. I started in a program when I was three years old, learning rhythm and things like that and I've always had a love for music. At my church, I got into choir and then got into musical theater."
"In high school, on just kind of on a whim, I auditioned for the school play which was 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.' I was cast as Joseph. So I was kind of like 'Oh, geeze. Well, maybe I'll take this a little more seriously.' Then I got into Community Theater and doing Summer Stock in Calgary, Alberta, that's my hometown. I loved it. Kind of have been doing it ever since. I decided to take my chances and move up to Toronto and study theater. So I went and got a degree in acting from Ryerson University. And [I've] been doing it ever since."
His parents were supportive. Well, sort of. "My mother is a professional artist, like a visual artist. So I've been encouraged to be a creative and expressive individual since I was young. My father's an engineer. He always urged me to be pragmatic and be responsible and make smart decisions." Telling his father that he had decided to go to college to study one of the hardest careers to break into and make a living at was met with some resistance. Evan prefaces the next statement by clarifying that he loves his father dearly. "I don't want to give him a bad rap, but when I told him that I wanted to go to University to study acting… I had good marks in school; he said 'You know you can study anything you want right?' I said 'Yeah, I know. That's why I want to study acting.' And he said 'Okay, well there's really only one line you're going to need to learn…' and I was like 'What is that?' And he said 'Would you like fries with that?'"
"He's since come around because he's realized that I'm actually making a living at it," Evan says easily. "In his defense, it is a long shot. It's a difficult industry. It's a difficult business to break in. I'm really lucky." It turns out that little bit of tension would come in handy while preparing to film "The National Tree." "I used some of the stuff from my own father and my's relationship as a lot of fuel for the background of the character of 'Rock Burdock' and his relationship with his Dad."
"In theater, my first professional job was playing the Rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof, out in Calgary," Evan begins when talking about his past roles. "It was like a summer theater. I actually won an award for it," he says casually. "I really realized that I had a soft spot for kind of clown stuff; it was my favorite topic in theater school as well. I've always been really close with children. I used to be a Sunday school teacher. Something about being able to make kids laugh… just being ridiculous…I've always had a soft spot in my head."
His first film role was not a comedic one but it did leave a lasting impression on the young actor. "My first film job came about half way through theater school. It was as… what's the right word for it… not quite sympathetic but kind of a bit of a jerk character, a really small role, on 'Save the Last Dance Two.' That was the first film set that I had ever been on and I loved the intensity. It seemed like it was where the action was. I really liked the dynamic… the feeling on a movie set. So that's I think why I've kind of moved over to film and television at this point. I really like the intensity and I really like how everybody works together to make it all happen."
Degrassi Photos Courtesy of: TeenNick and Epitome Pictures
It wasn't long before Evan ended up on the show that has been the training ground for numerous Canadian actors, a little show called "Degrassi." The show has been around forever in one form or another and can be seen on TeenNick, one of Nickelodeon's channels. Playing "Kelly," the lucky guy found himself in a storyline that revolved around his character sharing a dorm room with three of Degrassi's main characters. Female characters we might add. "That was my first reoccurring role," Evan tells us about his time on Degrassi. "I think I got it basically my first year out of theater school."
"Degrassi was the first time that I had a reoccurring role so I was definitely the new guy walking onto the set of an established show. It's a well-oiled machine," he continues. "Everybody knows what's going on. Everybody knows the folk lore. For me, it was impossible to call all the actors by their real names. I knew them by the character names. For me, it was really cool to step into a world that already existed and just kind of bring my thing to it. There's also a certain amount of pressure which I was a little worried about but after the first couple of days on set, I relaxed right in to it. People were great."
"I was really green when I walked on to that set and really was able to grow as an actor and recognize some of my own strengths and weaknesses," he admits. "Only by recognizing your weaknesses can you begin to try to pinpoint them and work on them. I felt like it was really instructional for me. I had a great time and made some lasting relationships."
The show also presented Evan with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that has been etched into his head and his heart. "I went with Free the Children to Ecuador with the cast of Degrassi. They made a documentary called 'Degrassi goes to Ecuador' with MTV. Myself and the thirteen other kids from Degrassi that went, we had a fantastic time and I really bonded with those kids there getting to do some service work. I was the oldest one of all the cast members there so there was a role that I had to play, which I was happy to play, because it kind of brought me back to not, quite being a camp counselor, (which is what I did when I was younger), but just getting to be involved in group activities and stuff. All of those kids are just normal kids who happen to be on television. And they've all got big hearts. So it was great!"
When the audition came along for "The National Tree," Evan knew right away that there was something special about this project. "[My agent] called me up one day and said, 'I've got this fantastic audition for you. I think you'd be great for it.' So I read it over like I usually do. As soon as I read the first couple of pages of the breakdown and of the audition material, it was one of those kind of 'Eureka' moments where I snapped my fingers and said, 'I need to get this part'."
"I'm not at a point in my career where anybody is giving me parts or anything like that so I knew that I was going to have to fight for it. I felt like the way that 'Rock Burdock' talks, is really close to the way that I talk. I'm a kid who came from Calgary, Alberta, which is a relatively small town, to come up to the big city because I wanted to see the world. That's exactly what Rock is all about. So I really identified with that. I also identified with being a kid who was at sometimes at odds with his father, but at the same time really knowing that there was a lot of care there, just not quite knowing how to communicate. In the movie, both Rock and Corey, his Dad, neither of them really know how to express the love that they have for each other. It's only at the end of the movie do they begin to realize that Rock is becoming a man. Both Corey realizes it and Rock realizes it in a true way as opposed to just being the kid who is rebelling and trying to have his own way. There' a real coming of age that I really related too," he says of the character he plays.
"Just from a technical point of view, there's such a great arc that Rock gets to go through from being, at the beginning of the movie, being kind of a wise-guy, who thinks he's got it all down and is just kind of raring at the bit to go… to really becoming an individual who's got his feet on the ground and is standing up for what he's realized he believes in and recognizes how much he needs his Dad and how much they need each other. It's a real coming of age which I was stoked to get the opportunity to play."
"I did everything I could to prepare for the audition," he recalls determinedly. "I talked to my Dad. I even grilled my parents on what was I like when I was 16. What are some things that you can tell me, some of the not so flattering things that I may have forgotten that by now? That might help me get back into that frame of mind."
"I went in and I felt like I had nailed the part," Evan recalls about the audition. "It's not too often that you go in to the audition room and walk out feeling like you actually got the job because the process isn't designed to make the actor feel good. The process is designed to find whoever is right for the role. But on this rare occasion I walked out of the room feeling like I had done the best that I could do. I knew that they were gonna probably have callbacks if they weren't sure or anything like that. I got the call, I think, maybe one or two days later, from my agent saying, 'They loved you! You got the part.' The character of Rock Burdock, I think, lives close to who I am or who I was. So I was able to connect with that a little bit and I think they saw that."
With only having about three weeks until they started filming, Evan got right to work preparing to play "Rock." "I researched the area, Oregon. That's where he's supposed to be from, so I researched if there was supposed to be any kind of dialect. Now, Oregon is on the West Coast and Calgary is pretty close to the West Coast so as it turned out, I didn't really have to do a lot of dialect work on this project. Other than that… I spent a lot of time with my little brother, who is four years younger than me and is a little bit closer to the age that Rock is, and just tried to watch his mannerisms. [I] Especially tried to listen to the way he spoke about my parents. He's kind of the guy who just moved away from home. I live across the country from my folks. Over time, especially going through University and stuff, I think every year that passes you come to respect your parents more for the human beings that they are whereas, when you live with them they're just your folks and they're always there. So I was really trying to get back in to that head space of Mom and Dad are just 'Ugh… Mom and Dad.' It seems foreign to me now to even consider not trusting my parents but I know at some point, every kid goes through a phase where they think their parents are hypocrites and think their parents only exist to hold them back. While I've always had a good relationship with my parents, definitely the seeds were there. So it was about finding those things and letting them take root. Get in an imaginative space and see where they grow too."
The young actor then found himself face to face with Andrew McCarthy, an actor who has appeared in numerous films and television shows including 80's classics like "St. Elmo's Fire," "Pretty in Pink" and the hilarious "Weekend at Bernies" movies. "It's cool!" Evan exclaims when asked about working with Andrew. "Any time I get to work with just kind of a name like that I go into sleuth mode, where I just become a sponge and I try to pick up as much as I possibly can from those people. I don't know if I freaked him out, but I was watching him like a hawk all the time. I told him at the beginning, 'I'm a young man and you really know what you're doing so if there's anything that you can tell me to help me get better at my craft or to learn as an individual, please don't hesitate to tell me.' I don't operate with a lot of ego. I kind of laid it on the line for him and said, I will be transparent so please just school me. And he was great!"
"We really kind of bonded over the process," he continues about his on-screen Dad. "He had a lot of really kind and also a lot of wise words about just life in the industry and about the pitfalls. I mean he's had ups and downs and he was honest with me… told me a lot of things about his life and a lot of personal anecdotes which were really insightful. We also had a lot of fun. He's got a pretty dry sense of humor. At first, when I didn't quite know him the first couple of days, I didn't know if he was joking at all. I was like 'Oh, geeze. I don't know if he even likes me.' But after a couple of days I realized that he's pretty much all the time. He's just got this droll sense of humor. Once I started dishing it back to him… we had this… it wasn't a mock-antagonistic relationship but it was a lot of give and take. The more comfortable I got giving him a taste of his own medicine, the better we got a long. I think it was great for the development of our relationship and the characters relationship as well. We started at the beginning of the film shooting a lot of the scenes from the beginning of the film in which we're not really getting along too well, which was nice because we didn't know each other too well so that kind of distance was already there for us. Over the course of the movie and over the course of the filming, we got to know each other so much better. By the end of the movie when we reconcile, we actually knew who each other were and could approach that truthfully."
The lucky lady picked to be Evan's leading lady in the film is another familiar face to Degrassi fans. "Paula and I are great friends and were friends before we started on the film. She's a doll. I can't say enough good things about Paula Brancati," Evan raves about his co-star. "She's got such a crackling energy. She's got a boundless spirit. I don't think I've ever really seen her upset, or if she is she doesn't stay upset for very long. She's really good at seeing the bright side of every situation. I never really got a chance to work with her on Degrassi because she was in the High School story line and I was in the University storyline. I would see her around and we were friends, but I never really actually got to work with her. So getting a chance to work with her, one on one, face to face, was great! It only just strengthened the bond that we have. I felt like a lot of the scenes where we had to be intimate, we had to leg-up because we already knew each other so well, we just laughed the whole time. We tried not to ruin takes by laughing, but there were a couple of times where we just had too good of a time. In between the scenes we'd eat lunch and all of those kinds of things. We just had a great time… goofed around."
Evan says that working with this particular friend made filming some scenes easier… like the scene where Rock and Katie physically meet for the first time. "I know how I felt when I first met her," he says of Paula. "It's a very clear memory in my mind of just first meeting her. It was a process of taking myself back to that moment. It wasn't like I had to imagine meeting this kind of generic girl. I was able to really put a face to it and I kind of made her a combination of the Paula that I know and the girls that I have been in love with in my life. That part was one of my favorite parts to play actually… the first meeting and the first kiss."
Did he have any other favorite scenes in the movie? "I haven't seen the movie in its final version," he says. "The last time I saw it… it was kind of a rough edit. I don't know if I quite have a very good idea of way the whole movie is going to pan out now that it's finished. I really love the forest fire scene. Partly because it was really special effect type-y… and I am guy and I do like explosions and driving cars and things. I'd love to get to do more of that stuff in my career. Also, in the storyline it's really where Rock and Corey come to a head in their relationship. It's the first time where Rock really stands up and faces his fears. He's there in a forest fire and Corey says, 'You'd better drive the car' and Rock is saying, 'You know I don't know how to drive a car. It's irresponsible. It's crazy. I'm not doing it." Because he's so afraid of failing. He doesn't want to let his father down but he also doesn't want to die. He has to be brave and he has to stand up and he gets through it."
"At first he won't even recognize the victory that he's had until his father really has some straight, kind words for him, which is also the first time in the movie that that happens," Evan continues. "I think at that moment Rock realizes that maybe, just maybe, his father hasn't been out to get him the whole time. Maybe his Dad just wants him to be a real man… a responsible person. From that point on it's the end of the decline and the start of the general move towards a reconciliation between the two."
Having spent a month on the film that Evan calls an acting "boot camp," his attention is now turned to preparing for his next big project… a half-hour comedy show. "I'm going to be starring in my own television show," he says excitedly. "I just found out a little while ago. The show is called 'Baxter.' It's going to be for Family Channel up here in Canada. I think everyone's hoping for the American connection. The Family Channel in Canada is part of the Disney umbrella. The production company makes a bunch of shows that are broadcast in the States at this point. 'Baxter' is a half-hour comedy set in an arts high school. I'm playing the title character, Baxter McNabb who is kind of an anti hero. He's a character who bucks the trends. He's a cool guy but not your typical version of cool. He kind of lives on the outside. He's a bit of a rebel but always kind of whips something brilliant out of nowhere at the last second. He's kind of like a Ferris Bueller. He's kind of one of those characters. He's a total clown. I'm not talking about clown with a red nose and all that kind of stuff but just someone who's just kind of going for the laugh or going out the outside way of understanding something. Wants to break the mold a little bit."
"It's set in an arts high school, so there's actors, singers and dancers. I've heard it described as Fame-light. It's going to be close in genre to that new show 'Glee.' Except it's going to be for the Family Channel so it's going to be a little more family oriented. It's still going to be funny. I've read a bunch of the scripts and it's going to be great. I'm really looking forward to it. One of my best friends has been cast as my best friends. We start shooting in January. I can't wait. It's going to be fantastic! So hopefully, if anybody likes the National Tree and wants to see any more of my work, hopefully, the United States will get to see that soon enough."
As we wind the conversation down, Evan mentions another big step in his burgeoning career. "I leave for California tonight actually, to go and try to make my way down there and see if I can get an agent. You're catching me at my most ambitious," he laughs.
We're excited to discover this talent early on in his career and get to bring him to reader's attention. Following Evan's career will kind of be like watching a shooting star. You don't really know how fast it will rise or how far it will go, but it will leave an impression. One thing is for sure, given the right opportunities this guy has all the qualities of a huge star in the making.
