Canadian actress Kathleen Robertson attends the premiere of Swimming with Sharks at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival on March 14, in Austin, Texas.SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP/Getty Images
Kathleen Robertson has journeyed from Hamilton to Holllywood – and from actor to writer – in her 37 year career. You may recognize her as Clare Arnold from Beverly Hills 90210 or Theo from Scary Movie 2. Her latest project, the Roku series Swimming with Sharks, makes her a familiar face yet again, but this time she not only stars in the series, she is also showrunner, writer and producer.
The psychological thriller – which looks at the dark side of the film biz and is loosely based on the 1994 film of the same name – follows Lou Simms (Kiernan Shipka) as she moves to Hollywood from a small town to begin an internship at Fountain Pictures. Robertson, who started acting at just 11, felt incredibly connected to the character during the writing of the series.
“You can’t really find two places that are more opposite than Hamilton and Hollywood,” Robertson, who plays Olive Mace in the series, jokes in an interview with The Globe. “I’ve always sort of felt a little bit like an outsider in Los Angeles and it’s funny, Swimming With Sharks is sort of reflective of that,” she says.
After acting in Maniac Mansion for YTV, she took her first big American job on Beverly Hills 90210, at 21. “It was definitely trippy to be from the east mountain and dropped into the biggest show on the planet at the time,” Robertson says.
While going to L.A. for acting was Robertson’s initial goal, writing was always an interest for her – and the progression was natural, she says. “Actors are expected to be actors and not a lot more than that. I’ve always been a writer and have written since I was a kid,” Robertson, now 48, says.
Kathleen Robertson works on the set of Swimming with Sharks.Handout
Taking Swimming with Sharks from paper to screen, however, didn’t happen without its share of obstacles. It was originally created for the streaming platform Quibi, but Robertson hit a dead end when the service shut down in 2020 owing to low subscription numbers. Production was then further delayed when the COVID-19 pandemic forced shutdowns of film sets across the globe.
Eventually the series got picked up by Roku, completed production and premiered at SXSW in March, the first time the cast was able to see the finished product.
The show is anchored by its two powerful leading women, Lou and, as her boss, Joyce Holt (Diane Kruger). The women lean into very real problems in Hollywood, namely abuse and assault.
“I tend to naturally be drawn to telling female stories,” Robertson says. “I was really interested in the setting of the world being this industry, but I think the more interesting part of it was really exploring the relationship between these two women,” she says. “Both of the characters in the show are sort of on the outside, but once they peel back the layers of who they are, they realize that they’ve both experienced very similar childhoods and both have suffered trauma; they’re both survivors.”
Lou and Joyce, themselves struggling with a complicated relationship, are immersed in a male-dominated world teeming with abuse and predatory behaviour (in the background, as production of the series was under way, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein fell from power during the #MeToo movement).
Diane Kruger, right, and Kiernan Shipka in a scene from Swimming With Sharks.Sophia Economou/Roku
Canadian screen legend Donald Sutherland, as Redmond, founder of Fountain Pictures, set out to put that predatory behaviour on full display, Robertson says. “His character is obviously based on somebody real and he is the villain of the piece. One of the things that is interesting about where we’re at right now versus where the industry was when I started out is it doesn’t really fly any more; you can’t get away with it without being caught.”
Next for Robertson, now that Swimming with Sharks has begun streaming, is an adaptation of Kaui Hart Hemmings’s novel The Possibilities, to be produced by Jason Reitman. After that? She’s planning to craft a role in a screenplay for herself. In the meantime, though, she’s enjoying the moment Swimming with Sharks is having, which she sees as a career milestone. “It’s my first series that I’ve created so it’s a big deal,” she says. “It’s always such a journey to get to the point where you have something that’s made and produced.”
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