TIFF 2021 rolled out the red carpet, quite literally, for The Big Splash, an event being held at the Windsor Arms Hotel in Toronto to promote the Liquid Media Group, a business solutions company offering independent IP creators to take their product from inception to monetization. We sat down with company Chairman, filmmaker, and actor Joshua Jackson to talk about the company, and his journey along the way.
Horror Geek Life: Your career has had some big highlights such as Dawson’s Creek, Fringe, the new Dr. Death, and now, here you are, a chairman. Do you ever afford yourself the luxury to just take a step back and take a look at where you came from, to where you are now?
Joshua Jackson: Yeah, I mean, this is a pretty cutthroat business and has thrown away people much better than me. I’m constantly amazed I get to still do this 30 years in, and still get to do it at a high level. Frankly, I’m having more fun now than I was in the beginning. It’s a beautiful thing. (laughs)
HGL: Are you more selective now about what you choose to take on in your career?
JJ: I’m pickier now and also, I’ve aged into the place where the best stories are being told for people like me. You know, you start off your career as a son, a brother, a boyfriend, you sort of work your way through it, and now I’m a dad, so I kind of skipped through the single guy part, right to the dad part. I’m much pickier, but also much more respectful of my own time. I got lucky and was born in the right era because the most interesting stories right now, in my mind, are being told in long format, and there’s an audience there, money there, to be spent doing those shows the right way. I have the opportunity to be in some of them, so yeah, life is good.
HGL: What made you take on the role with Dr. Death?
JJ: I chose it because when I listened to that podcast, I as so astonished by the story and that man, and my brain wanting to reject it. I just didn’t want to believe it was possible, and I thought to myself, that’s a really compelling character. That was really the decision making process for me. When a character sits in the pit of your stomach like that, and you know the people that you’re going to be working with are both decent humans and confident and capable of telling the story, that’s the whole package right there.
HGL: How did you become Chairman of Liquid Media Group?
JJ: Chairman of a NASDAQ company was not on the bingo card when I started my life. (laughs) It happened in a variety of different ways, I won’t pretend it’s been a completely linear path because company building is hard. I’m a Canadian, and growing up in Vancouver and the Canadian industry, I saw there was a gap between what we were doing and what we were owning. There is no lack of talent in Canada, we have amazing actors, directors, producers and the Telefilm system and the public system is great up until a point. It nurtured the business until it was really robust, but we’re a really robust production center, all across Canada. We should take a little bit more risk, and also take a little more ownership of the things that we’re doing, so that was the germ of the idea. It’s grown and changed over the years, but I thought to myself, there’s no reason why it can’t also be us, and that’s really all it is. I know that the only way to survive over time is to have some ownership, you have to be able to survive and tell the second story, the third story, and to be doing it 30 years later, you have to have some skin in the game.
I want to thank Joshua for taking the time to talk with us, and for the wonderful event put on by TIFF. Thanks also to Jane Owen for all the help coordinating pictures and interviews.
To learn more about the Liquid Media group check out their website: https://www.liquidmediagroup.co/.
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