Yaga actors made murder wall to keep evolving story straight

TV PREVIEW YAGA Starring: Carrie-Anne Moss, Hudson Williams, Noah Reid and Clark Backo

Carrie-Anne Moss plays an older woman rumoured to seduce younger men in Yaga.

TORONTO — Before they started filming, the stars of Crave’s new supernatural crime show Yaga brought an onscreen trope behind the scenes to help them keep track of the story’s many moving pieces: a so-called “murder wall.”

Clark Backo, who plays a straitlaced cop on the show, said she and Noah Reid went to showrunner Kat Sandler’s apartment, where they broke down each of the show’s eight episodes and taped dozens of recipe cards to the wall to note which characters knew what, when, and what their motivations were.

“What’s a romantic moment? What’s a comedy moment? What’s important?” Backo recalled laying out on the cards. “Because (Sandler) is also melding every single genre under the sun, so there’s also making sure that we’re finding flow in that.”

The series is a mystery based on Sandler’s stage play of the same name (produced in Winnipeg in 2023), which is itself loosely based on the Slavic folklore character of Baba Yaga. In myth, Baba Yaga is a crone who lives in a hut that walks around on chicken feet; she flies around in a mortar and pestle and eats children.

The show centres on the disappearance of the heir to a commercial fishery, played by Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams. Backo (Letterkenny) plays the police officer assigned to his case, while Reid (Schitt’s Creek) plays a private investigator hired by the missing man’s family.

Their investigation leads them to an enigmatic university professor portrayed by Carrie-Anne Moss — an older woman rumoured to regularly seduce younger men.

The relationships between the characters aren’t always clear, and Backo said she would occasionally refer back to a photo of the “murder wall” to make sure she kept everything straight in her head.

“There were a few moments where that really did help, but I think just the process of doing it was the most helpful: just us getting together and going through the script and marking it out.”

It was necessary in part because of the packed schedule, which Backo said gave the cast an hour to film each scene — far less than what’s standard.

“Eight episodes in 32 days, which is, for people who don’t know, it’s basically two indie films in a month. And we had a lot of fun despite that,” Backo said.

Reid and Backo would practise their lines between takes for the next scene they were scheduled to shoot.

“The pace of play was very fast. Kat writes a lot of words. A part of her rhythm as a writer is there’s a lot back-and-forth. It’s fast-paced. It’s sharp, the turns are quick,” he said.

He recalled one particularly daunting scene, which was either 17 or 19 pages long.

“In television you just don’t see that length of scene very often. It speaks to Kat’s playwright roots,” he said.

Moss said even she, who’s been in the business for decades, was taken aback by that scene.

“I thought it was a mistake,” she said. “Because you get scenes, and they have these numbers, and I looked at it and I thought ‘this could be broken into three or four pieces.’”

But no, Reid said, it was real and they made it happen.

“It’s what I would describe as Type 2 fun — it’s not always fun in the moment, but it’s fun when you look back.”

— The Canadian Press