clark johnson

Clark Johnson

The star of the HBO drama The Wire on his daring new show, why heโ€™s in hot water with Halle Berry & life in the village

CLARK JOHNSON APPEARS unaware of the effect he’s having on most everyone else in the room. We’re in between takes, and the 30 or so crew members on the set of Cra$h and Burn are rearranging the set, tinkering with panels and dials, fixing collars and all the while flashing furtive glances at the famous gent presently arriving at the punchline of a joke with cast members who’ve pulled their chairs in close.

Finally, we’re ready to roll. Johnson rises from his cubicle and takes his mark amid the potted plants, water cooler and filing cabinets that decorate this Mississauga office. At Action! a brunette in a pencil skirt swishes past, eyes fixed on an armful of documents. Johnson and his co-star drop into dialogue. Halfway through, however, something’s amiss. The director, dissatisfied, yanks off his headphones. Cut!

This, the business of filming a TV show, can be a long and laborious process where one 30-second scene can consume hours and multiple takes. Efficiency is therefore the law of the land. But where cast and crew are nervously fussing over the next take, Johnson is drumming vigorously on the top of a filing cabinet. Clearly, the sudden stop-and-go of the set is nothing new to Johnson.

“I touched my tie, and there’s a mic in there,” he explains a few moments later. “The camera could be just off, a cable could be hanging.You know, little stuff can make you go again.”

He would certainly know. Over his decades in the business, Johnson has directed big-budget shows and movies and some of Hollywood’s biggest stars — Colin Farrell and Samuel L. Jackson, in 2003’s S.W.A.T., and Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland and Eva Longoria in 2006’s The Sentinel.

Before that, he was on the long-running series Homicide: Life on the Street as Det. Meldrick Lewis. But Johnson is perhaps best known for his work on HBO’s The Wire, a gutsy cop drama that earned critical acclaim for its honest portrayal of the trenchant social ills facing American urban society today, from the drug trade and smuggling, crooked politics, a crumbling education system and a news media dangerously reliant on advertising dollars.

Johnson directed the first three episodes as well as the series finale and, in season five, played wise and weary newspaper editor Augustus “Gus” Haynes, which made him a vital part of what Slate editor Jacob Weisberg called “the best TV show ever broadcast in America.”

High praise, but not a far cry from how Johnson feels about the show himself. “That’s one of the things I’m most proud of, that show,” he says.

Today, Johnson is in front of the camera — no directing this time — as Walker Hearn, a cop turned insurance fraud investigator who plumbs the seedy depths of the insurance game alongside his partner and lead character Jimmy Burn, played by Luke Kirby. The Showcase series, produced by Paul Gross, premieres on Nov. 18 at 9 p.m. on channel 39.

A typical plot might see an insurance company refusing to pay out to “the little old lady whose house burned down because she was wearing [something as inconsequential as] a plaid shirt,” Johnson says.

Hearn and Burn set out to right the various wrongs, a job that’s not unlike those of the TV cops of Johnson’s past. “OK, I’m listening to what you’re saying, but I’m trying to pick up on what you’re thinking. That’s fun,” he says of his character’s mindset.

A series about insurance fraud set in an office may not scream surefire hit, but that’s not how Johnson sees it.“You look at these cubicles out here and how predictable it seems, but in the world of insurance fraud, people are gaming all the time, so it’s more like the cop and robbers stories we’re used to,” he says.

Plus, the two female leads (Toronto’s Caroline Cave and Vancouver’s Leela Savasta) are “profoundly sexy,” he adds.

Johnson grew up on Heath Street and lives nearby today, not far from his siblings, jazz singers Molly and Taborah and social worker Ron (“the only grown-up in the family,” he says). When asked, though, Johnson says he’s “from” Philadelphia, which is where he was born and lived until age six when the family picked up and headed to Canada.

Nevertheless, while Johnson’s various directing and acting gigs take him all across the world — as you’re reading this, he’s in South Africa directing Halle Berry in a shark thriller called Dark Tide — Avenue and Dupont is where Johnson hangs his various hats.

“I call it ‘my place upstate’ because I’ve got two pine trees and a deck in the back, and that place is really mellow.With the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, I come to Toronto and I’ve got my little country retreat.” He takes his work to Caffe Doria, when he needs to get out of the house, and he plays golf with the butchers from Olliffe.

The area wasn’t always quite so posh, Johnson remembers. “It’s really yupped up now, but it was pretty much a middle-class neighbourhood when we got there,” he says.

The Johnson kids were a talented bunch from a young age. Ed Mirvish cast them in his productions along with another talented troupe of child actors, Cynthia, Jennifer and Loretta Dale. “I think they did Gypsy while we were doing Finian’s Rainbow,” says Johnson. “We kind of grew up in the wings of the Royal Alex.”

After university at Concordia and in the States and a stab at pro football, Johnson took a job as a driver on the set of an action movie called The Last Chase, starring Lee Majors. Bit roles and special effects work followed. The work was regular but never high profile.

Finally, in 1985, Johnson scored a regular part on Night Heat from 1985 to 1988. That led to Homicide: Life on the Street from 1993 to 1999.

Eventually, Johnson found himself behind the camera, directing five episodes of Homicide. From there, oneoff directing spots on some of TV’s biggest shows fell into place: The West Wing, NYPD Blue, Third Watch, The Shield.

Then, in the summer of 2001, David Simon, co-writer and co-producer of Homicide, approached Johnson to direct the pilot of a new show he had dreamed up called The Wire. Johnson was an easy choice to direct the show’s pilot.

“Clark is hilarious. He has one of the more refined senses of humour in the business. He is a master of the practical joke, albeit not as much as I am,” says Simon. “He keeps the crew loose. Listen, it’s a hard job. It’s a fun job, but it’s also 12, 14 hours a day, and five days a week.… He knows everyone’s name, he’s into everyone’s shit. He’s making everyone loose and comfortable when by rights no one should want to stay there that long.”

Since getting this scene right on the set of Cra$h and Burn is the only thing keeping cast and crew from their lunch break, the same sentiment could apply today.

At the moment, the director is huddled with Johnson’s co-star, giving instructions on how to tweak things. Little do they know that Johnson has snuck up behind them and is eavesdropping on the private conversation.

When the director finally notices, the crew erupts in laughter and Johnson scurries back to his mark. The master of the practical joke has struck again, and whether anyone realizes it or not, the mood in the room has noticeably relaxed.

The next take, perhaps not coincidentally, is a keeper.

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