For Toronto actor K. C. Collins, star of the upcoming Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent: “Everything I do goes back to my grandmother.”
She was the one who raised Collins in the city from the time he was six years old. Grandma loved baseball, so Collins took up the sport. Grandma loved television, so Collins loved television. Together, the pair would watch Benny Hill, Dynasty, Dallas.
“I feel like I excelled at baseball because I knew how much she loved it, and acting is the same,” says Collins. “I specifically remember the feeling that I would get seeing how watching those shows made her feel. And I remember wanting to be able to make people feel like that.”
She is what originally led Collins to pursue baseball professionally. He went to college in New York on a baseball scholarship and even became a Blue Jays prospect at just 13. But one day after following a friend to an audition, the acting bug hit hard, and became his new dream. (Years later, as an actor, he’d throw the first pitch at a Jays game in the arena, a full-circle moment.)
To his grandmother’s great joy, he’s since become a Canadian television mainstay, having starred in countless series, including The Cleaning Lady, Chucky, Pretty Hard Cases and Clarice, along with a Canadian Screen Award–nominated performance in the 2023 film Chien Blanc.
It’s become a cathartic career choice as, Collins says, it didn’t start off so easy, with plenty of folks warning him that the screen industry isn’t a particularly kind one to Black actors. However, with an agent who saw his talent early on and felt the path ahead for him was a good one, Collins has remained very booked and very busy.
Now, with Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, he may just be tackling his biggest role yet, thanks largely to the franchise’s legacy. Created by television legend Dick Wolf, the American police procedural has been on the air since 1990, and is the longest-running scripted drama brand in television history. Three decades in, and it has finally spawned a Canadian spin-off, one that features an entirely Canadian cast (including Aden Young, Kathleen Munroe, Karen Robinson, Nicola Correia-Damude and Araya Mengesha), was written and produced by Canadians, and was shot in Toronto.
For Collins, setting that whole legacy series thing aside, it was also producer-sister team Tassie and Amy Cameron, of Cameron Pictures Inc., who piqued his interest. He’d previously worked with them on Pretty Hard Cases and found them to be a rarity when it came to their incredible leadership. On Law & Order, Tassie plays showrunner, while both executive produce.
Their installment of the series centers on Young as Detective Sergeant Henry Graff and Munroe as Detective Sergeant Frankie Bateman as they investigate high-profile crimes and homicides in the city. Collins plays Deputy Crown Attorney Theo Forrester, who serves as a sounding board for the lead duo, loves to win a case and to keep busy. Call him a little chaotic.
As Collins puts it, “He’s always in and out, and it can feel hard to pin him down. You got to give him what you got or he’s gone.”
The fun part for the actor, at this stage in his career, was getting to shoot in his hometown. While most Canadian actors eventually make the move down south, Collins says “it was awesome” to situate himself back where he grew up.
“You don’t realize what your city has evolved into. Being downtown was like ‘whoa!’,” he says. “I hadn’t been in such a long time. I was like, ‘Look at my city, it’s beautiful.’ I’m happy that the city has this [series], that I’m a part of it, and I’m happy that I get to relive Toronto.”
No one, however, is happier than Collins’s grandmother. He says, a smile evident in his voice, “We just spoke last night. She’s proud.”
