November 17, 1991
It didn't take long for Carolyn Dunn and Rob Stewart to be completely Mariah-cized. That's the co-stars' code word for the sunstoked langor that enveloped the Sweating Bullets cast and crew while filming. Tropical paradises - Puerto Valarta, Mexico, last season and Israel's seaside resort of Eliat this year - stand in for the detective show's ficitional setting of Key Mariah. Dropped in the center of tourist madness, Dunn and Stewart partied as hard as they worked. "It was just a really, really weird time. It was surreal," Stewart says now of those first eight months in Mexico. "The last two months, every Friday and Saturday night, the whole cast and crew would be in the pool naked. I was offering $10,000 one night to anybody who would touch me naked. No takers. I was sick. Period," he says. Stewart actually did get ill - with a touch of typhoid fever - and at one point the cast ran a betting pool on how long it would take the locals to clear rotting animal carcasses off the city streets. Dunn eventually moved out of the hotel to get away from the insanity. "I just needed to be alone," she says. "When you're on mega-burnout you don't realize it until you get off the ferris wheel." It wasn't all trouble in paradise, though. Forget the heat, the road kill and the too many all-nighters and it sounds a little like a summer camp. "It was a magical time," says Dunn. "It's not like we neglected our work. We got our work done." "Well," says Stewart, "you did." For Stewart, any work was good work. When he auditioned for the role of Nick Slaughter, a down and out P.I. in paradise, he could identify. He was deeply in dept, hadn't worked in months and couldn't afford a haircut. It was his long ponytail that caught the eye of producers Andras Hamori and Susan Cavan of Toronto's Accent Entertainment Corp. And Stewart was headed for Mexico. Dunn, a native of Sydney, N.S., who may have guest-starred on every show ever produced in this country, did a head turn for her part, too. She dyed her blonde hair bright red to capture the flash of Sylvie Girard, Nick's bossy and businesslike partner. "Sylvie thought she had a goal in life," says Dunn of her character's pre-Mariah days. "She would marry someone very wealthy, and make it on her own with a great career going. And then she finds herself in this place with him. If you want to find the attraction, it's definitely to the danger and to him," she says. Neither actor is fond of the earliest episodes, in which Nick is darker and the dialogue between them is more ripping than rapartee. "We were a bastard and a bitch," says Stewart. "It was uguly to watch." Even before the series began airing in the U.S. last year, it lost it's most obvious comic relief, a character named Mr. Knuckles, who was actually a tatoo on Nick's hand. After three episodes were shot, including one where Stewart sang I've Got You Under My Skin to Mr. K, CBS balked - and amputated. "With his handy straight man gone, Nick himself needed to lighten up and warm up," says Stewart. "Whenever I had to say lines that were sexist or chauvinistic or just plain nasty, I always took the edge off them," he says Now we wear our characters like comfortable clothes. We know who we are now and why we could like each other. Both actors think they know why viewers would like the show. "It's just a fantasy," says Stewart. "People are going to react all over the world the same way - 'I want to be there.' " by Claire Bickley ŠThe Toronto Sun |