Stephanie Morgenstern Comments On Flashpoint

This morning's Montreal Gazette featured a story about Flashpoint by Brendan Kelly. Kelly writes that he is dismayed by the show's lack of promotion in Quebec. Quebeckers typically take a lot of pride in anything produced by personalities from there, and Stephanie Morgenstern (Sailor Venus #1) was raised in Montreal. She even acted in a French sitcom, La Vie, La Vie. Last week when the numbers came out for the premiere, we were really happy to hear of her success with the show, but we wondered why all over Canadian television it was always the executive producers Bill Mustos and Anne Marie La Traverse appearing and not the creators. The Gazette was able to get comment from Stephanie about the show. She has a lot of really good things to say about how she and Mark present the stories each week, and we've pasted her bit after the jump!


For Morgenstern - who plays a terrified hostage in the first episode - Flashpoint is much more than a standard-issue police procedural show.

"What we're delivering are universal human stories," said Morgenstern, who was born in Switzerland, raised in Montreal and left our town for Toronto after studying English and German at McGill.

"From one episode to the next, at the heart of it is always one desperate or frightened person who did not expect to be facing a tactical team, living the most terrifying moment of their life," added Morgenstern, whose previous credits include roles in Maelstrom and The Sweet Hereafter.

"I think people respond to that. Some of the stories are about career criminals, but more of them are about ordinary people who've been pushed to the edge because of something they desperately believe in whether it's saving their daughter's life or protecting a brother.

"In addition, there's the way that the team responds to these emotional incidents. Emotions go right through their bullet-proof vests. You can take off the vests at the end of the day, but what's gone into your eyes or ears, you can't get rid of that. You've had a front-row seat to the most frightening moment of someone's life and you can't shake that at the end of the day."