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Toronto-raised actress Zoie Palmer takes the plunge on 'The Guard'

2 hours ago

You might think somebody who nearly drowned as a child would not want to grow up to play a water rescue specialist on TV.

Yet there is Zoie Palmer, taking the plunge every week on "The Guard." The Vancouver-lensed drama airs Tuesday nights on Global.

Palmer plays Carly Greig, part of a crew of daring Canadian Coast Guard saviours who put their lives on the line to help others even when they can't always save themselves. Steve Bacic ("Andromeda"), Jeremy Guilbaut ("Edgemont") and Claudette Mink ("The Days") play the other key members of the offshore rescue team. "JAG" star David James Elliott has a recurring role as Mink's character's reclusive boyfriend.

Palmer, a native of England who grew up in Toronto (and attended York University to study drama), says her own real-life rescue occurred when she was around nine.

She and her older sister were swimming about an hour north of Toronto near Sutton, Ont. Both had recently taken swimming lessons and were testing their limits. Palmer panicked when she got in over her head.

"I went under and she rescued me," she says.

How did her parents react? "I don't know if we ever told them."

Palmer emerged with a fear of water. But as she related over lunch last week in Toronto, her father was in the Royal Air Force in England and she credits him with her sense of adventure. So when it came time to audition for "The Guard," she wasn't fazed by the swimming requirements. Palmer and co-star Guilbaut are the two leads most often in the water and part of the testing for their roles involved distance swims and retrieving weights from the bottom of pools.

"The show is really character driven as well," she says, "but we were told up front that, 50 per cent of the time, we would be in the water."

So far that experience has gone swimmingly, she says. The wet suits help, especially the thicker, 7mm ones, and there is usually a hot tub to dunk into between takes. Professional divers are always on the set, "ready to swim over with oxygen whenever we need it," she says.

There are action scenes aplenty in the pilot, including a daring nighttime helicopter search and rescue on a stormy sea. The series opened with Palmer and Guilbaut diving under water in an attempt to rescue a young family from a submerged automobile.

Some of Palmer's most daring scenes, however, occur on dry land. After a failed rescue bid, a rattled Greig hits a local bar and gets picked up by an eccentric stranger (Ryan Robbins). The two share a steamy tryst aboard his makeshift houseboat.

Shooting love scenes in front of a dozen or so crew members is no biggie, says Palmer.

"They're really not that interested in what we're doing," she says of the crew. "They were more interested in making sure the prop didn't break when I opened the door."

Palmer was delighted to find that, after a decade on "JAG," U.S. network success hadn't gone to Elliott's head.

"He was very friendly, I really liked him," said Palmer.

The two traded Toronto school stories; Elliott shared the one about the acting prof who told him he'd never make it.

The first eight episodes of "The Guard" were produced last September-November in and around Squamish, B.C., with the series forced into hiatus due - not to a writers strike like so many other B.C. productions this winter - but to colder weather conditions.

Production on this season's final seven episodes is scheduled to resume in March or April, weather permitting. Judging by the ratings, Global will be hoping for sooner rather than later.

"The Guard" premiered Tuesday to an estimated 813,000 viewers, tops among domestic dramas this season.

Palmer's other acting credits include "Instant Star," where she played a Goth girl quite unlike the intense adventurer she plays on "The Guard," and the 2003 TV-movie "The Reagans," where she played presidential daughter Patti Reagan.

Palmer says she's been lucky so far to have worked opposite some great actresses, including Judy Davis, who played former U.S. first lady Nancy Reagan in that movie.

Fresh out of school, Palmer admits she was "terrified" at first to play opposite the three-time Emmy-winner, but Davis put her at ease.

"At the very end, she was leaving and I walked over and thanked her and told her it was a pleasure to work with her and she put both her hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye and said, 'You have the right stuff. Keep going."'

What she left out was "straight into the deep end," but Palmer has found her way just the same.

Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.