The New Hollywood North: The city’s busiest showrunners
The Toronto talent behind some of TV’s buzziest series
By Patricia Karounos
| August 17, 2022
Photo by Gesilayefa Azorbo
The Diversity Champion
Nathalie Younglai, a writer for the crime procedural Coroner, recently teamed up with Toronto’s newest A-lister, Simu Liu, to produce the CBC Gem rom-com Hello (Again). Since then, she’s been the supervising producer on CTV’s upcoming mother-daughter detective series The Spencer Sisters. On and off set, Younglai strives to make the industry more diverse—she founded BIPOC TV and Film, a non-profit that advocates for representation both on and off camera.
Photo by Ian Watson
The Sitcom Veteran
When Anthony Q. Farrell’s name is attached to a project, it’s going to be funny. He’s written episodes of The Office (including the one with Kevin’s chili disaster) and showrun a pair of family sitcoms for Super Channel, The Parker Andersons and Amelia Parker. Up next, Farrell is taking over the second season of CBC’s Run the Burbs, a comedy starring and co-created by Kim’s Convenience alum Andrew Phung, and running his own CTV series called Shelved, a workplace comedy set in a Parkdale library branch.
Photo by Mae Truong
The Trailblazer
Marsha Greene got into show business working behind-the-scenes roles for reality shows like Big Brother Canada. It wasn’t long before she rose to the top, showrunning the third season of the medical drama Mary Kills People. This past year, she served as co–executive producer on one of Canada’s most celebrated TV launches, The Porter, a CBC and BET Plus period drama about a group of 1920s railway workers fighting to create the world’s first Black labour union.
The Comedy Queen
Vera Santamaria kicked off her career writing for Canadian classics like Little Mosque on the Prairie and Degrassi: The Next Generation before debuting her own show, How to Be Indie, a witty teen comedy loosely based on her childhood in Rexdale. She’s since served as a writer and producer on the cult comedy Community and the Netflix hit Orange Is the New Black. Most recently, she lent her skills to the Disney Plus superhero series Ms. Marvel and the raunchy comedy PEN15, for which she earned an Emmy nomination.
