“My house was a stand-in for Patrick Dempsey’s in his latest show. It was a surreal experience”

Patrick Dempsey, if you’re reading this, I propose a quid pro quo. Our house played your house in the first season of Memory of a Killer, which was shot in and around our Upper Beaches neighbourhood this past fall. I have a new novel coming out this September. Could you play me for the author photograph? Every esteemed literary prize sticker in the world could decorate the front cover, but if we’re looking to sell copies, nothing would beat McDreamy’s blue eyes staring out from the back cover.

One day last summer, I found a note in my mailbox from a location scout asking to contact them if we were interested in our house being considered for a television production. I’ve lived in a three-storey red-brick, grey-shingle century home with my wife and our four teenage daughters since 2010. Out of a combination of curiosity and doubt that this would actually happen, we agreed to a visit from a location scout. This wasn’t the first time: our home had been considered for Reacher a few years prior, but apparently it had too many books to make for a convincing cop’s house.

Once more, a friendly person came and took lots of pictures. Then, a week later, a couple of people conducted a walkthrough. A week after that, big white transport vans pulled onto the sidewalks around us. Some 20 people approached, including the director. Everybody was greeted by our dog, a self-aggrandizing undersized Weimaraner, who accompanied them all through the house and around the yard as they talked, measured and took more pictures. At that point, the crew decided they wanted to proceed, and we said yes.

Our online sleuthing in between visits had revealed that Patrick Dempsey was starring in the show. We weren’t super fans per se, but of course we all knew him from Grey’s Anatomy, which added to our excitement (though my personal favourite from his body of work is the early ’90s sibling dramedy Coup de Ville while, for my wife, it’s his star turn as the Prophet Jeremiah in the late ’90s Biblical epic of the same name).

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Memory of a Killer—based on a 2003 Belgian film that was itself inspired by a 1985 novel—is set in Manhattan and follows a professional assassin (Dempsey) who leads a separate life as a Xerox photocopier salesman and doting single dad in upstate New York. Then, early onset dementia collapses the divides he’s so carefully maintained.

Uninvited, I joined a conversation with the director about how to deal with our library of a few thousand books. Maybe his recently deceased wife was a librarian? An English teacher? A collector? Polite smiles and nods ensued. These industry professionals were interested in applying their ideas to our house, not the other way around.

The three-day arrangement in the final week of August involved a day for set-up, a day to shoot, and a day for takedown and clean-up. We agreed to compensation for use of our house and the expense of being out of it. Flyers in our neighbours’ mailboxes explained there would be parking disruptions, but who reads flyers in mailboxes? The night before filming, the empty parking spots on the surrounding roads were reserved with orange pylons. Friendly guys sat in foldable chairs overnight, nabbing spots that came open and explaining to people accustomed to parking near their houses that they couldn’t for the next few days. I didn’t hear much complaint, though I wasn’t seeking it out.

We found a last-minute cottage on Airbnb. From our refuge in the Algonquin Highlands, we received texts and images from neighbours reporting on the organized mayhem: production crews, equipment and trucks had arrived. Our furniture went out; set furniture came in. I still wanted to know what they were going to do about the library, but the big news from that first shoot—beyond “Patrick Dempsey is standing in your driveway!"—was the late-night filming of a car chase: multiple takes, connecting streets blocked off and bright white overhead lights looming from heavy cranes set up on our front lawn, crushing all the crabgrass. When we returned, everything was exactly as we’d left it, save for a chair placed a few inches to the left.

They came back three more times, in September, October and December. We fielded a lot of requests from friends (and friends of friends) who were Patrick Dempsey fans—if you’re a woman over 50, you probably asked us to get you an autograph—but had the invincible excuse of never being there when he was. One time, we returned and found a used glass on our kitchen island, a strange oversight for an otherwise impeccable operation. I put it in the dishwasher and didn’t think of it again—until a member of the production crew texted my wife that Dempsey had used this glass and they’d left it there for us. A memento? Something to sell online?

During the second round of filming, we stayed for two nights at the Royal Sonesta, near U of T, sharing a double room with our daughters. One night, we ran into Janet Turnbull-Irving, a literary agent and the wife of novelist John Irving, in the lobby. When she heard about the shoot, she expressed outrage on behalf of our daughters, smiling at them conspiratorially, that the production wasn’t renting them a separate room. As a compromise, I got them Shirley Temples at the hotel bar while they did their homework. I worried that, with each successive shoot, the novelty and excitement of being involved in a production starring Dr. Derek Shepherd would fade. Neighbours told me that they didn’t mind, that it’s a good thing people are still using actual locations instead of green screens and AI, and that it was good for the city’s visibility and for its film and television industry. I did hear rumours of a local Facebook group complaining about the disruptions, but thankfully I’m not on Facebook.

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The last shoot happened soon after a big snowfall made navigating and parking on our narrow streets harder than usual. The day before the crew arrived, I watched a few neighbours shake their heads at the return of the orange pylons and speak with the parking spot minders. I felt bad for my inconvenienced neighbours but worse for the guys who had to sit for hours on those flimsy-looking chairs, now in frigid temperatures and surrounded by snowbanks. That final shoot was made even more complicated by an urgent family matter. We had to prepare our guest room for my octogenarian father, who has dementia and, ironically, in one of his various delusional episodes, had told us that he was being targeted by a professional assassin. We informed the production crew that the guest room was being renovated and found out that they had been using it as a makeup station. They would use our daughters’ bedrooms instead, which felt right: a professional television production could easily use as much makeup as four teenage girls.

In December, friends and relatives on both sides of the border reported glimpses of our house in trailers for the show. Neighbours mentioned seeing previews on CTV, where Memory of a Killer debuted in January. We watched the first two episodes as a family, in my dad’s new room in our house. Our daughters were amazed, confused, bored and outraged by the commercials. But, then, there it was—our house, on a television screen in our house! And there’s the glass. He’s drinking a smoothie out of one of our glasses!

It was strange, surreal even. Soon I was jealous that a house one block south, where the character’s pregnant daughter lives, was getting a lot more screen time. But never mind: in at least one shot from inside our house, you can see our library in soft focus behind the star and his famous blue eyes—a victory for literature. A writer friend emailed me the next day to ask what I’d charge to display his new book in our library when it’s time to shoot season two.