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Rebecca Northan Marries Work and Pleasure

Here’s what actor and improv comic Rebecca Northan took away from working on the family film Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium: her first movie credit; the chance to act opposite Natalie Portman; a nice paycheque; a nasty cold caught from her pint-sized co-stars.

Here’s what Mr. Magorium took away from Rebecca Northan: her honeymoon. The 35-year-old Calgary native was scheduled to marry fellow improv actor Bruce Horak in Calgary last spring, at exactly the same time Mr. Magorium — about a magical toy store run by a 243-year-old eccentric (Dustin Hoffman) — was shooting in Toronto.

Which, to her credit, she did.

“There wasn’t too much conflict,” says a relaxed Northan over breakfast at a coffee shop in Toronto, the city’s she’s called home for the past six years.

“I think because Bruce and I have produced so many shows we just approached our wedding as a show.”

In addition to appearing with Second City, teaching improv out of her apartment and starring as Diane (the mom) in last year’s CTV series Alice, I Think, Northan has, as she puts it, “directed much theatre, and acted in theatre, and directed sketch comedy, and done sketch comedy, and produced it.”

So she and Horak put on their producer hats and mounted their wedding at The Loose Moose, a Calgary improv theatre where they’d cut their teeth as performers. “There was an 8 o’clock curtain on our wedding, the first half was the ceremony, then there was an intermission, then the second half was command performances by our friends,” recalls Northan.

It was their honeymoon that took the big hit.

“We were going to spend a week in London, a couple days in Paris,” says Northan. “I remember the director [Zach Helm] coming into makeup and saying, ‘I hear you’re getting married, are you taking a honeymoon?’ And I said, ‘That’s kind of up to you.’”

As it turned out, the filming schedule did conflict with the big trip. “So my husband had his honeymoon by himself,” says Northan, sad but not at all bitter. Magorium was a huge opportunity, after all.

The big-budget fantasy casts Northan as the single mother of a boy (Zach Mills) who develops a special friendship with the toy store’s clerk (Portman).

Northan, who has no kids of her own, says she’s been asked to audition almost exclusively for “mom roles” since arriving in Toronto at age 29. “That was a bit of a shocker to me,” she says, “I’m not responsible enough to take care of myself, why are you sending me out for mom roles?”

Northan’s on-screen son spends most of his time at the Willy Wonka-esque emporium where the toys come to life, have personalities and even suffer mood swings.

“It looked amazing in person,” Northan says of the set. “The scale of it — huge — and I’d never seen so many toys in my life. They must have had about 40 kids who were extras, and these poor kids are brought to the most fantastic toy store they’ve ever seen and between takes they’re being told ‘Don’t touch the toys,’ ‘Don’t touch the toys.’”

The movie may have cost Northan her honeymoon, but it created a new tradition. “I guess Mr. Magorium will be our anniversary film,” she says, “we’ll watch it every year.”

—Marni Weisz