{"id":19972,"date":"2016-09-08T06:20:09","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T10:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huntsville.dopperonline.ca\/?p=19972"},"modified":"2018-10-01T13:15:52","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T17:15:52","slug":"freedom-fame-staying-grounded-meet-grant-nickalls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/freedom-fame-staying-grounded-meet-grant-nickalls\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom, fame and staying grounded: Meet Grant Nickalls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week, I will be profiling an extraordinary human being who lives in our community. If you know someone who is doing something interesting with their life, I want to hear about it. Send me an email at <\/strong><\/em>laura.maclean@doppleronline.ca<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/broadstreet-zone><\/strong><\/div>\n

He\u2019s played a bit of everything: a serial killer, Jennifer Lopez\u2019s boyfriend, a First Nations man, and a troubled father. He got the chance to shoot the breeze with John Candy and turned a dinner date down with Mariah Carey. But for Grant Nickalls, getting the chance to play Tom Thomson in a theatre production next year is a dream come true.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means so much to me,\u201d says the 46-year-old Huntsville actor, who is the host of Hunters Bay Radio\u2019s morning show and contributes a weekly video to Huntsville Doppler. \u201cWhen you take the stage in your hometown, the stakes are much higher. You can\u2019t fake it, these are the people who know you the best. And that scares me a bit for sure. To me, this is big… this is huge. And I\u2019m extremely grateful that I\u2019ve been given this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grant is no stranger to the Algonquin Theatre stage or to portraying the legendary Tom Thomson. He played the famous Canadian painter in a play to honour the opening of the theatre back in 2005. He did a lot of research to get into the role as Thomson, who Grant calls \u201ca tortured guy, who everyone loved and admired for his paintings but all he wanted to do was drink, fish and chase women.\u201d<\/p>\n

And now, with the coming of When Winnie Knew<\/span><\/a>, <\/em>slated for its debut in July 2017, Grant is ready to take the lead more than ever. It\u2019s a big deal for a lot of reasons: the opportunity to play the lead role of an intriguing and captivating man (yet again), the fact that he\u2019s been granted permission from celebrity author Roy MacGregor to use excerpts from his book Northern Light<\/em>, sharing the stage with both Cydney Jones (she plays Thomson\u2019s love Winnie Trainor) and Sean Cotton, one of the area\u2019s finest musicians. None of it would even be possible if it wasn\u2019t for the beautiful mind of Teri Souter, who approached Grant with the idea for the play. He says he will be guided by the memory of local playwright Stina Nyquist, as she was the one who originally introduced him to Thomson.<\/p>\n

\"Grant

Grant can be serious, but he’s also got a playful, humorous side too.<\/p><\/div>\n

Grant is the whole package. He\u2019s an intelligent, good-looking, down-to-earth family man who believes that growing up in a small town like Huntsville taught him the importance of being kind and respectful to others. After finishing elementary school here he was transferred to an all-boys school in Newmarket, an experience that at first he was not at all that fond of. But had it not been for that move, there\u2019s a good chance Grant would have never discovered his true passion.<\/p>\n

I was a typical jock who tried out for a play, got the part and that was it. I was hooked. For me, what I loved about it was that feeling of freedom. I just felt so free. I felt like, as weird as it sounds because there was all these people sitting there watching me, that I wasn\u2019t being judged. Which doesn\u2019t make sense, I know, because that\u2019s what the whole industry is about. Acting is like having a license to take a risk\u2026There\u2019s this whole process of acting that allows you to make choices in a controlled environment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Being a part of that school play opened a new door for Grant. As a guy who didn\u2019t normally like being in the spotlight, he thrived off taking the stage. And the comments and feedback he received from people was proof that he was good at acting. The director of that play happened to go to university with a woman who was an agent in Toronto and he had convinced her to come check Grant out in a production. Apparently, she, too, liked what she saw. She immediately became Grant\u2019s agent. He packed his bags, moved to Toronto and the first job he got was a commercial for Coca-Cola that went international. By the time he was 22, he was attending the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal and graduated with a degree in acting. The rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n\n\t\t