Banff: Canadian Female Producers Break Down Barriers to Better Roles, Careers

The proverbial sound of breaking glass heard this week around the Banff World Media Festival signaled a Canadian TV industry continuing an effort to break down barriers to female producers advancing their careers.

Canadian actors-turned-producers Chelsea Hobbs and Jovanna Burke in Banff launched their own banner, Grand Boulevard Entertainment, with an eye to creating better roles for women and encouraging Canadian talent to create and produce their own content.

“It’s a fierce industry. It’s very competitive. And what Jovanna and I have been trying to create more opportunities for people like ourselves, for Canadian actors and Canadian talent, writers, producers – everybody – because the stories should be there. The audience is there,” Hobbs, whose Hollywood credits include UnREAL and Make It or Break It, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Projects the Grand Boulevard duo pitched in the Canadian Rockies include Puck Bunnies, a mockumentary about hockey moms, and The Sandwich Generation, a comedy about parenting. Burke, whose TV acting credits include Supernatural and The Flash, said generating better and more authentic leading lady roles for Canadian talent is top of mind.

“We always wanted to tell stories that we didn’t see in scripts. We have a certain value we wanted to place on especially female characters at the center of stories, and we didn’t see that in the scripts we read. So we want to create a community and a base in Vancouver for stories that are female-focused and have underrepresented voices at the center of them,” Burke explained.