Jennifer Finnigan Raises a Glass to ‘Quirky, Weird’ Moonshine and the Schitt’s Creek-Like Dramedy’s CW Debut
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The CW this Friday night at 9/8c invites you to get a taste of Moonshine, an acquired Canadian dramedy set against the backdrop of financial hardship, small-town intrigue and a long-buried secret that threatens to annihilate a quirky clan once and for all.
Created by Sheri Elwood (Lucifer), Moonshine stars Jennifer Finnigan (Salvation) as Lidia, an architect and eldest sibling who wants to redevelop her family’s titular campground and exploit the valuable coastal property. Immediately, Lidia finds herself locking horns with younger sister Rhian (Reign‘s Anastasia Phillips), while other characters include Lidia’s sister Nora (Mr. D‘s Emma Hunter), a sexy local DJ who knows all the family secrets; Sammy (Avocado Toast‘s Alexander Nunez), Lidia’s musically gifted adopted brother who holds secrets of his own; and party boy Ryan aka Rhain’s twin (The 100‘s Tom Stevens), who is running his own (illegal) business out of the resort.
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TVLine reconnected with Finnigan to get a tour of Moonshine and discuss why it (and she) are a good fit for the evolving CW. Oh, and to also get the scoop on (fake) punching her real-life husband….
TVLINE | I know that Moonshine has been streaming on Freevee for a hot minute, but you must be excited for it to actually be airing here in the United States.
Yeah! I mean, I’ve been doing this show for three years and I kind of just thought we would live in our own little microcosm of Canada and some other foreign countries. But it’s cool that The CW “got” our very quirky, weird vibe and decided we were a match.
TVLINE | The series synopsis starts off by saying this is “An Epic Tale of Lust, Legacy and Lobster.” Which of those three do we get the most of?
If you’re asking personally for Jen Finnigan, it would be lobster. But I think it is the first two in equal measure. It’s funny, it’s so hard to explain the show because it’s such a unique little piece. It’s quirky and weird and at first you’re not quite sure what it is. And then you realize, “Oh! It’s actually really funny,” and then there’s a mystery that threads through the whole first season that gets more and more outlandish and intense. We cover all the bases.
TVLINE | So, your character, Lidia, returns home to the family business in Manitoba–
No! Nova Scotia, man. Nova Scotia. They’re not eating lobster in Manitoba….
TVLINE | You do not order the lobster in Manitoba!
Yeah, I don’t recommend ordering lobster there. No, this is 100% the hills, set in Nova Scotia, in a little town outside of Halifax. It’s about a woman who’s coming home for a funeral and realizes that she has inherited half of her family’s ramshackle campgrounds, The Moonshine, that she’s done her very best to avoid her entire life. But she gets sucked back in. It’s a really fun, proudly Canadian, family dramedy, but the tone is really unique. Even we were struggling to figure out what the tone was at the beginning.
TVLINE | I was going to ask, how would you compare the show that you signed up for three years ago to what it has become, three seasons in?
When I first started doing it, Sheri [Elwood], the brilliant showrunner and writer, knew me from Tyrant, so she was like, “But do you do comedy?” I was like, “I do, I do love doing comedy!” I’ve done two sitcoms — Better With You and Committed — and a lot of dramedy, so I said absolutely. That’s actually my sweet spot. What was fun is that as she got to know me, she realized that I’m actually pretty slapstick, so some of the physical comedy she added in. I mean, by Season 3? I won’t even tell you. But my character is completely unhinged. It was so, so incredibly fun because we were trying to figure out that tone at the beginning and essentially my character is kind of a straight man. But very quickly the lunacy rubs off on her.
TVLINE | Let’s put it this way for people: “If you like _____, you’re going to like Moonshine.”
Arrested Development. Maybe Schitt’s Creek. I’d say Schitt’s Creek. Yeah, I would say it sits in there, but there’s also family drama. It’s definitely got a dramatic element as well.
TVLINE | Which character would you say Lidia has the most interesting dynamic with?
Listen, part of the appeal of doing the show was that it’s very female-driven. The most obvious dynamic is with my sister Rhian, who is unstable at best. She’s always wearing a visor and carrying a clipboard….
TVLINE | Nobody wears visors anymore. That’s the first red flag.
Oh, she’s bringing it back, baby. She is. And Rhian believes — rightly so — that The Moonshine, which has been her life, should be hers, so the idea of her sister who left to become a fancy New York architect is coming back and trying to make this place into a “glamping Coachella vibe” is utterly insulting to her, and she becomes a woman scorned. And then we cut to a goat festival, with a cannibalistic goat, and a full-on physical fight. It’s fighting only the way sisters can.
TVLINE | Speaking of fighting, your husband Jonny [Silverman] get slugged by Lidia in the trailer. How very difficult was that for you?
Oh God, it was so fun. Everyone’s like, “Isn’t it so great working with your husband?” And I’m like, “It is, but only if we’re at odds, because in real life we get along pretty well.” I mean, we have been together for almost 20 years, so if we’re gonna work together, I want us to be ripping each other’s heads off. And it was a weird catharsis to be able to fake punch out my husband, who is such a wonderful and sweet man. But we had a really good time doing that!
TVLINE | Who is his character, Daniel, to Lidia?
He begins as her sleazy husband and — spoiler alert — we find out in the first episode that he’s been unfaithful with the young assistant. Could it be more cliche? [Laughs] This is part of the reason she decides to leave behind that perfect, fancy life that she had imagined for herself and got the hell out of Dodge. She realizes that maybe she needs to surround herself with her family, to “come back home” in more ways than one.
TVLINE | You talked about The CW seeing something in your quirky little show. Yet it kind of feels right that Jennifer Finnigan is now on The CW.
Why is that it?
TVLINE | I… have no idea.
I’ve been on every other network, so maybe that’s why. I’ve been making the rounds! I did the gritty drama on FX, sci-fi on CBS…. I like to switch it up. I always like to keep it fresh.
This also happened to be a real gift because it was one of the first productions in North America to shoot during the pandemic. At the time, Nova Scotia had zero case cases of COVID, so our entire cast and crew was, like, bubbled up. We became each other’s family, we saw each other on weekends, we survived a hurricane together, we survived the pandemic….
TVLINE | I heard that from the Vancouver TV casts, too, because you’re hunkered down and you can’t travel easily….
But this was far before Vancouver went into production. Nova Scotia, the Maritimes were a bubble and they had zero cases for almost the first eight months. I remember that L.A. was completely shut down, an absolute ghost town, and I didn’t think this show was gonna go. And then Sheri said, “Guess what? We’re starting up in early August or late July.” I said, “Are you kidding me?,” and she said, “Nope. We need you on a plane so that you can do the full two-week quarantine.” We landed, went to the house, didn’t leave for two weeks, and when we came out it was like a Disney movie. Kids were in school! People were in restaurants! It was live music! It was like, where are we and how have we escaped the madness and chaos of the world right now? It was a gift to provide my kid [Ella, now age 5] with some normalcy during the time.
TVLINE | That’s wonderful.
It’s so cool, and it brought the cast so incredibly close together. That’s part of the special uniqueness of the show with the circumstances surrounding it. It doesn’t always work that like, where three women can come off as sisters so quickly, and I think part of the reason is that we were forced into this little bubble and we all fell in love with each other, the entire cast.
TVLINE | The CW likes — well, used to really like — their superhero shows…
Which is why I wasn’t sure this was a match for them….
TVLINE | Who on Moonshine would you say is a superhero? How might Moonshine fill that superhero-shaped hole in their hearts?
The Moonshine is the superhero, because somehow it keeps existing despite the fact that it’s being run by a bunch of lunatics AKA the Finley-Cullen family and it is completely falling apart at the seams. The sewer system is exploding, the cabins are on their last legs, but somehow this place lives on. The shining like moments of the show are about how this ramshackle resort is falling to pieces and yet it keeps on surviving — and we keep on fighting for it. And I’m super excited for the audience to see what Nova Scotia looks like, because it’s stunning.
TVLINE | I hear it looks a lot like Manitoba.
It looks nothing like Manitoba. Get off your gummies immediately.
The coolest, meta, weird-ass part about this whole show is that Sheri wrote it loosely based on her own family that runs a cool little hippie resort in Nova Scotia. And we filmed on that actual campground, which was serendipitous. This was a family affair all the way.
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TVLINE | One last question, and this is obviously what it’s all been building to…. In what way will Moonshine offer closure for Salvation fans?
[Laughs] In no way, in absolutely zero ways. I mean, I still want closure myself. I still miss Grace.
TVLINE | So no aliens, no meteor showers….
Nothing. But we do have a mysterious skeleton. So if you want a little mystery vibe, that’s in there! I really wish I could offer anyone [Salvation] closure. I’m ready to make, like, a movie on my iPhone just to give myself and the fans closure.
TVLINE | “Sampson was a spaceship!“
That’s all the closure they need, I guess. What happens next? We’ll never know!
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