There’s a push-pull aspect to actor, James Tupper. Or maybe pull-push
is a better way of putting it. The first thing out of his mouth before he sits down is “I don’t have much time.” “How much time have you got?” I ask. He tells me “I’m going to have to leave as soon as my son is done with his spelling contest.” We move to another table to speak, and I fumble for a second with my phone, worried that it isn’t recording; he says if it isn’t, we can just do the interview again. And that next time he’ll do an impression of me. “Do it now!” I say, curious what he means. “You probably wouldn’t like it very much,” he teases. That’s how we begin.
For someone being interviewed, he asks a lot of questions. One gets the sense it’s because he’s curious about other people and the world around him, but it’s also a way of deflecting when asked something he doesn’t want to answer. And like the Bouzouki music playing in the background of the Greek restaurant where we meet, he jumps from chord to chord at a pace.

He grew up in Nova Scotia and worked as a carpenter, but always really wanted to be an actor; at nineteen he started doing theatre at night and eventually made it into drama school in Montreal. He went on to get an M.F.A. from Rutgers, and with more than fifty plays under his belt he’s thought about returning to theatre. But while his kids are growing up tv shoot schedules are easier to navigate.

I ask him what role he’s played that’s been the farthest from who he is as a person. He answers, “I think... it’s really funny because you’re always exploring a part of yourself. I’m a very gentle, sweet guy and sometimes I get cast in these kinds of diabolical roles. When I was in ‘Revenge’, I was the dad, and when I came back from the dead and I had been leading like this horrific life [he laughs] that was hard to access because it was pretty dark.” I ask if these parts are easier to play because they require less vulnerability. He responds, “Well that’s not quite how I look at it... everybody is everything; in different circumstances anybody could do anything. Like, look at war zones; what people are forced to do, how they’re forced to live... We all have those alternate parts of ourselves, and when you’re doing a role, things become unburied in a way you don’t generally access.”
How has he changed as an actor over the years – for better and/or for worse? He says “I work harder. To understand the material, I work WAY harder than I ever thought I’d have to. I always thought I could glide through on personality… It dawned on me slowly, but when the stakes go up with the job, when you’re suddenly offered a series regular on a show and there’s all this money involved, you start working a lot harder [he laughs]; you stop sleeping.”

With success comes opportunity for activism: he was a spokesperson for PETA for a while, and raised over $100,000 for Puerto Rico after the damage wrought by Hurricane Maria. He explains “I was really upset... Nova Scotia is a place that gets a lot of hurricanes so I think it’s just bred in the bone that you reach out to people when they’re devastated – that’s when you’re friendly. And I couldn’t stand what I saw and the way that some parts of our society were just dismissing it. They’re like our brothers and sisters... I’m trying
to help out people in a desperate situation.”

He used to build houses in the Hollywood Hills and still has a shop where he’s currently constructing a kitchen table. When his kids have school assignments, he brings them in there and shows them step by step how to build what sound like the most elaborate and impressive educational projects ever. His son must be the kid who always comes in over the top.

James talks about a great book he’s reading on the Comanche Nation. I press him on how he has time to read anything besides scripts and his children’s homework. “That’s a good question,” he says, “I make thirty minutes a day and me and my boy sit down and we read. You have that time; if you just do thirty minutes a day... we also do thirty minutes a day on piano.” (Did I mention he and his son are taking piano lessons together?)
James cooks a lot and recently has been getting into a “really healthy thing; I just did a series with Alicia Silverstone so she’s been coaching me [she’s a known vegan]. I generally shop at the farmers’ market and then go home and cook, and have a great, really fun Sunday. I still eat meat” [we won’t tell Alicia]. He likes learning new things and sometimes hires a chef to come over and teach a group of friends how to make a variety of dishes. He has two dogs and a cat named King George who’s the boss of them; I ask if he’s seen “Hamilton” (he hasn’t) and tell him he’ll have a new appreciation for King George once he sees it.

Because I’m an actor, myself and eternally interested in how actors work, I ask him about his process and how he approaches a role. “I dream about it.” That’s all I get.

“I just did my first costume fitting for “Big Little Lies [Season 2],” he tells me, “It was kind of amazing. It’s interesting when you had a character a year ago and you come back to it... it automatically comes right back into your body and you’re like ‘oh, yeah – this guy!’ [laughs] I’m really looking forward to that, but they’ve sworn me to silence.” I tell him that’s just a tease to bring it up and then say ‘but I can’t tell you anything about it. JT: “Exactly.”

He will tell me that he can ride his bike to work, which not many actors in L.A. can say. Or would do. When asked “Who would you most like to interview?” his answer is Shailene Woodley. “I met her doing ‘Big Little Lies’ and I just think she’s one of the most genuine, down-to-earth, real people I’ve ever met. I think she’s super-powered in a way... just a real human and real generous spirit. And on ‘Big Little Lies’ she stole my heart; she was a single mom with that child... so that’s who I’d like to interview; to find out why she’s so awesome [laughs]”. I ask if he’s able to see her at work and learn a little bit about how she approaches things, but it sounds like she maintains her well-earned mystique. “Everybody [on Big Little Lies] is very private,” he says, “It’s like the big leagues, the NBA. Everybody’s very very good at what they do and can do some really special stuff, but by the time you’re acting in the scene – the preparation is very silent and very singular and very focused, and you don’t hang out and chat.” “What about lunch,” I wonder, “can’t you just sit down and ask some questions?” He says “We shoot all day long; yeah, there are a couple of moments where you’re like ‘What are you doing this weekend?’ and she’s like ‘I’m saving lives’ [laughs] but you don’t really have a chance to talk to someone. She’s famous on another level but she handles it in the way she does, and doesn’t let it get to her. I’m a fan.” I’m a fan of hers, too.

…And then there’s the Meryl factor. “I can’t believe you’re about to have Meryl Streep coming to your show” I marvel. “That was like a dream when I was sixteen, seventeen years old,” James says, “I thought, if I ever worked with her it would be amazing. It’s a dream; as an actor, to be able to work with her! It’s incredible, I can’t wait. That’s what makes my relatives in Canada both delighted and confused. You know, they can’t believe little Jimmy Tupper is working with someone as well-known as her. Yeah, I’m a fan.”
He returns to the subject of acting, “I remember when I started ‘The Brave’ and I had a 5:30am call, and I woke up at like 2:30 in the morning and spent three hours just lying there getting ready to do it. You know, whatever really happens in those three hours when you’re alone? It’s very personal. There’s something about growing up around the ocean that gives you a lot of space inside; the kind of ocean I grew up around, there’s nobody there, it’s all rocky and windswept and just teeming with seals and whales. You could see them all over the place... just beautiful. And it’s really lonely but really expansive.”
That’s what I meant about the push-pull of James Tupper. Somehow informed by the ebb and flow of the ocean’s waves. You can take the boy out of Nova Scotia...
***
Five years later, we’ve all survived the pandemic, riots, insurgency and, at least the early stages of geopolitical upheavel. Aleim and I are back at the editorial work of putting the next issue of the magazine together, taking stock of a backlog of articles, seeing what we’ve got and what we need. Reading through this one, we pause. A google search confirms… Tupper’s son Atlas’s mom is Anne Heche, an A-list actress who starred in blockbuster in films opposite Harrison Ford, Johnny Depp, Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro, who died after crashing her car into a Mar Vista residence in 2022. We were in some stage of pandemic lockdown at that point catching up on TV, and news, aside from vaccine stuff, was a little slow. So, unfortunately, the tragic story received a lot of unwanted attention.

To the rest of the world, this was a shocking event stranger than fiction. The dramatic death of a famous, beautiful, but troubled actress in her prime of life… but for James Tupper, it was the loss of an ex-partner and his son Atlas’s Mom.
So yeah, Aleim and I agree, we’d better give this guy a call.
James answers and immediately makes time for this conversation. An update is necessary at this point, he says, because so much has happened. “It’s difficult to sum up how it’s been going over the last few years,” he tells me. “There’s been a lot of change. I’ve been working a ton… which is really great. And been loving being a dad.”

I ask him how it’s been surviving the loss of Anne. “We’d separated long before, and had become friends and supported each other,” he explains, “We lived very different lifestyles and I can’t say anything but positive things about Anne. She was a person who was lit from within, a brilliant artist and mother. Like so many people with addiction issues, she struggled. She tried to get control of her demons… but it doesn’t diminish what a good mother and partner she was.”

Atlas is doing well, he reports. He loves tennis and wants to be a D1 Tennis player and hit the tour. “He’s enormously talented,” James says, “and [the sport] has created a healthy lifestyle. Like so many people who become athletes, you enter into a contract where you dedicate yourself every day. It helps him deal with the tremendous loss he suffered. It’s healthy, he sleeps at night and eats right, plays little with videogames… and in general his overall quality is that he’s a sweet Canadian boy, a little on the shy side.” James continues, ”the last few tournaments he entered he was undefeated, he’s plowing through some great opponents…overall very positive.”

James has embraced the new challenge of being a single parent. “I couldn’t be happier. I’m happy that I have an opportunity to love him every day. Like so many people that dealt with partners with addiction issues, it creates a tremendous amount of chaos for the whole family… so in the new manifestation that we have, there’s less chaos, more focused energy. He’s doing the best I could hope for. In situations like this it takes a long time for the bruises underneath to reveal themselves. When I was six I lost my mom to cancer, so I have first-hand experience with dealing with this. I found out that Aretha Franklin also lost her parent at six, there are no words for the pain that a child feels when he loses a parent. So what do you do with that? You take it one day at a time…”

I ask what helped him survive after the death of his own mother. “Nobody did anything with me at that age. What made the biggest difference is that I learned what not to do… I learned that there are so many ways you can help a child. I think back then there wasn’t the same level of awareness, the same level of science. I reached out to professionals right away instead of putting him into therapy too soon I talked to them myself about what they can recover and what they can’t. Losing a parent is a life defining moment… Then six months in he saw a therapist himself. He begged me not to send him again. Children have a quality where the amount of loss is so overwhelming that they reach forward and grab at the life they want to have. That may have helped him find the focus on tennis… there are a lot of really specific ways that children deal with grief.”

And then there was a strange story that emerged from the general frenzy around Heche’s passing. Something in Page Six about Heche’s older son Homer, Tupper’s former stepson, taking the family to court to sue for custody of his younger brother. James quickly dispels it. “There was never a custody thing, and never a lawsuit.” He says, “they put that in the paper and I had friends calling me from England… Homer was never asking for custody. It was so bizarre. At no time has anybody ever questioned my custody… most of the stuff that was printed was nonsense. We’re a close family.”

“If I comment then it becomes a bigger thing,” he continues, “I didn’t have my publicist even bother. The struggle we had was over who would be the executor. We always agreed that the estate belonged to Atlas and Homer. My preference would have been someone neutral, and Homer wanted to do it himself. He ended up doing it and it’s been a long a difficult road – and he’s included us in everything.”

As challenging as that responsibility sounds, James reports that Homer is also doing very well. “He was my stepson from when he was three, and I got to be his father until he was fifteen or sixteen, and I love him like he was my own son. Sometimes fathers and sons disagree. He’s got a job and refocused himself, had a huge Christmas bonus… I got them both tickets to the Rams game and they both went. They’re just being bros.”

Through all the chaos, James has kept his focus as an actor, lighting up when I ask him about recent projects. “I’m in Ride. A Western airing on CW. It starts this week with Nancy Travis and a bunch of young super talented actors. I love being a cowboy. I had to get on a mechanical bull! We shot it in Calgary.”
I ask him for his take on what’s going on in the industry. Between the takeover of the business by streaming platforms, the advent of AI, and the strikes, it seems like it’s been pretty tumultuous. I’m curious as to how the landscape looks from his standpoint as a theatrically trained actor.

“I don’t know if I’m an exception, but I’ve never been working more. I just got back from a shoot and am having a nice time with it. Everyone says [the business] is contracting, but there are still so many options, with the world audience – it used to be that you made a show for America, Canada, and couple of other countries, now they’re exported all over the world. I feel like there are still loads of opportunities and people shouldn’t be pessimistic… There are loads and loads of profits and money to be made.”

On the impact of AI: “I don’t’ know much about it. I will say this about it… they’re taking an amalgam of all this information and they can make something that seems like a script that exists today. But how could a computer write When Harry Met Sally? The subtle insight into a woman’s heart and how a man thinks… I don’t think a computer will ever reach that. For actors, they may be able to reproduce some things but I’m not panicking… yet. I am interested in people. No matter how similar even animation is…”

We chat a little about Big Little Lies. It’s only been a couple of days since the announcement came out that there will be a Season 3. “Here’s what I’ll tell you. They haven’t even said that I’m involved… so, get excited but be in it for the long haul… it might be eight or ten months before we get it on the air.”
Fair enough! We know we’re in good hands, and we can wait.