Directed by Terry Miles (Dawn Rider), 2024’s Calamity Jane is a far cry from the 1953 movie musical of the same name starring Doris Day. If you’re a cinephile and happened to experience the earlier film about the infamous female gunslinger, you already know that that Jane didn’t go on a killing spree.
That’s not the case in Miles’ version, which is penned by Leon Langford and Collin Watts. This Jane is jonesing for blood. As played by Emily Bett Rickards (Arrow, The Flash), Jane wants vengeance. She breaks out of the jail cell Sheriff Mason (Tim Rozon) confined her in and goes on a rampage. Rozon, who’s captured our interest in SurrealEstate, Wynonna Earp, and Schitt’s Creek, smiles when the 1953 film version is brought up.
“I’ve actually seen it way back in the day,” Rozon said, “but I don’t remember too much about it. I got to play Doc Holliday on Wynonna Earp for four years, and it had been like two years since I played a cowboy. So, then I got this script to be a cowboy again. I guess it was just inside me at that point. I just really wanted to do it.”
Calamity Jane also stars Arrow headliner Stephen Amell as Wild Bill, Jane’s love, and a supporting cast featuring Primo Allon, Jana Berengel, Garrett Black, Spencer Borgeson, and Ben Cotton. In this exclusive MovieWeb interview, Tim Rozon opened up about working alongside Rickards, how starring in Wynonna Earp prepared him for future roles, and why we can’t get enough of Surreal Estate. Read on.
The ‘Kick-Ass’ Script Sold Him
Calamity Jane
- Release Date
- February 2, 2024
- Director
- Terry Miles
- Runtime
- 1hr 35min
- Writers
- Leon Langford , Collin Watts
- Studio
- Tubi Films, Enlighten Content
In this retelling of Calamity Jane, we find the gunslinger eager to break out of jail and be with Wild Bill. But when she hears he’s been killed in a poker game, Jane unravels. Her jail breakout sends Rozon’s Sheriff Mason on a quest to divert disaster. All against a backdrop of the rugged Wild West. Of taking on the project, Rozon shared:
“I knew I’d get to actually ride some horses and do real cowboy stuff in the movie. It’s one of those stories where I read it, and I’m like, ‘This is a kick-ass script, this is going to be super fun.’ I showed up on a set, and it just was everything I could have imagined. It was just a bunch of grown-ups running around, playing pretend, having a blast. It was one of the best groups of actors and people that I got to spend time with in a long time… Every aspect of it was amazing.”
4:05
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A true Western fan, Rozon added: “Don’t get me wrong, I like the futuristic stuff. And the past stuff. I love the medieval stuff. But I’m not a fan of any problem that could be solved by a cell phone.”
On Working With Emily Bett Rickards
One of the best things about the production was working alongside Emily Bett Rickards, who played Felicity Smoak on Arrow—Rickards reunites with Arrow costar Stephen Amell here.
“I’ll say this: I’m one of the most prepared actors that comes to a set,” Rozon shared. “Like, I know my entire script almost before showing up. I really do the work before, so does Emily. It’s amazing. We were working on scenes a couple of days in advance. Even when we were sitting around a set, if we knew the scene we were about to film… we were just going over it, not really totally getting into it, but just going over it.
“We just got to play every day on set because we were so ready,” he added. “But I was super lucky on the movie. My first day I had scenes with Emily and Priscilla Faia [of You, Me, Her], who played Abigail. I got both their performances in the first day. It was some of the jail stuff. And I was like, ‘This movie’s going to be amazing.’”
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The actresses are dynamic in Calamity Jane, and Rozon noted it was because they were “giving so much… they were so nuanced and so interesting that I just reacted to what they were doing. It was so fun to do that as an actor because I was in the scene, but at the same time, I was thinking, ‘Wow, these guys are really cool.’”
From Schitt’s Creek to SurrealEstate
Before Tim Rozon entered CBC’s Schitt’s Creek as resident hottie Mutt Schitt, he was in the hugely successful Canadian series Instant Star. That was in the mid-to late-2000s. “That was kind of a big deal,” he admitted. “It was pre-social media and all that stuff. It’s one of those things where it’s like I’ve consistently been working, but then around the time Schitt’s Creek came out, and I started doing Wynonna Earp, I just started working a little bit more… and you know, you do this for a long time, and sometimes you don’t get any of the recognition. Then you kind of do. I won a Canadian Screen Award two years ago, and it’s one of those feelings where I’m like, ‘Oh, they do know who I am.’”
That’s an understatement. When SYFY’s SurrealEstate came along in 2021, the engaging sci-fi show became a hit. Rozon’s Luke Roman headed a real estate agency specializing in selling haunted houses. That Schitt’s Creek costar Sarah Levy was also on board made the outing all the more interesting for the actors and their fans. When asked why he felt SurrealEstate took off the way it has, Rozon said:
“I think it’s the cast dynamic… of that group of people that work at the agency. It’s such a great group of people that come together to solve the case, because each week we deal with a different haunted house and entity. So yeah, there’s the fun, coolness part of dealing with ghosts and how fun that is. But I think the thing that draws people in is the actual demons that the characters are dealing with themselves, and how they rely on each other to deal with that. There’s a real found family, if that’s a word, to it that I think people respond to… these people coming together who kind of accept each other for who they are, and then just throw themselves into the most batshit crazy scenarios and try and get out of them.”
An Undying Love for Westerns
Rozon says he appreciates many genres in filmmaking but mostly any type of movie or television show where, as an actor, he gets to play and be a “kid” again. “And sci-fi shows or Westerns, it’s just,” he added. “You’re putting on a costume, and you know, I normally have a mustache, facial hair in some way. Don’t get me wrong, I do like doing the romantic comedy in a Hallmark or Christmas movie. They’re fun. But I’m wearing an Abercrombie and Finch sweater. I’m not in dirty cowboy boots riding with Emily Betts Rickards on a wagon behind me shooting a shotgun. There’s a difference in fun level… That’s what makes acting fun for me.”
He says audiences may be surprised by how much action the film holds as well as all the character dynamics. He and Rickards play well off each other.
“
You put two people together who think they are totally different people. They think they have a version of who they think that person is and then they spend enough time together and they go through some trials and tribulations together, and maybe realize, ‘Okay, maybe this isn’t who I thought you were.’ Maybe, you know, bad people do good things and good people do bad things and there’s a difference. You know what I mean? Good people can make mistakes. It can happen. As long as there’s redemption. You should be allowed to be redeemed, is what I’m saying. I think both of them redeem each other by the end of it, which is great. Because I don’t think either one thinks they need redemption, but yet they do end up redeeming each other.”
Catch Calamity Jane in theaters and On Demand.
