Sara Canning‘s guest spot on Murder in a Small Town is a full circle moment after she originally auditioned for the lead role.
“The show has definitely been on my radar because I got to read the pilot and audition. I immediately loved it,” Canning, 38, exclusively told Us Weekly about her appearance in the Tuesday, November 4, episode of the Fox series. “A good friend of mine was in the pilot and the nice thing about being in the industry is having gotten to know a lot of actors really well. I get to see a lot of them in shows that are shot locally. So it was pretty cool to get to join for an episode.”
Based on novels written by L.R. Wright, Murder in a Small Town follows a police chief named Karl (Rossif Sutherland) who investigates mysterious murders with the help of a few others, including his girlfriend, Cassandra (Kristin Kreuk). The procedural format allows the show to feature celebrity cameos such as Canning’s, who played Mackenzie in Tuesday’s episode.
Before joining as Mackenzie, Canning initially read for Kreuk’s character, Cassandra Lee.
“Kristin is such an incredible actor and it’s so beautiful to watch the chemistry between her and Rossif [Sutherland]. It was really special to get to come aboard,” she shared about her role.
Canning’s character is originally introduced as someone who organizes a memorial after the death of her sister. The event went awry after a bear attack, but it was ultimately revealed that Mackenzie planned to kill someone during the memorial to avenge her sister’s death.
“It’s really interesting playing a character who is in the middle of such a traumatic event and processing so much grief. It is about living in the reality of the trauma of the event of the bear attack,” she told Us. “To have all of these scenes in a hospital bed, you have to try to differentiate between where she’s at in processing what’s happened and suddenly feeling like she’s being investigated.”
Canning called the opportunity a “pretty challenging” role.
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“The great thing about playing Mackenzie is that we get to meet her in a pretty honest state. This horrible thing has happened and it’s affected her in a very real way — despite the plotting that she was up to. I loved that about this character, this reveal,” she teased. “These particular mystery shows are really good at giving us a character that contains multitudes. We get to meet Mackenzie in a very real state of trauma. It’s all the more interesting as it unravels into what the premeditative nature of this whole thing was and how she’s left now to pick up the pieces while being trapped in a hospital.”
Playing Mackenzie allowed Canning to push herself as an actress. “I love murder mystery shows. I’ve just started watching Task, which I’ve only watched the first episode of but I love shows that exist in that tone,” she said before teasing what’s next. “Then I have Virgin River, where I have a pretty significant arc in season 7 of that show, which was really exciting. And I did a film with long time pal Daniel Gillies from The Vampire Diaries as well called Shaman.”
Murder in a Small Town airs on Fox Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.