Q&A

Hollywood

Q: The writers and actors of “Heartland” gave such a shocking but loving goodbye to [spoiler alert!] this season. But why is the character gone from the show?

A: Before we go any further, there are serious spoilers of the Season 14 premiere of “Heartland” below. This is especially tricky because “Heartland’s” availability varies wildly depending on where you watch it.

Season 14 hasn’t aired yet on American Netflix, but it has aired on CBC in Canada and on the UP Faith and Family streaming service in the U.S. So, if you watched it there (or if you don’t mind reading what happens before you’ve seen it), carry on and wallow with us.

Ty’s death at the beginning of this season may have been a shock to fans, but it wasn’t a shock to the producers and cast.

Graham Wardle, the Canadian actor behind the beloved veterinarian character, had long expressed a desire to leave the show and pursue new projects. That gave the writers the chance to write an exit worthy of the character.

As big of a change as Ty’s absence has been for the show, it marks a bigger change for Wardle, who has decided to give up acting entirely (for now, at least).

“I’m gonna take a break from acting and just focus on my podcast, focus on some other projects that I’ve got on the go,” Wardle explained on an episode of the spiritualitythemed podcast “Time Has Come,” which seems to be his main project. This said, he’s also written a self-help book (“Find Your Truth”) and edits and produces another self-help podcast, “Mathamagical.”

You can learn more about all these varied activities at his website, GrahamWardleOnline.com.

The cast of “Heartland”

Q: I just saw Kevin Spacey in a movie called “The Billionaire Boys Club.” It looked recent, but wasn’t there already a movie with that name?

A: The newer film is as close to a remake of the original as it can be without technically qualifying as such.

The problem, it seems, is that both of them are based on a real crime that happened in the ‘80s, in which a bunch of young investment bankers hit upon a get-richquick scheme that seems to have ended in a murder.

The 1987 version of “The Billionaire Boys Club” was a high-profile, big-budget miniseries on NBC (back when those were still a thing) that credited Greg Critser and Sue Walton among its writers, thanks to the articles they wrote about the crime.

The 2018 version was a big-screen feature that only credited its scriptwriters — Captain Mauzner (“Factory Girl,” 2006) and “Wonderland’s” (2003) James Cox (who also directed).

Thus the new film isn’t a remake of the old series, but rather another telling of the same story. There are no direct links between the two versions — not in the producing staff, at least.

But they did have one cast member in common: Judd Nelson. He was the star of the first version, rising financial whiz kid Joe Hunt, and in the 2018 version, he played Hunt’s father.

Q:Why did they cancel “Designated Survivor”?

A: Much of the fun of “Designated Survivor,” at least in the first season or so, was in exploring the tension between the humdrum life of an academic and low-level cabinet member and the highstakes life of the president of the United States (after said academic is thrust into the big job).

So, it might be fitting that, after a dramatic rescue, this very high-profile show ended for some pretty humdrum reasons.

It was first cancelled by ABC after two seasons, but Netflix swept in at the last minute and bought the rights to produce a third season, only to cancel it again shortly after that.

Star Kiefer Sutherland told Radio Times magazine that this final cancellation wasn’t about anything fun like creative clashes or even sudden ratings drops. It was about contracts.

“We had an amazing experience with Netflix, and a kind of freedom that was wonderful,” Sutherland explained, “but the reality is, because the contracts were so complicated and different from network television to Netflix, etc., they didn’t book a lot of the actors that were on the show, and they took other jobs, and I don’t blame them for a second for that.”

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