{"id":859291,"date":"2026-08-15T18:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T18:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/859291\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T18:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T18:06:15","slug":"sterling-points-canadian-director-megan-park-on-creating-one-of-summers-most-talked-about-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/859291\/","title":{"rendered":"Sterling Point\u2019s Canadian director Megan Park on creating one of summer\u2019s most-talked-about shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Director and creator Megan Park attends Prime Video’s ‘Sterling Point’ World Premiere at Regal Union Square in New York.Michael Loccisano\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Sterling Point, the Prime series that Megan Park created, wrote and directed, about a group of teenagers in Ontario cottage country sharing an indelible coming-of-age summer, had only been streaming for a week when Park and I got on a video call together. But the internet was already in raptures about it; the Closet Scene in particular had been dubbed \u201ciconic.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve watched the show, you know the moment: Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie), a local who works as a pilot and mechanic at his father\u2019s marina, and Annie (Ella Rubin), the privileged New Yorker who\u2019s uncovering a family secret in Lake Muskoka, are sitting opposite one another in her cottage\u2019s woodsy, wainscoted storage closet, when Ellis reaches out \u2013 left hand behind Annie\u2019s right knee, right hand on her waist, their eyes locked \u2013 and pulls her across the floor into him. They\u2019ve been quietly crazy about each other for seven episodes, but this is the first time either has made a move. The swooniest part is, it ends not with a kiss, but a hug. You can practically hear a collective \u201cohhh\u201d echoing around the Earth, followed by the click of a million rewind buttons being pressed to watch it again. <\/p>\n

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Left to right, Ella Rubin, Mabel Strachan, Bo Bragason, and Am\u00e9lie Hoeferle in Sterling Point.Sabrina Lantos\/Prime\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the kind of authentic-feeling interaction that viewers love to call \u201cimprovised,\u201d when in fact it and everything people are loving about the series are a direct result of Park\u2019s work ethic, powers of observation and commitment to collaboration. She dreamed up the scenario, in which Annie and her twin brother Connor (Keen Ruffalo, son of actor Mark Ruffalo) are bequeathed an island by an estranged grandfather. She created those characters, as well as Ramona (Am\u00e9lie Hoeferle), a guarded but deep-feeling local raised by her grandfather who turns out to be the half-sister Annie didn\u2019t know she had; Rory (Daniel Quinn-Toye), one of Muskoka\u2019s nouveau riche, but kind; Oona (Bo Bragason), a British free spirit with a lax mother; and Maple (Mabel Strachan), Oona\u2019s precocious younger sister. Park crafted the series\u2019 premise \u2013 that growing up and feeling out of control can be freaky, but also exciting \u2013 and developed its layered relationships, both straight and queer. She wrote the funny, naturalistic dialog that gives the characters real snap. She cast a winning group of young actors and then she \u2013 gasp \u2013 asked for their input.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m shocked that more directors don\u2019t collaborate that way,\u201d Park, who was born in Lindsay, Ont., and turned 40 in July, says on our call. The sun is streaming into her home office outside Toronto; she\u2019s wearing a white tank top and has her blonde hair loose; and she\u2019s limping slightly because she broke her big toe at her series\u2019 premiere in New York, then turned her ankle a week later picking up one of her two children. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll limp forever, but at least it will evoke fond Sterling Point memories,\u201d she cracks. (She and her children\u2019s father, actor and musician Tyler Hilton, divorced this past January.)<\/p>\n

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Hoeferle, Rubin and Park attend the ‘Sterling Point’ World Premiere in New York.Michael Loccisano\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Back when Park was a young actor, in films and series including Charlie Bartlett and The Secret Life of the American Teenager, \u201cno one would ever ask me, \u2018Now Megan, how would you sit in this scene?\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cIt was just, \u2018Sit here, wear this, say that.\u2019\u201d But on Sterling Point and in the two films she wrote and directed, The Fallout (2021) and My Old Ass (2024), \u201cthe actors and I discuss a scene, I film the scripted take, and then I ask what they\u2019d do. It\u2019s the only way to get the authenticity I want to capture.\u201d <\/p>\n

So when her producers offered Park and on-screen half-sisters Rubin and Hoeferle two hours of rehearsal time in a conference room, Park instead held a bonfire where the three shared stories from their childhoods. When her cast created music playlists for their characters, Park listened to them, to help her get inside their heads. She\u2019d observe how Rubin and Hoeferle would snuggle before a take, braiding each other\u2019s hair, and then incorporate that into the scene. And when Rubin asked how she should get across that closet floor into Whiteduck-Lavoie\u2019s arms, Park and her director of photography, Kristen Correll, huddled in the space with them and figured it out. <\/p>\n

Park had never written television before, but her co-showrunners, Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz, had created two Young Adult classics, The O.C. and Gossip Girl. \u201cThe structure of those series, or Dawson\u2019s Creek or One Tree Hill, they\u2019re similar in the way they draw you in, with love triangles and mysteries,\u201d Park says. \u201cThese active characters in search of answers. At first I was scared. How do I put those tropes through the voice I want this show to have?\u201d<\/p>\n

Her answer lay in her characters. \u201cThey come into my mind fully formed, and then it\u2019s about reverse engineering situations to fit them,\u201d Park says. \u201cMaple is 14, so smart, a voracious reader, so what would throw her? Getting her period. Annie, turning 18, has never defined herself as the girl with the dead mom \u2013 but what if she did?\u201d Annie\u2019s late mother\u2019s two loves, played by Jay Duplass and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, are also coming of age \u2013 middle age \u2013 facing up to decisions they made when younger. <\/p>\n

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Hoeferle and Rubin play half-sisters in Sterling Point.Sabrina Lantos\/Prime\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Park filmed exteriors on Lakes Joseph and Rosseau, and interiors on a Toronto sound stage. \u201cI love showcasing Canada for Canada,\u201d she says. \u201cWhy can\u2019t this be happening all the time?\u201d As a director, she understands how to convey the honeyed afternoons and lavender dusks of a summer by the lake, the August shiver of days shortening, the teenage ache of being nostalgic for a moment even as you\u2019re living it, and that gutted feeling when you realize that you\u2019re maybe not who you thought you were, just as you\u2019re about to enter a vast, unknown adulthood. She knows how to shoot teenagers watching fireworks over the water, piled atop one another like puppies; she understands the plume of a boat\u2019s wake and the romantic slap of an old screen door.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written before that, for me, the truest drama comes from people who are struggling to behave well, and Park loves that, too; she finds straight-up villains dull and instead gives every character their colours. But mainly, she knows that teenagers are people, and treats them with respect. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a Millennial, and honestly, my teenage years were a lot like Mean Girls,\u201d Park says. \u201cI think Gen Z see the world through a different lens. They\u2019ve experienced more upheavals and uncertainty than I ever felt, and come out the other side kinder, but also craving being off the grid. The state of the world, social media, economic uncertainty \u2013 they\u2019re dealing with all of that as they\u2019re trying to leave the nest. They are so much more resilient, smarter, and more aware of how their behaviour affects the people around them than my generation was. It drives me crazy when I watch shows that don\u2019t take them seriously. My goal is to give them the elevated stories, characters and content they deserve.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Rubin and Daniel Quinn-Toye, who plays Rory, in Sterling Point.Courtesy of Prime\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Park\u2019s next project as writer\/director, Die Alive, a romantic comedy feature starring Zo\u00eb Kravitz, will be her first centred on adults. \u201cIt\u2019s about parenthood, aging parents, female friendship and the comedy that comes from that,\u201d she says. \u201cOf all the things I\u2019ve written, it\u2019s the closest to where I am in my actual life.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also imagining scenarios for Sterling Point season two, though that\u2019s yet to be announced. \u201cWe knew we wanted Annie and Ramona to trade places, so if we get a season two we\u2019ll see how that\u2019s affected them,\u201d she says. There\u2019s a lot she wants to dig into \u2013 Connor looking for his and Annie\u2019s biological parents, maybe an ex of Ellis\u2019s turns up. \u201cThe characters are special to me. And the actors are already BFF\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

She stops herself. \u201cSee, I\u2019m dating myself,\u201d she says. \u201cMy cast would let me know: \u2018Megan, nobody says BFF\u2019s anymore.\u2019\u201d And Park would listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Director and creator Megan Park attends Prime Video’s ‘Sterling Point’ World Premiere at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,361,46,549,75,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-859291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-celebrities","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-entertainment","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}