Why playing a closeted, grieving farmer in Essex County meant so much to Brian J. Smith

A few weeks before he was handed the script for Essex County, actor Brian J. Smith had an eerily predictive dream. 

"I was out on a farm and I just woke up with this feeling of like, 'Oh wow, I need to be out in the country. I would love to just go out and spend some time on a farm,'" he says. "It was very, very bizarre. And then like three weeks after that, this script came across my desk.

"I was just like, 'Sow, this is so synchronistic.' It felt like this had been manifested in some way."

What Smith had seemed to specifically manifest was the role of Ken, a stoic farmer who must contend with his own grief, fears and queer identity while raising the 11-year-old son of his recently deceased sister. Ken is one of the many rich characters that are part of the rural Southwestern Ontario-set world created by Canadian illustrator Jeff Lemire in Essex County, a five-part limited series based on his own graphic novel.

"I guess I just love exploring grief for some reason," Smith says. "I look back on a lot of stuff that I've done and there's something about people that are going through really extreme emotional states but having to carry on as if everything is normal."

"For some reason, that seems to be something that I'm really attracted to. It's not necessarily the way I live my own life at all — it's just that creatively, it really turns me on."

Previous to Essex County, Smith is known for his work in both television (as Will Orski in Sense8, for example) and on stage (he was nominated for a Tony Award in 2014 for his work in a revival of The Glass Menagerie). He also publicly came out in 2019, and his experience grappling with his sexuality certainly aided in his ability to tap into Ken.  

"I think connecting to being a gay man in a rural town was something that was pretty accessible to me just because of the way I grew up in Texas in the 90s," he says. "You know, I had to tamp down my sexuality because I was afraid of being outed. And so that was accessible to me and was something I was excited to explore."

Smith says that Ken's sexual history was something he talked a lot about with the creative team on Essex County — "you know, what it's like for him just on a day to day basis out in a place like that as a gay guy," he says.

"We talked about the fact that he probably is on the apps, or was on the apps at one point and just sort of gave up on it. I think when we first meet Ken, the impression I always had is that he's just sort of given up on finding someone or thinking that he's ever going to be in a meaningful relationship."

Smith imagines that Ken feels like he sees a very clear path ahead for him. 

"Which is that he's just going to be one of those very lonely guys that's just kind of plugging away. But the thing about Ken that's so nice is that he has kind of found his paradise, in a way. He loves that farm. He loves that piece of land. There's so much memory and nostalgia to that place for him. So in some way he is living out his dream, even though he's very much in stasis and is a little bit stuck."

Essex County is set in the present day, and Smith can't help but think about the current surge in anti-LGBTQ sentiment in terms of his character's journey.

"It lends a different feel to the scenes that Ken has with his dad, where his dad is basically implying that Ken should not be the guardian of the nephew because he's gay," he says. "I think that maybe even three years ago, that would have just been sort of seen as a personal issue that the dad had with Ken because of his homosexuality. But now, in the context of everything else that we're dealing with, one of the first things you think about is people talking about grooming and talking about pedophilia."

Smith rightfully refers to the current climate as featuring "this steady drip of poison into people's ears that homosexuals and transgender people are sick and that they're pedophiles." And he's very concerned about where it's heading.

"It's the first step in reigniting culture wars by making people afraid of us again."

That's something he's exploring in a very different project he's been working: directing a documentary about Fire Island, the famous queer-centric community off the coast of Long Island.

"We filmed the majority of it last summer, and this was just as the Dobbs decision had come down and Ron DeSantis was launching Don't Say Gay," he says. "And it's important to hear what people are saying in places like Fire Island, because it's a very highly concentrated queer conversation generator, places like that."

"The thing that's on everybody's mind right now is the fact that it seems like there is definitely this backlash to the sense that we have won the culture wars — that we've established ourselves and we're mainstream. 'We're out, we're proud, you know, get used to it,' you know. And I think that there is this unexpectedly swift and intense backlash from people who are saying, 'Hold on, wait a minute, this has changed way too fast.'"

Smith feels that people who hold those views feel like they now have license to really start "being very vocal and legislatively active" in the way they push back against queer people.

"It's definitely happening and people are afraid. I mean, there's this sense that all the progress that was made, you know, if they can get rid of abortion rights as a federally protected idea, gay rights are really next on their radar."

"They're slowly chipping away at it. You see it's happening in Tennessee with the anti-drag laws, which basically make it so you can't have drag shows at a gay pride parade because it's a public space. I mean, it's coming. They're coming ... for us. And it's time to kind of sit up and pay attention and figure out what we're going to do about it, because it's real."

You can look for Smith's documentary on Fire Island at some point in the coming year or so (he's still shooting it), while the finale of Essex County airs this Sunday at 9pm on CBC; the entire season will be available on CBC Gem soon after.