Pop-Culturalist.com

With over 90 credits to his name, Matthew Kevin Anderson has solidified his place amongst the industry’s most versatile talents. He’s a gifted storyteller who has never shied away from tackling timely and difficult subject matter and characters.

His latest project, SkyMed, finds Matthew stepping into the shoes of a character who’s not afraid to leverage his privilege to advance in his life and career. The must-see medical drama follows the intense personal lives of young nurses and pilots flying air ambulances in remote Northern Canada.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Matthew about his journey into the industry, SkyMed, and playing the antagonist.

PC: How did you discover your passion for the arts and storytelling?
Matthew: I’ve always been more attracted to the arts. I was never really interested in academics. I was never really interested in school, to be honest. But I don’t know if that’s because I ended up going to a lot of schools as a kid. I moved around a lot. I was always more focused on being in a new environment and having to make all new friends every couple of years. I became really interested in people. That’s something that I attribute my interest in acting to—adapting to all these different scenarios and things like that throughout my youth. But I was definitely always more interested in the arts.

In elementary school, I had a music teacher who wanted me to join the choir. She was like, “You have a really good voice. You can sing.” I was really interested in choir, but she got me into the school musicals and we did Fantasia and Wizard of Oz. That was sort of my first time being on stage and being in that environment where you’re backstage, you’re with your fellow actors, and you’re feeling the excitement of doing a live performance. I would say that was a huge influence on me.

Then Vancouver started becoming really busy film-wise. You started seeing film sets popping up everywhere. I was always curious about that. But I never really thought acting would be my career until I was watching TV one day and my sister saw someone from her high school on TV. She was like, “That kid goes to my high school.” I was like, “What? We can do that too?” I always thought it was something that people were doing in a faraway place. That’s when things came together.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Matthew: I’m a huge advocate for mentorship. It’s very important. The reason why I find it important is because I realized that I didn’t have strong mentors when I was younger. My parents knew nothing about the arts or the industry. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but they really didn’t know. They don’t understand what I do. [laughs]

At a young age, there was a woman, whose name I can’t remember right now, who guided me in a certain direction. Later in my career, I met Paul McGillion in Vancouver. He was on Stargate: Atlantis and a bunch of other things. He became a mentor who taught me a lot. But that was later on in my career.

I’ve had to steer my own ship and learn from my own mistakes. I wish I had a strong mentor earlier in my career though. I think it would’ve helped me navigate those waters a lot easier. I try to focus on being that person for others now.

PC: You’ve had so much success already in your career. When you look back, is there a moment that stands out?
Matthew: There have been a lot of moments at different times in my career. Most recently, I would say where I am in my acting career is looking for ways to keep it really exciting for myself and the people that I’m acting with. A lot of the projects that I’ve worked on in the last year, like Corrective Measures, have given me a long leash. The script is a starting point. Then we all come together on set and they’re like, “This is what we had scripted. How can we take this to another level?”

That was so exciting and collaborative. For me as an actor, that is the feeling that I’m chasing right now. It’s the projects where you’re not just being hired to show up, hit a mark, say a line, and paint within the lines. I want to paint outside of the lines, and I want to create exciting moments that the writers couldn’t have thought about in the room when they were writing it. They don’t know who the actors are going to be. I want to be able to get on a set and take it to another level.

PC: Tell us about SkyMed, your character, and what drew you to this project.
Matthew: SkyMed is awesome. I heard about it and I contacted my team. I was like, “I’m really interested in this project.” They sent me a couple of characters to look at, and I ended up putting a few things on tape. They liked me for Brad. I love shooting on location. Getting to go on a plane and head to Winnipeg was really cool. I thought the story was really neat. It’s a unique world. It reminds me of M*A*S*H. I don’t know if people remember that show, but I watched that when I was a kid and it has that feel—lots of interpersonal relationships and intense triage action and emergency situations and how that brings people together and affects people as well.

It’s a really interesting world that they’re using to create a medical drama, and I wanted to be part of it. It was a really great crew and cast. It’s all inspired by true events. The show creator’s sister is a flight nurse. Her brother-in-law is a pilot. I have friends who are pilots. It’s so interesting. It’s a cool community. The fact that a lot of this stuff actually happened is wild.

PC: When you’re playing a character who’s so different from who you are, is that more or less challenging?
Matthew: It’s definitely more exciting. I got into this business because I wanted to play a bank robber and shoot guns. I wanted to get chased by the police and do the things that I couldn’t do in real life. You can’t walk into a bank and rob it, but you can in the film world. So I enjoyed the challenge of it. It is really uncomfortable though. I’m playing an intense racist in this.

I recently did a project for Stop Asian Hate. It was a music video. They had the director’s aunt play the waitress and I was berating her in the video. She’s not even an actor. She’s just someone’s aunt. I was like, “She knows this is acting, right?” But I was improvising and saying all these terrible things because I needed to evoke that emotion from the audience. My role was to make the audience hate me. It makes the hero’s journey bigger and greater when I play a bigger villain or bad guy. It’s difficult though. It’s an exercise in acting.

PC: You do such a fantastic job evoking that emotion from audiences. How rewarding is it for you to know that your performance is driving this strong reaction?
Matthew: That’s my job, right? At the end of the day, that’s my job. It’s to support Julie Puckrin’s story as much as I possibly can. If I’m going to be the bad guy, I want to be the best antagonist I possibly can be. If people are disliking my character then I’ve done my job. I’m really happy about that. When people come up and they’re like, “Man, you’re a really good villain. You play a good racist.” I’m like, “Oh, God. That’s so weird.” [laughs]

It was the same thing on that video shoot. People were like, “Wow, you play a good bigot.” I was like, “Thanks. I’m just trying to do my job.” But in all seriousness, I love getting a reaction. I feel like that’s a part of what we do. We want to evoke some kind of feeling in the audience.

To keep up with Matthew, follow him on Instagram. Watch the first season of SkyMed on Paramount+ today.

Photo Credit: David Tenniswood