After a summer on the stage at Stratford, Colm Feore will be ready for an explosive change of pace.
"I'm here in Stratford doing art, so I clearly will have had enough of that," the versatile Canadian actor said. "So if there's a chance to blow up some s---, I'm there."
Speaking of blowing up s---, Feore has increased his worldwide profile substantially with his recent portrayal of Henry Taylor on 24. But Feore will help to highlight senseless violence from another perspective in the two-part CBC mini-series Guns, which airs Sunday and Monday.
Guns, which was directed and co-written by Sudz Sutherland and also stars Elisha Cuthbert and Shawn Doyle, actually was filmed more than two years ago.
"It felt ripped from the headlines when we were making it," Feore said. "There had been an inexplicable rash of gun violence across the country. People were scratching their heads but everyone knew there was something underneath this.
"Someone has to be buying these guns, selling these guns. They didn't get them at the bottom of a Cheerios box."
Feore plays Paul Duguid, a slick Toronto-based businessman who is waist-deep in the trafficking of firearms.
"My character really thinks he's justified," Feore said. "He thinks it's a family business, that his kid is going to play ball. It's the day-to-day routineness of it that's chilling."
Feore has covered the spectrum of good and evil during his TV, film and theatre careers.
"It's exemplified by what I'm doing in Stratford now, playing Cyrano de Bergerac, a fabulous good guy, and Macbeth, who has a darker view," Feore said. "But I accept that duality and I believe they cross-pollinate.
"One of the journeys of Macbeth is, once you start killing your friends, geez, it never ends. Shakespeare does have Macbeth say to his wife, 'Honey, I know we started this wrong, but the more you do it, you actually get better at it.' "
That resonates for Paul Duguid in Guns, too.
"Suddenly it's a business and you're doing great," Feore said. "Some is legit, some is not quite so legit, but if it wasn't you it'd be someone else, and you get better at it, and you get richer, so it's hard to stop."
We couldn't let Feore go without inquiring about the uncertain future of Henry Taylor on 24, which will be back in January on Fox and Global.
"Last I saw, I had a hole in me, people had cut pieces off, I'd had a bad headache from some terrible coffee, I'd killed a man, my wife was leaving me and my kids were either dead or in jail," Feore said. "So morally Henry is at the end of his rope. I don't where we're at with that.
"Listen, I have a deal that says, 'If you need me, call me.' I'm happy to work on 24. They are the most delightful people."
And hey, if Colm Feore gets to blow up some s---, all the better.