Showrunner Roma Roth (far right) on the set of Sullivan’s Crossing.Jessie Redmond/CTV/Supplied
Though she originally studied primates in university, Roma Roth has become television’s foremost expert in soulmates.
The London, Ont., native is showrunner and executive producer on the popular Nova Scotia-set romantic drama Sullivan’s Crossing, which returns April 27 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CTV (and, next month, on the CW in the United States).
Roth also executive produces Virgin River, the even more popular Netflix romance, shot in B.C., that is currently the streamer’s longest-running series.
Both those shows are based on novels by bestselling American author Robyn Carr – and Roth’s American-Canadian production company Reel World Management has a third in development based on Carr’s Thunder Point series that she says will “probably” be another cross-border production like Sullivan’s Crossing.
As the third season of Sullivan’s Crossing begins Sunday, former neurosurgeon Maggie (Morgan Kohan) is dealing with the aftermath of a diner fire that may that may have killed her father, Sully – and having confessed her true feelings to Cal (Chad Michael Murray). Roth confessed her true feelings about the romance genre in a phone interview with The Globe and Mail from a hotel in Toronto – where she was working on this season’s postproduction.
The actors in Sullivan’s Crossing on CTV.Jessie Redmond/CTV/Supplied
I’m interested in your progression through the books of Robyn Carr. How did Virgin River get off the ground originally?
I had wanted to get into TV series – up until then I’d been working primarily in television movies. So I spent a good six months looking for the right material to adapt and came across Robyn’s work. Virgin River was on a list of HarperCollins top 200 books of all time; she had interesting bedfellows there: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Thorn Birds, The Bible. I did up a small pitch, sent it over to one of the executives at Netflix in an e-mail, focused a lot on the book sales, and got a meeting and sold the series.
Virgin River was originally published by Harlequin – which was founded in Canada and owned by TorStar until 2014 when it was sold to HarperCollins. Did you grow up reading Harlequins?
I did not. I have a master’s degree in anthropology and behavioural sciences and primatology, so I was reading more scientific books. But I’ve always loved romance and watched romance. The Thorn Birds was one of my favourite miniseries of all time
For your master’s thesis, you made a documentary on bonobos, is that right?
That’s correct. There was some romance involved because it was about that gestural communication during their dating relationships.
What did you learn from bonobos that you’ve applied to your work?
Well, anthropology as a whole, it teaches you how to observe the world from a much more objective way, so that you’re not really kind of imposing your own ideas on things. That certainly has helped me to analyze and observe the world, where things are going. So, for example, when we developed Virgin River, Hollywood had kind of veered away from romance. What I had noticed about the world was that we were kind of heading back toward the 1980s and 1990s and some values that we had kind of left behind.
Virgin River’s Melinda and Jack got together in season three – and now it’s headed for its seventh. On Sullivan’s Crossing, Cal and Maggie got together near the end of season two. Is the moment your romantic leads get together a struggle – or an opportunity to make a show blossom?
Relationships are fraught with ups and downs in the real world. Even if you get people together, that doesn’t mean that they’re aligned all the time. Things that are happening dramatically in their lives and external circumstances can affect a relationship and give you that kind of push and pull that you need for a romance drama series. There’s always this fine line: How long do you keep your two leads apart? You don’t want to antagonize your audience.
You work with your husband – how long have you two been together and how long have you worked together?
Wow. That’s a trick question. My husband’s gonna be mad. Time is irrelevant for me because I live in the now. We’ve been together for, let’s see, 22 years; married for – I could be wrong – 17; and working together, probably, at least 10, if not 12 or 14 years. Certainly working with your significant other has its ups and downs, but he’s my best friend and my biggest supporter. I couldn’t ask for a better partner both in life and in my work.
Which of your shows’ characters would be most likely to say: “Time is irrelevant for me because I live in the now.”
Frank Cranebear.
I love Tom Jackson in that role on Sullivan’s Creek.
An iconic Canadian actor.
While romance is on the rise on TV, we’re also hearing that young people are having less sex than they used to in society. Does that work with the genre or against it?
Whether or not people are having sex doesn’t really impact the romance genre because, at the end of the day, the romance genre is intended to play into your fantasies. So most people who are fantasizing probably aren’t having sex – or maybe not having the sex that they’re interested in having. A lot of my friends who I would say are intellectuals, particularly stronger women, they are reading Harlequin books because it satisfies the side of themselves that they can’t express in the real world.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
