Episode 273: Aliza Vellani Returns

The YVR Screen Scene Podcast

Aliza Vellani originally joined us in July 2021 to talk about her work in the first season of Netflix’s Sweet Tooth. Sweet Tooth draws its inspiration from Jeff Lemire’s comic book series about a boy who’s half-human and half deer navigating a world that has been devastated by a virus that has killed a lot of people and led to the mysterious emergence of human-animal hybrid babies. Aliza plays Rani Singh. Rani has the virus, but is a rare long-term survivor, thanks to her doctor-husband Aditya’s devotion and mysterious life-saving treatments, which we discover involves slaughtering hybrid children. The series shoots in New Zealand but features two Vancouver actors: Aliza as Rani and Christian Convery as the titular Sweet Tooth himself. Both Aliza and Christian won awards for their Sweet Tooth performances at the 2022 Leo Awards.

Earlier this month, Sweet Tooth and Rani were back for another eight-episode journey that somehow managed to at once thrill, chill, entertain, and devastate audiences. Throughout season two, Rani reckons with karma, and the moral quandary of her predicament. As she says early on, “How many lives for mine? Will we reap what we sow?” But as another character observes in that same episode, Rani is one tough cookie. Rani is so very human: vulnerable, loving, conflicted, a little Lady MacBeth, and still feisty as shit. In this wildly fascinating interview, Sabrina Rani Furminger talks Rani and Sweet Tooth with the inimitable Aliza Vellani, and also gets the 4-1-1 on her latest project: a reunion of sorts with the work of Zarqa Nawaz, the brilliant mind behind Little Mosque on the Prairie, in Zarqa. Episode sponsor: UBCP/ACTRA