Bri­an Lewis

Her sis­ter in Boston rent­ed a big screen. Her dad threw a par­ty here. And every­body else who knew her had their eyes glued to their tele­vi­sion sets on No­vem­ber 11, when Trinidad-born, Cana­da-based ac­tress Vivien Eliz­a­beth Ar­mour ap­peared in the 200th episode of ca­ble chan­nel CW's Su­per­nat­ur­al. The se­ries stars teen heart­throbs Jensen Ack­les (Dean Win­ches­ter) and Jared Padalec­ki (Sam Win­ches­ter).

The 23-year-old for­mer Bish­op Anstey stu­dent did not have many lines in the episode, but she be­lieves al­though her scenes were short, it was enough to open the door for more gigs in the fu­ture.

Speak­ing in an in­ter­view from her Van­cou­ver home via tele­phone, Ar­mour ex­plained the episode, ti­tled Fan Fic­tion–which was in the 10th sea­son of Su­per­nat­ur­al–was a trib­ute to the army of fans the show had at­tract­ed since its in­tro­duc­tion back in 2005.

"Fan Fic­tion was like a huge love let­ter to the fans, com­ing from the team of Su­per­nat­ur­al," said Ar­mour.

What prob­a­bly helped Ar­mour land this role was that her back­ground as a high­ly trained vo­cal­ist was put to good use in the episode which was, co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, a mu­si­cal one.

Ar­mour played the char­ac­ter of Katie, one of three girls from a pri­vate girls' school who de­cide to stage a mu­si­cal about Su­per­nat­ur­al. Dean and Sam, who are broth­ers in the se­ries, are seen in the episode watch­ing the mu­si­cal which de­picts their lives as de­mon and ghost hunters.

Ar­mour, a mu­si­cal the­atre grad­u­ate of the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Dra­mat­ic Art (Ra­da) in Lon­don, got to per­form some of the show's orig­i­nal ma­te­r­i­al, as well as cov­er sev­er­al songs in­clud­ing the un­of­fi­cial Su­per­nat­ur­al theme song, Car­ry On My Way­ward Son by Kansas.

She ac­tu­al­ly played the role of a man–Bob­by Singer–in the mu­si­cal. Though her char­ac­ter re­quired some cross-dress­ing and wear­ing a beard, Ar­mour said the ex­pe­ri­ence was phe­nom­e­nal, just hav­ing the sup­port from all the cast mem­bers.

"It was a spe­cial episode so a lot of us had to cross-dress, play­ing the char­ac­ters of the Win­ches­ters. But I know I am speak­ing for my co-stars when I say that we nev­er felt more com­fort­able and ap­pre­ci­at­ed as we did on that set," she said.

She de­scribed the Su­per­nat­ur­al team as a fam­i­ly, hav­ing formed a strong bond over its ten-year ex­is­tence.

"The two main char­ac­ters Jared and Jensen, were so wel­com­ing and they're pret­ty fun­ny too. Sport­ing that huge beard earned me a lot of nick­names on the set. But all of it was just pure fun," she added.

Get­ting the part

Be­ing cast on Su­per­nat­ur­al was the first au­di­tion that came through for Ar­mour, a Van­cou­ver Film School film pro­duc­tion ma­jor.

"I have done count­less au­di­tions for com­mer­cials be­fore. I'd get call­backs and some­times it just would not work out, which is okay, be­cause it's all part of the ter­ri­to­ry," said Ar­mour.

The role was al­so her first mu­si­cal au­di­tion in Van­cou­ver.

A long­time fan her­self of Su­per­nat­ur­al, Ar­mour stud­ied the show's pen­chant for clas­sic rock and au­di­tioned singing Some­body To Love by Queen and the emo­tion­al com­po­si­tion I Dreamed a Dream which was sung by Anne Hath­away in Les Mis­er­ables.

In less than a week af­ter her au­di­tion, she got a call from her agent Deb­bie Ma­hood telling her she had got the part.

"I was at Vic­to­ria's Se­cret shop­ping with my mom when my agent called. I had seen her a cou­ple hours be­fore and there was no word yet about the part, so when I got the call I just freaked out," Ar­mour re­called.

Like two lit­tle girls both Ar­mour and her moth­er Eliz­a­beth, were screech­ing in ex­cite­ment, cry­ing with joy and jump­ing up and down right there in the store. Ar­mour even knocked over a lamp. But they weren't charged for it: once the store at­ten­dants found out what all the com­mo­tion was about, they al­so joined in the cel­e­brat­ing.

"It was tru­ly a pro­found mo­ment for me be­cause CW is such an in­tim­i­dat­ing net­work and for that to be my first op­por­tu­ni­ty was in it­self a ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment," she said. "At the same time a very hum­bling ex­pe­ri­ence."

The episode airs

It was a sur­re­al mo­ment for Ar­mour when the episode aired on No­vem­ber 11. She doesn't have ca­ble tele­vi­sion, so had to watch it at a gath­er­ing at a friend's house. Ar­mour said she was most­ly teary-eyed, just think­ing about how it all came to­geth­er.

"When I saw it I just to­tal­ly cried," she said in her slight­ly Amer­i­can Cana­di­an ac­cent.

"It was a very fun­ny episode and I looked hi­lar­i­ous with the beard. It was just so fun­ny to see it how it all came to­geth­er, even if I wasn't in this episode I would still have loved it," she added.

Ar­mour, who is named af­ter Vivien in the Ten­nyson po­em Mer­lin and Vivien, al­so felt the love from the fans who took to Twit­ter with a huge num­ber of tweets about the episode.

"The pro­duc­er made us do live tweets dur­ing the show and the re­sponse was amaz­ing. I ac­tu­al­ly tried to in­di­vid­u­al­ly re­spond to as many tweets as pos­si­ble.

"I am just so grate­ful and hum­bled by the sea of sup­port I have had from every­body here and back home. It's enough to make me gid­dy," Ar­mour joked.

How the jour­ney be­gan

As ear­ly as five, Ar­mour was singing, main­ly in the choir at Bish­op Anstey Ju­nior School. She con­tin­ued with the se­nior choir when she en­tered Bish­op Anstey High School and would of­ten par­tic­i­pate in an Au­gust va­ca­tion artis­tic camp put on by the late Ly­di­ans choir con­duc­tor, Pat Bish­op, who her­self was an old Bish­ops girl. There, she would learn the arts of mu­sic and per­form­ing, the­atre, cos­tume de­sign­ing and vi­su­al arts.

"I can still re­mem­ber the choir go­ing to Long Cir­cu­lar Mall to per­form for Christ­mas and that time when we sang at the Pres­i­dent's House. It was Pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son at that time," she says.

But by age 12, a big change would take place in Ar­mour's life. Her moth­er Eliz­a­beth Solomon, a for­mer jour­nal­ist and hu­man-rights ac­tivist, be­gan work­ing with the Unit­ed Na­tions. Ar­mour and her younger sis­ter Tara were soon off to the In­ter­na­tion­al School of Hague in the Nether­lands. Ar­mour joined the school's choir, which trav­elled around Eu­rope to per­form and com­pete in fes­ti­vals.

At 16, she moved to Lon­don, where she joined an­oth­er choir and jazz band, which al­so com­pet­ed against oth­er choirs in places like Glas­ton­bury, where the pop­u­lar Glas­ton­bury Fes­ti­val is held.

Ar­mour lat­er de­cid­ed to get her feet wet in the­atre. She got ac­cept­ed in­to Ra­da where she par­tic­i­pat­ed in a sum­mer mu­si­cal the­atre course and an in­ten­sive work­shop.

Ar­mour en­joyed the ex­pe­ri­ence so much, she de­cid­ed to de­vel­op a ca­reer plan and go ful­ly in­to the­atre.

"I de­cid­ed I had to have a spe­cif­ic plan. So I would go from mu­sic in­to the­atre, then in­to film. That way I will emerge much more well-round­ed," she said.

Ar­mour at­tend­ed the Berridge Con­ser­va­to­ry in Nor­mandie, France be­fore mov­ing to New York, where she en­rolled in the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Dra­mat­ic Arts to study film. Fi­nal­ly she went to Van­cou­ver, to the Van­cou­ver Film School.

To­day, Ar­mour has to her cred­its six ap­pear­ances in film and tele­vi­sion and has been in a num­ber of the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions.

She is cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing her first self-writ­ten and di­rect­ed short film, called Do­ri­an, which is an ex­per­i­men­tal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of her favourite book, The Pic­ture of Do­ri­an Gray. Ac­cord­ing to Ar­mour, the film was al­so heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by her mem­o­ries of Car­ni­val and the Blue Dev­ils and J'Ou­vert.

"What makes this project so spe­cial to me is that on top of writ­ing it and di­rect­ing it, I was al­so the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, and it was a pret­ty ex­per­i­men­tal and am­bi­tious shoot us­ing a lot of light­ing and cam­era tech­niques that I was ex­cit­ed and ner­vous to at­tempt, but the near­ly-fin­ished prod­uct is look­ing great so I'm very ex­cit­ed to be able to share it ear­ly next year," said Ar­mour.

An­oth­er short film she pro­duced, Cap­tain Bal­lan­tine and the Paint­ed La­dy, was just ac­cept­ed in­to the Whistler In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val which takes place in De­cem­ber.

"This is su­per-ex­cit­ing and I'm so proud of my team and so grate­ful to all of the peo­ple who sup­port­ed us mak­ing this am­bi­tious short film."

Fam­i­ly means every­thing

The young ac­tress said the au­di­tion­ing sea­son slows down in Van­cou­ver around this time of year and she plans to spend every bit of her free time with fam­i­ly.

"For the next four years I will not be fly­ing any­where for the sum­mer, be­cause that is pi­lot sea­son for ac­tors. Au­di­tions are rolling in like that at that time.

"I know that time will be re­al­ly hard for my fam­i­ly be­cause we are re­al­ly jet­set­ters and love to go on ad­ven­tures to­geth­er. It is hard for me to have a con­sis­tent lifestyle in film. It can be hard on re­la­tion­ships and sched­ul­ing your life in a con­sis­tent way so when you do have breaks, take ad­van­tage of it," said Ar­mour.

Ar­mour will be back home in Trinidad in De­cem­ber. "Yes, I will be home on the 20th, to vis­it and spend Christ­mas with my fam­i­ly," she said ex­cit­ed­ly.

Ar­mour in­tends to make films in T&T. She ex­plained that in Van­cou­ver a lot of pro­duc­tions are joint tax ven­tures with Amer­i­ca.

"Pro­duc­tions are a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort. So half of the pro­duc­tion will be done in LA and half in Van­cou­ver and they share the tax­es. I would want to do that for T&T and Cana­da.

"I think it would be a re­al­ly great thing be­cause we are part of the Com­mon­wealth. It is a great way for a more de­vel­oped coun­try and in­dus­try to find the small­er stars and try to boost them. So if I were to be in­volved in a pro­duc­tion, I would want to bring the mon­ey to T&T and utilise the lo­cal tal­ent there."

She added, "I be­lieve in push­ing lo­cal tal­ent 100 per cent. It re­al­ly peeves me when big busi­ness­es move in on small or­gan­i­sa­tions and try to take over every­thing. You know there is this sort of stereo­type that third world or small­er coun­tries may not know what they are do­ing when it comes to film and I would cer­tain­ly like to dis­miss to no­tion, hence my de­ci­sion to push for lo­cal tal­ent."

That move is an ab­solute among her fu­ture plans, but for now, this Tri­ni ris­ing star is build­ing her re­sume and her ex­pe­ri­ence to take the world by storm.

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?FILM & TELE­VI­SION

SU­PER­NAT­UR­AL (Dir: Phil Sgric­cia)

THE KLAN (Dir: San­ti­a­go Le�n)

ID­IOTS CAN SUR­VIVE (Dir: Travis Hansen)

CAP­TAIN BAL­LAN­TINE & THE PAINT­ED LA­DY (Dir: MG Bak­er)

HEART IN A BOWL (Dir: Pratik­sha Sri­vas­ti­va)

THE­ATRE

THE WOMEN OF LOCKER­BIE as Woman–Mar­ry McArthur The­atre, New York, NY

THE HOUSE OF BERNAR­DA AL­BA as Bernar­da Al­ba - Man­ny Green­field The­atre, New York, NY

ONCE A CATHOLIC as Moth­er Basil Mar­ry–McArthur The­atre, New York, NY

MOON­CHIL­DREN as Kathy - Man­ny Green­field The­atre, New York, NY

THE ART OF DIN­ING as Nes­sa Vox - Man­ny Green­field The­atre, New York, NY

TWO PRE­CIOUS MAID­ENS RIDICULED as Magde­lene - Carnegie Hall, New York, NY

THE SER­VANT OF TWO MAS­TERS as Smeral­d­ina - Ma­jorie S Dean The­atre, New York, NY.