Fans could see Kiefer Sutherland play Jack Bauer on the big screen even though '24' finishes as a TV series at the end of May.
KELSEY MCNEAL/FOX
Bill Brioux
Special to the Star
During the eight worst days of his life, Jack Bauer was pretty much on his own when it came to saving the world.
The actor who played him, however, knew he could always count on one team to have his back: Canadians.
Over the past nine years, dozens of Canadian-trained actors made the trip to Los Angeles to work along side Kiefer Sutherland on 24, with Leslie Hope (Bauer’s doomed wife Teri) and Elisha Cuthbert (danger girl daughter Kim) in on the action from the beginning.
Two who enjoyed long (by 24 standards) runs — and who recently got married in real life — are Carlos Rota and Nazneen Contractor.
Contractor, who survived 21 episodes this season as Kayla Hassan, the Muslim daughter of a Middle Eastern leader, was back on the set of 24 five days after her honeymoon in Mexico. Both she and Rota — who appeared in Season Six and parts of Five and Seven as Morris O’Brian (estranged husband of Bauer’s loyal CTU comrade Chloe) — worked their wedding around their busy shooting schedules.
Rota is perhaps best known in Canada for Little Mosque on the Prairie, where he’ll be scarce this coming season. He had just wrapped work on an episode of NCIS: Los Angeles and Contractor finished working with Jon Voight on a Fox pilot in Dallas when they got married April 1. After a five day honeymoon in Mexico, she was back on the set of 24 wrapping up her final scenes before heading off to shoot Next, a NBC pilot with Paul Reiser (which just got picked up as a series, so watch for her in fall).
“It’s stupid to try and get married during pilot season,” says Contractor, in Hamilton, Ont., these last few weeks shooting the upcoming fantasy-adventure TV-movie Blood of Pegasis. “It’s stupid, but we did it.”
Rota and Contractor seem like the perfect pair to flank busy Jack Bauer. Both can spring into action at the drop of a visa, and both grew up all over the globe before settling in Canada where they began acting careers. Rota, of Italian ancestry, was born in London and lived in Hong Kong and the Bahamas. Contractor was born in Mumbai, India, and raised in Nigeria and London.
Both say landing gigs on 24 changed their lives. “It was a gift that show, it really was,” says Contractor. “I was only supposed to be on two episodes and I was on 21.”
Her break came after a two-season stint on the CBC series The Border, recently cancelled after its third season. “It certainly wasn’t my choice to leave it,” says Contractor, whose character was killed off at the end of Season Two. “That really catapulted my career.”
The couple note that 24 is a series much respected in the TV industry. A gig on that show is a ticket onto other Hollywood lots.
Rota does believe, however, that it was time to call it quits. “It will end in a good place,” he says. He credits Canadian-trained director/executive producer Jon Cassar — who he worked with in Canada with 24 co-creator Joel Surnow on La Femme Nikita — with running a tight ship and keeping the door to Canadian talent open. This past season, Canadian director/producer Brad Turner filled a similar role. “To create that show and to keep it going for eight seasons took a tremendous amount of effort,” says Rota. “I think it’s time to move on to features.”
Contractor agrees and credits Sutherland, also an executive producer, for setting the quality tone. “He really takes the reins on the set,” she says. “He wants to have fun but he’s also ridiculously charming and really concerned about our well being. I had a torture scene and he came up to me later to tell me how great it was. I was so spoiled and very happy to be there.”
Contractor says many tears were shed at the final wrap party. “That crew had been there for 10 years, through a writers’ strike and a year-long hiatus,” she says. “Everyone was suddenly realizing that they were part of something that was really great.”
Contractor can’t spill the beans about Monday’s two-hour finale — “they’re pretty strict about that!” — but does promise fans will find closure. “It’s not going to leave anyone wondering,” she says.
As for critics who whine about how 24 often cheated on its real time format with Bauer racing a little too quickly though L.A. traffic or skipping bathroom breaks, Rota says take a pill. “Stop taking it apart too much,” he says. “If you start digging around as to why this one guy ends up saving the world all these different times, all in one day, you need to get a life.”
