Tight Pants and Self Righteousness

Left to right: John Dunsworth as Mr. Lahey and Patrick Roach as Randy in Season 3 of Trailer Park Boys

Patrick Roach is as pleasant and as witty on the telephone as you’d expect him to be. And unlike his alter ego Randy – the shirtless character he plays on the increasingly popular Canadian TV mockumentary, Trailer Park Boys – Roach isn’t in the least bit confused about where life is leading him.

The affable husband and father of two, resides in Cole Harbour, N.S., not far from his hometown of Halifax, and presumably not far from Randy’s home in Sunnyvale Trailer Park. He still holds down a job as a regional manager at a local water bottling company, pays his mortgage, and raises his infant children with wife Candyce. Family responsibilities aside, if he could do anything, Roach says he’d love to roam this world shirtless and free.

“Before, I would never go out to the beach or something without a shirt on, now I’m on national TV shirtless and sticking my belly out as far as I can all day long,” he laughs. “I’d love to be running around all the time without a shirt on, what could be better?”

Trailer Park Boys features two dope-smoking, rum and cola drinking, hard-talking trailer park boys (John Paul Tremblay as Julian and Robb Wells as Ricky) in this low-budget, edgy program airing Sunday nights (9 p.m. ET on Showcase). Roach’s character Randy and his boss – trailer park supervisor Jim Lahey (played by John Dunsworth) – are Julian’s and Ricky’s arch-nemesis.

The show playfully mocks life in a trailer park in Eastern Canada. Despite the violence, drugs, profanity, and moments of absolute hilarity, it has its touching and troubling moments also.

Roach says performing along side veteran actor Dunsworth has been an “amazing experience”. He concedes slipping into Randy’s persona is a lot easier than putting on the character’s ultra-tight, cream-coloured, polyester slacks, thanks in part to Dunsworth.

“A lot of times, I don’t know what the hell Mr. Lahey is saying. So it’s pretty easy to look confused,” he tells S&H.ca. “As soon as I put those tight pants on, and it takes me about five to 10 minutes to do wearing boxing shorts underneath, I turn into Randy.”

Left to right: Ricky (Robb Wells) and Julian (John Paul Tremblay) down home at the Sunnyvale Trailer Park.

For those in the know, Randy is a likeable, yet slightly pathetic creature. The assistant trailer park supervisor leads a confused life. Aside from his sexual identity crisis (the show implies there’s an on-again, off-again gay relationship between Randy and Mr. Lahey), Randy is a man who respects and responds to authority and experience – two traits he identifies with in Mr. Lahey. But his closest companion and boss has a shady side also that manifests itself into a drinking problem. Over the course of the new weekly episodes airing on the Showcase network, Roach says viewers will get to know Randy and Mr. Lahey more intimately.

Trailer Park Boys is blessed with a bevy of talented and genuinely funny characters. But it’s Dunsworth – one of Halifax’s most revered actors – and his portrayal of Mr. Lahey who gives the satire its guts. Outside the Park, Dunsworth has appeared in countless CBC radio dramas and he’s held leading roles in over 25 Neptune Theatre productions. Recently, he played a brilliant minor role as Guy Quoyle in the motion picture The Shipping News (Mirimax Films, 2001), based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by E. Annie Proulx.

Discussing his role as Mr. Lahey, Dunsworth says his father was a psychiatrist who the actor describes as “pretty authoritarian”. Coming from a strict upbringing, he admits to drawing on his childhood memories of his dad as a loose foundation for the part of Jim Lahey’s persona that makes him the uptight, demanding, controlling figure that he is.

“It’s easy for me to be that guy,” Dunsworth says matter-of-factly. “I’m hot blooded with a lot of personal prejudices and (Lahey) is as well.”

With the Trailer Park Boys’ third season set to air on April 20, Dunsworth says he hasn’t noticed the swelling popularity the show’s been receiving. He has had his moments however.

“When I was in Newfoundland, a guy in his mid-50s wearing a clerical collar came up to me and asked if I was Mr. Lahey,” he recounts. “We chatted for awhile and then I signed a napkin for him. Another time while on a flight, the stewardess recognized me and moved me from my seat to sit in first class.”

Dunsworth says he thoroughly enjoys playing the part of Mr. Lahey and working with director Mike Clattenburg. He must. He turned down a role in the international box office smash film Titanic to fulfil his obligations at the Park.

“I like playing a character from a righteous stance and someone with world experience,” he says. “This show takes a specific view of this world and I think it’s complementary when people get it. Clattenburg takes a view of this world based on a very humanitarian point of view, and I think that’s important given the present state of the world’s affairs.”

– Images courtesy of Alliance-Atlantis Broadcast Group