As the TV show Chicago Fire continues to grip viewers, Canadian actor Jocelyn Hudon from Toronto, who plays Lizzie Novak, has quickly become a fan favourite. Since we first met Novak in Season 12, Hudon has added a brilliant energy to the show, from more thrilling moments to simple camaraderie in the 51 team, and even this week’s Halloween episode, she’s always a highlight.
Hudon had a fascination with TV and movies since she was young, but it wasn’t something she ever said out loud. While she attended an arts high school, where she was a dance major, seeing all the drama-focused students already on TV made her feel like it was “too late” for her unspoken desire to act to become a reality.
As she left high school and studied communications and public relations, she knew that wasn’t the right path for her, and Hudon started thinking that if she didn’t say her dream out loud, she would never pursue it
“I just said it out loud. ‘I’m going to be an actor.’ And then I just started,” Hudon told Yahoo Canada. “This is what I want to do. I don’t want to do what I went to school for.”
I just said it out loud. ‘I’m going to be an actor.’ And then I just started.
“I always loved dancing. I still dance. I never thought it would be a career in any way. … [Even] in school, I was like, I just don’t think this is where I belong. And then once I started acting, I was like, I feel like this is it. This makes so much sense. And I just thrive in this environment and with these kinds of people.”
Like many actors, the initial audition process for Hudon was daunting, filled with a lot of unknowns, trying to prove herself before she had a robust resume of work to hang her hat on. So she had to get herself out there and in front of agents.
“It’s like a chicken and an egg kind of situation. They’re like, ‘Send us your resume.’ And I’m like, I don’t have a resume,” Hudon shared. “So I found an agency and I just went in, and I was like, ‘Hi, I’m Jocelyn. I want to be an actor now.’ And then I just did it until someone took me, because there was no other way, really, of getting anyone to sign me. So then it was a lot of learning as I went.”
“My agent at the time told me to watch Orphan Black, and I kind of learned a lot by watching Tatiana Maslany, another Canadian. So that was kind of how I learned. And then I started booking things pretty quickly.”
Being among the Canadian actors who have achieved incredible success in American productions, Hudon stressed that making the move is “really hard,” and something that requires a lot of work, even just navigating the logistics of working in the U.S.
“It’s a lot of work behind the scenes, for sure,” Hudon said.
“I think it wasn’t in my sight at first. I think I was just happy to be an actor. .. And then as you get better, and as you go on, you’re like, I want to be able to work anywhere, whether it’s the States or Europe, or whatever. … Getting a U.S. rep, how the hell are you supposed to do that? You’ve kind of just got to claw your way there, slowly but surely.”
Yahoo Canada’s Eh Listers is an interview series with women and non-binary Canadians in film and television, looking back on their careers with unfiltered stories about their greatest projects.
Pixels — 2015
Hudon got to work with some greats on her first professional project, in the movie Pixels, which starred Adam Sandler.
“I could not believe I was getting paid for those few days,” she said. “It was just a dream. It was awesome.”
“[Adam Sandler] is just so kind and gives everyone time and attention, and he’s not a diva. He’s just the greatest example I could have ever witnessed as my first interaction with a huge actor. And the set was so positive. … I was hooked. I was like, ‘Is this what every job is going to be like?'”
Recalling her time on Pixels, Hudon shared that she did feel “confused” for a lot of her time on set, unsure of how everything worked.
“I showed up and I’m like, ‘Who do I ask for? Where do I go? How do I get to my trailer?’ I have no idea,” Hudon said. “I asked for a DA instead of an AD [assistant director]. … And then I left all my stuff in my trailer, and then the next day it was all gone, because you’re not supposed to leave your stuff when you’re a tiny, small day player. … But I learned a lot.”
The Strain — 2017
While still relatively new to her professional acting career, Hudon continued to work with incredible talents, including landing a role on Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s series The Strain, with stars including Corey Stoll, Kevin Durand and David Bradley.
“I remember, on my way to my audition, I had booked some other movie, and I was like, I’m not even going to be able to do this one,” Hudon said. “I went into that audition … so free, because there was less pressure on myself. And then I just did it and got it. … That was such a professional set. And I blasted through three seasons of The Strain, because I joined on Season 4.”
“The vision was so specific. The vampires were disgusting vampires. It wasn’t glittery vampires. The sets were so dark and cool, and the actors that [del Toro] picked … [had] a gravitas to them. Definitely a different tone than anything I had done before that. So it was really cool to experience that as well. And I definitely learned a lot. The props people on that show were so great. We had movement choreographers as well. I turned into a vampire at one point and they’re like, ‘This is how you’re going to move.'”
Dave — 2023
After starting her career with comedy greats in Pixels, Hudon joined the series Dave for its third season, starring comedian and rapper Dave Burd. While she initially auditioned for Season 1 of the show, she received a shock when she went into the audition, but it motivated her to improve in a specific skill.
“I auditioned for Season 1. .. I was still new-ish. They sent the sides, I think it was like eight pages. I was like, ‘Got it. Memorized it.’ … I flew from Toronto to L.A., I go to the audition, and the whole thing is improv. And I was like, ‘What!’ Because I never improved,” Hudon shared. “I go back to Toronto, and then I enrolled in Second City, and then I enrolled in Groundlings. .. I thought, ‘I can’t let that happen again.'”
“Then I auditioned for it another time, and then finally I auditioned for Season 3, and got it. But I was prepared this time. So it really showed me a weakness. … I was so happy to get on it, and I was so glad that I could just get on and be free, and trust the skills I had learned.”
A testament to Hudon’s determination and commitment to continuing to grow and learn as an actor, she still takes classes at Second City in Chicago.
“You can’t think that you have it figured out,” Hudon said. “I don’t think you should ever think that.”
“You’ve got to keep learning and keep just seeing where your weaknesses are, and trying to get better all the time.”
The Fall — 2024
In 2024, Shaun Hart’s romantic drama The Fall won the Audience Award for a feature film at the Mammoth Film Festival, starring Hudon.
“That was one of those movies where you’re like, it’s just such a perfect whirlwind of people,” Hudon shared.
Hudon plays Lacey Huxley, who lives with her grandparents in El Castillo, California. Just as a romance starts to spark with Thomas Cocquerel’s character William, her ex-boyfriend, played by Jeremy Sumpter, shows up back in town with his fiancé, bringing up a lot of complicated memories from the past.
“That character was dark, that was hard to do,” Hudon recalled. “That one really pushed me to be … not a likeable character, and it’s hard to do that sometimes, because you just have to keep going darker and darker. … Be just the worst version of yourself, which is hard to show people.”
The actor added that in terms of leaving that character behind, Lacey “lingered” with Hudon once filming wrapped.
The Sound — 2025
Hudon has recognized that she’s an actor who enjoys stretching herself with her roles, whether that’s a particular language or something physical she has to tackle, and that was certainly the case with the film The Sound, where Hudon was tasked with a significant rock climbing element for the story.
The actor has been rock climbing her whole life, so she was ready for the challenge. But a project like The Sound also taps into another reason why Hudon loves acting — being able to use all these special skills she has, from climbing to dancing, to sailing and scuba diving.
“It was cool to do something where they needed one of my special skills,” she said. “And then I got to meet Alex Honnold from Free Solo, so that was really cool.”
In terms of other things Hudon wants to tackle in her acting career, she’d love to do an action movie, like John Wick or Ballerina, something that has a significant physical element.
Chicago Fire — 2024 to present
Hudon now plays fan favourite Chicago Fire character, Lizzie Novak, joining the show in Season 12. Her entry into the series proves that sometimes, things just work out the way they were meant to be, with the Chicago Fire audition coming after Hudon was in a slump of not booking a few roles.
“When I auditioned for it, I was like, ‘This is mine.’ … And I had just tested for so many things back-to-back and not gotten them. … There was so much heartbreak for me personally … right before getting Chicago Fire,” she shared. “So just having someone say yes to you … and coming out with a win was so great.”
“This is exactly the kind of job I wanted. There’s physicality, there’s action, there’s comedy. It’s an ensemble, … I really wanted to be a part of an ensemble project. … I’m so glad all the other things I tested for didn’t work out.”
With Chicago Fire episodes released relatively quickly after they’re filmed, Hudon has become accustomed to watching the show and evaluating her own performance, including making adjustments as she continues to film.
“You … get to watch really quickly what you just did and adjust, which I think is really important,” she said. “It’s a good way of … learning and growing and stretching and getting better and better, because I watch it a little bit critically of myself, … not in a terrible way, but I like to see what I’m doing that could be improved, and try to improve it for the next episode.”
While many actors can’t watch themselves on screen, Hudon has recognized that growing up as a dancer made her able to look back at her performances.
“I think dancers can take a note and you can take criticism, and you don’t get all upset about it,” Hudon said.
Chicago Fire has a phenomenal ensemble cast, and Hudon highlighted that the great energy from the group has been there from the beginning, when she did her initial network test with Hanako Greensmith, who plays Violet Mikami.
“That was just the foundation of our partnership on the show. … We kind of set the tone in the network test,” Hudon said. “We are great partners and we have such a great relationship, on screen and off screen, and all of that is just real. … I love that friendship and that partnership, and they just complement each other so well.”
“I also love Dermot [Mulroney], my boy Dermot, because he was new too. He came in half a season after me. So we really bonded. I had this thing I called, ‘What would Dermot do?’ So I just do whatever he does, because … I look up to him.”
Chicago Fire has also given Hudon the experience of being on a series with a massive fan base, and an audience that is obsessed with the stories and finding Easter eggs.
“The fans are smart as hell,” Hudon stressed. “Since I joined, I read every single comment, I listen to the podcast, I read the Reddit [threads], the Twitter, everything, and they can guess the storyline. … I don’t know how they can find the Easter eggs, and they can figure out a story.”
“There are so many great fans who are so supportive, so excited. They love the show. They come to Chicago and they just stand outside the firehouse. … There will be a giant crowd of people, and they’re from all over the world. … It’s so great to meet them and have the support, and have people that love your show.”
Now that the actor has seen great success, if she could give her younger self a piece of advice, it would be to “relax.”
“There’s that expression, … whatever is meant to be will be. … It’s so hard to believe when things are going wrong, and it’s easy to believe when things are working out,” she said. “But you really just have to have faith and just trust yourself, and trust timing and just relax. And honestly, whatever is meant to be will be, and whatever is yours will find you.”
Carolina Bartczak played Taylor Kitsch’s wife in the Netflix series Painkiller, starred alongside James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult in X-Men: Apocalypse, and now leads the CBC series Plan B for Season 3. The Polish-Canadian actor comes from a family of engineers, but she didn’t love studying biochemistry in Toronto, and an invitation to be on a TV redecorating show was a starting point for her to look into working for production companies.
“I was working at a production company in Montreal. … I was watching auditions come in, I just thought, damn, that looks so fun,” Bartczak recalled to Yahoo Canada. “But I’ve never known anyone who’s an actor. I never had any contact with [anyone in the industry] and I just thought, … I’m going to die one day and I might as well take a big swing. … And if it goes nowhere, cool, as long as I tried.”
“I always just saw it as an experiment of trying something new and something that I didn’t know anything about. But also it checked a lot of boxes as to what I wanted to do in my life. I wanted to work on meaningful projects. I wanted to work with artistic people. I wanted to travel. I wanted to be a bunch of different people. … So once I went to theatre school I was like, oh this is it. I found my soulmate as a job.”
Bartczak then studied in New York, but like many actors, success in the challenging auditioning landscape after school was difficult to come by.
“It’s hell. It’s so hard. I spent the first year, I was living in New York, couldn’t get an agent, couldn’t get anyone to even meet with me. And then finally some agent met with me and was like, ‘Oh you’re Canadian? You should just go back home,'” Bartczak said. “I was so determined to stay in New York, and actually it was the best advice she ever gave me.”
“I landed in Toronto and started auditioning and man, it takes a long time for people to trust you, to give you a part. But I stuck with it and I’ve kept going. And it’s full of heartbreak. … You fall in love with the parts you audition for. … But when it’s good, it is heavenly. It is the best.”
Bartczak admits she did feel like she had to be in the U.S. to be successful. Now the actor says that mostly came from her own “ignorance.”
“I didn’t know that there was an entire industry in Canada, and I didn’t know there was an American industry in Canada,” she said.
“When you go to school in a city, I was only with Americans, so I kind of latched on to their dreams, because I didn’t know what direction I could go in. But, man, am I grateful that person told me to go back to Toronto, because I’ve had a lot of luck and a lot of progress, and I’ve gotten to work on a lot of cool things, because I was in Canada.”
Yahoo Canada’s Eh Listers is an interview series with women and non-binary Canadians in film and television, looking back on their careers with unfiltered stories about their greatest projects.
The Smurfs 2 — 2013
But ahead of Bartczak’s leading character work, her first experience on a sizeable professional projects was for the film The Smurfs 2. While certainly not one of her bigger roles, it was a particularly positive experience for the actor.
“I had three lines in The Smurfs 2 movie. It was the most fun I’d ever had,” Bartczak said. “It was also one of those movies that has a lot of financing behind it. You get to see the orchestra of everyone doing their job.”
“And the thing that struck me is that everyone on set is working, is so focused and committed to doing a good job. Even the sound person, I could see him practising his microphone flicks, and the person bringing the cake onto set, and set dressing. [It was] so amazing to be in a job where people are so happy to be there.”
Throughout her career, Bartczak has seen the difference between working on more big budget projects, and more indie work, with a lot of it having to do with how much control you have on set and with a character.
“When you work on something that has a huge budget, that means that there’s a lot of people making decisions, and so your decision-making capability is smaller,” Bartczak explained. “I remember being on a show that had so much money behind it, was so stylized, and I’m saying to the makeup artist, ‘Oh, can I just fix my eyebrows?’ And she’s like, ‘No, you can’t. … That came from up top.’ … Both of them have their benefits and their drawbacks.”
X-Men: Apocalypse — 2016
Entering a huge franchise with X-Men: Apocalypse was something Bartczak described as a “terrifying” experience, sharing the screen with some of her favourite actors.
“I don’t think I slept for the three weeks that I was there. But also so exciting … just sitting in the makeup trailer and James McAvoy popping in and being like, ‘Hey guys, what’s up?'” Bartczak said. “I was like, am I in a dream?”
“Actually, Michael Fassbender is one of my favourite actors … and watching people who are at the top of their game do their job is heavenly.”
But while she’s had success in notable projects with famed actors, Bartczak has also had to learn to navigate the ups and down of being an actor where work isn’t consistent.
“You do come off this high and then it’s a crash down to earth. It’s almost like you’ve had this dopamine high of working really hard, or having long hours and interacting with a lot of people, and you come home and you’re like, oh I have to clean cat shit out of my cat litter. It’s a very different life,” Bartczak said.
“Among us actors, we always talk about the crash down to real life, and you come off of a high and you’re feeling great for a week, and then it’s just down. So that’s something that you learn as you go along, that you have to take care of your mental health. And I plan a lot of physical exercise, I plan seeing friends to make sure that I can get through that difficult comedown.”
Bartczak spoke to her X-Men: Apocalypse costar, Rose Byrne, about pushing against being typecast, vying for roles people wouldn’t necessarily associate with a particular actor.
“From the beginning of my career I have been cast as a mom. I guess I have mom energy,” Bartczak said.
“I remember actually speaking to Rose Byrne about this when we were shooting X-Men, she was like, I couldn’t get a job on a comedy. She was like, everyone saw me as the girl from Damages and they couldn’t possibly imagine that I could be funny. And so she had to break through walls to get an audition for Bridesmaids. … I think that is just the natural part of being an actor, is trying to convince people that you can do other things, and that’s just part of the journey.”
Moonfall — 2022
While Bartczak’s latest project, Plan B, firmly sits in sci-fi as a time travelling story, she came to the project after previously experiencing the unique work of Roland Emmerich in the genre with Moonfall, which also starred Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson and John Bradley.
“That was one of those really cool, big budget films, and Roland Emmerich is an expert in visual effects,” Bartczak said.
But with all his skill, the cold Montreal winter proved a challenge for Emmerich, impacting how the film was created.
“Apparently he doesn’t like the cold and we were shooting in Montreal in the winter, so that entire movie is shot on one sound stage, even car chases,” Bartczak said. “He invented a way to harness vehicles so that they could move and look like we were racing, but in a room. So every day coming on set I was like, well what am I going to see today? It was very, very interesting.”
With Bartczak among the Canadians actors who have worked on several U.S. productions that film in Canada, the question regularly comes up about how many of the leading roles in Canadian-filmed American work is actually made available to local talent. While Bartczak recognizes that it’s “amazing” that Canadians can get work on American productions, she also wishes that Canadians were more recognized for their ability to take on more significant roles both in front of and behind the camera.
“On one hand it is amazing that we can support American productions in Canada, because it employs so many people,” Bartczak said. “On the other hand, do I wish that they hired more Canadians, that they trusted Canadians to have bigger roles and a bigger input? Yes, I do wish that.”
“I understand them needing to bring in the star power for financing, and I think … the answer is to educate them that we have very skilled and very talented people in Canada who can take those acting parts, or key hair or key design. … I think the more productions work here the more they will feel comfortable with the level of professionalism that we have here.”
Painkiller — 2023
A project that was particularly impactful for Bartczak was working on the Netflix series Painkiller, a fictionalized series based on the American opioid epidemic, including the actions by Purdue Pharma and Richard Sackler in the rise of OxyContin misuse in the U.S. Directed by Peter Berg, Bartczak played Lily Kryger, whose husband Glen (Taylor Kitsch) becomes addicted to OxyContin after being prescribed the drug for an injury.
“Because we had all done our research, we all came with this body of sense memory and images, and so I feel like we came and built this fully formed story,” Bartczak said. “And also, because it’s a true story, … I heard often from people on set [who knew someone who] died of an opioid overdose. So it was also finding that nuance and respecting the people that actually had gone through some of these tragedies.”
“The subject matter is very complex and I feel like it’s going to be one of those stories where we’re going to be discovering new facts about it as we go along. … I thought [Peter Berg] did an amazing job at balancing the macro story as well as the micro story, but not just making tragedy porn out of it. Not just making it about the sadness and the unfairness. He wanted to make it entertaining so that people were more likely to watch it and be able to see the whole story. … Casting Matthew Broderick as Richard Sackler I thought was brilliant, and making it really quirky and weird, but then having this whole separate drama happen with this family in a small town, I thought that was really clever.”
This was another reunion project for Berg and Taylor Kitsch, who famously started working together on Friday Night Lights in the 2000s, and have continued to collaborate on multiple projects since.
“I get the impression that they’re siblings. They argue and they fight and they love each other. So that was really fun,” Bartczak said.
But in playing the wife to Kitsch’s character on the series, Bartczak really wanted to ensure that they were able to authentically capture the couple’s relationship.
“I forced Peter Berg to give me Taylor’s contact information, because I knew that we were going to be stepping onto set playing a couple that has been married for 15 years and has a child together, and that requires a certain amount of comfort between two people,” Bartczak said. “And so I didn’t want to be meeting him on the first day.”
“I was able to get in touch with Taylor and have dinner and talk about our characters and their relationship, and how they ended up here and how they’re going to end up there, which I think really allowed us to sell our marriage and romantic relationship very well. … I’m always most afraid … that people don’t buy the relationship, because if you don’t buy the relationship, then you can’t care about the story.”
Plan B — 2025
In Season 3 of the CBC hit Plan B Bartczak plays Abigail Walker, a TV morning show host who faces the tragic loss of her teenage daughter Lucy (Arianna Shannon) to suicide. Desperate to save her daughter, Abigail looks to the Plan B agency to travel back in time to hopefully change Lucy’s life.
None of the characters in Plan B was crafted as “good or evil,” and this appealed to Bartczak.
“They’re just quite holistically human. They have their character flaws. They have their character traits that are good, the ones that are bad, and they’re good people who are trying their best and making mistakes along the way, which is kind of how I see life,” she said.
“You’re just doing your best and you’re making mistakes along the way, and hoping that none of the mistakes are permanent. And that’s what I really liked about the writing, is that it was very nuanced, and everyone was likeable in moments, and everyone was hate-able in moments. And when someone’s trying their best, it’s easier to forgive them as an audience member.”
Easily the most moving and heartbreaking moment in Plan B is seeing how Bartczak portrayed Abigail finding out her daughter is dead, with the character in complete shock.
“I found that reaction quite jarring when I first read the script and thought, why isn’t she reacting the way I think she’s going to react? And I think we’ve just been so used to, on television there’s a tragedy and the person breaks down into tears and has their emotional outburst. Whereas from the research that I did, more often than not, the tragedy is so great that their brain actually can’t handle all the information, because it would just shut them down. So they almost put a little blinder on in order to slowly absorb the tragedy, which I thought was so brilliant in the show,” Bartczak said.
“Her ex husband, Nick, and her son are so emotional as people, and vulnerable, that when they see the tragedy they’re able to react. But she’s so tough and impermeable that she can’t actually deal with the tragedy until she can break it down in her head.”
There’s also an interesting element to Abigail where she’s someone who does so much for people outside her immediate family, particularly women, including being a sounding board for discussions around their mental health, but it wasn’t the same in her relationship with her own daughter.
“I thought a lot about that. … We are the least forgiving to the people that are closest to us, and the least forgiving to ourselves, and it’s easier to have a kind word for someone who is not in your inner circle,” Bartczak said. “I don’t know why human beings are like that, but she’s unforgiving to herself, and she’s very strict with Lucy, but then goes to her women’s group and is so generous, and it’s such a contradiction.”
“And that’s the writing of Plan B, is that all these people are contradictions. They’re not one way or another, they’re not angels and they’re not demons. They are both. And part of Abigail’s journey in the show is to be able to bring that vulnerability into her family.”
While she has taken on many different roles in her career, from a Smurfs character to the complexity of Abigail in Plan B, Bartczak still wants to try her hand in a big action role.
“I want to be a spy. I want to learn how to shoot a fake gun on screen. I would love to do some kind of action thing,” Bartczak said. “That’s on my bucket list.”
