“We were all in our late 20s writing this show and these teenagers were actual teenagers. Martin, who started as a story editor on the series, said the show’s commitment to accuracy has, was and always will be its signature. The massive problem and point is when you have guns in the hands of teenagers really horrible things can happen.” “Sadly, I am not surprised that it keeps happening. “The genesis of the storyline was about how bullying can explode into violence and how everybody’s complicit in that,” Martin said. “I was thinking, ‘Oh, isn’t it great as a society that we’re working through these things and we’ll move past this type of thing occurring,’” Ellis said, conceding no one could have predicted that gun violence would only increase since his time on the series.Īaron Martin served as the show’s executive producer at the time. “It’s unbelievable to have been part of something that people are still talking about close to 20 years later,” Ellis said.Īt the time, the actor said that he thought tackling the story on TV could help solve the problem. The informative storyline was one of the first TV presentations of real-life school violence. Nineteen years ago, his character, Rick Murray, was one of the first school shooters to be depicted on television in “Degrassi: The Next Generation.” After being pranked by his classmates, Ellis’s character brought a gun to school and used it to paralyze Jimmy Brooks (memorably played by Drake) before being killed himself. In a Star exclusive, we caught up with 14 former teen actors who appeared on the series, as well as two of the show’s former executive producers, to ask how they feel about the return of the series and why it continues to mean so much to Canadians.įor Ephraim Ellis, being a featured actor on the program was life-changing. The series continues to air, in some iteration, in 180 countries worldwide. Different spinoffs of the series continued to run from 2001 up to the final “Next Class” episode, which aired in July 2017. The roots of “Degrassi” date to 1980, when “The Kids of Degrassi Street” premiered on CBC. It will be a reimagining of the franchise that aired the last episode of its “Next Class” incarnation five years ago. ![]() The new series, greenlit last January, is based on the long-running Canadian franchise about the teenage middle and high school experience. You could almost call it a long overdue high school reunion.
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