Since it premiered on an obscure Canadian cable channel in 2001, Trailer Park Boys has
gone from an underground cult favorite to an international sensation, as audiences around
the world warmed to the foul-mouthed antics of Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles.
But how much do you really know about the people behind the show?
Here's a look at the untold truth of Trailer Park Boys.
Almost nobody was a professional
Instead of professional actors, many of the original cast were friends of creator Mike
Clattenburg.
Robb Wells and John Paul Tremblay, who play Ricky and Julian, met Clattenburg in high
school and went on to run a pub and pizzeria on Prince Edward Island before leaving to
work on the show.
Another of Clattenburg's buddies was Mike Smith, who was so funny when he visited the
set to record some audio tracks that they added him to the cast as Bubbles.
John Dunsworth, who plays Jim Lahey, had the most experience out of the original cast,
having worked steadily as an actor since the 1960s, while J-Roc actor Jonathan Torrens
also had some experience as the host of a teen-oriented talk show called Jonovision.
Close call
After an early career as a local TV producer in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Clattenburg shot
a feature-length Trailer Park Boys pilot on his own dime.
In 2000, he flew to Toronto to pitch the show to TV executives.
Unfortunately, a mockumentary about a group of foul-mouthed petty criminals wasn't an
easy sell.
Every network gave him a firm no.
Clattenburg had actually given up and was preparing to return to Nova Scotia when he
decided to give it one more shot.
He and producer Barrie Dunn cold-called Showcase, a relatively new cable channel that was still
trying to find its niche.
To their shock, the vice president of programming picked up the phone and they were in her office
pitching the show in 25 minutes.
Showcase loved the pilot, and the Trailer Park Boys series was given the green light.
Slow burn
Trailer Park Boys debuted on Showcase in 2001, but it didn't exactly set the world alight
in its first season.
Michael Jackson, who played Trevor, says that one early fan organized a party to celebrate
the show and the whole cast decided to go.
Unfortunately, no one else showed up and the cast spent the night partying with their one
fan.
Fortunately, Showcase was a struggling young channel in need of content and played the
episodes on repeat until they picked up a cult following across North America.
When the cast visited Los Angeles in 2004, they were shocked to find everyone knew who
they were despite the fact that she show had never aired in the U.S.
Sounds like they really turned up the heat.
“Look at me!”
“What?”
“Turnips aren’t involved in the expression!”
“Well, that’s just your f---in' opinion, isn’t it?”
Smoke free
The cast of Trailer Park Boys are known for their love of booze and weed, even signing
a deal to have their own brand of marijuana.
One thing they don't do, though, is actually smoke or drink on camera.
For smoking scenes, Robb Wells has said that they're often actually toking on rosemary.
And the pot plants grown by Ricky are actually perfectly legal industrial hemp plants, which
do not contain any THC.
That said, you can spot real cannabis at least once in the series, with Wells explaining
that "...there was one time when we were doing bottle hits.
They were trying to get this fake stuff to burn like hash and they couldn't find anything
that worked, so I think they used real hash for that one."
“Bubbles, hit this s---.
All the way from California, baby.”
“Oh my God, one of Snoop Dogg’s real joints!”
One Last Shot
A major inspiration for the series was a short film Clattenburg made in 1998.
The short, called One Last Shot, featured John Paul Tremblay and Robb Wells as early
versions of Julian and Ricky.
The film was entirely improvised on set and John Dunsworth apparently stole the show in
his first appearance as Mr. Lahey, to the point that he nabbed a best performance award
at the Atlantic Film Festival.
Sadly, One Last Shot has never been commercially released.
Old lady glasses
Mike Smith's Bubbles quickly became the show's breakout character, with his friendly attitude
complemented by a pair of adorably thick glasses, which are actually older than the character.
In fact, his girlfriend found them at an estate sale in Texas for 50 cents among the effects
of a recently deceased old lady.
Smith loved the glasses and would put them on to amuse friends, which was the origin
of the "Bubbles" character.
The glasses originally gave him a pounding headache, but over the years his eyes have
adjusted to the ridiculous prescription.
Angry actors
After six seasons, the actors who played Cory and Trevor left the show, complaining of low
pay and poor working conditions.
Cory Bowles eventually returned as Cory, but Michael Jackson refused to make another appearance
as Trevor, posting that he felt ripped off, and, quote, "disrespected as an actor and
as a person."
According to Jackson, he worked for the minimum actor's equity pay for the first three seasons,
then received only tiny raises despite the show's growing popularity.
By Season 5, friends who appeared in commercials were still making more than he was.
To make matters worse, he said that the producers repeatedly lied to him and the other actors
about other actors' pay, refused to hire a proper film crew, and provided unsanitary
bathrooms and trailers.
John Paul Tremblay later hit back at Jackson on a Trailer Park Boys forum, claiming that
any difference in pay was due to the fact that the primary cast members also worked
as full-time writers on the show for what worked out to "pennies on the hour."
Abuse accusations
Fans love Bubbles for his gentle, childlike nature.
So they were shocked in 2016 when Mike Smith was arrested in a Los Angeles hotel and charged
with domestic battery against a woman named Georgia Ling.
But the charges were quickly dropped, with Ling releasing a statement saying,
"...at no point did I feel I was in danger, otherwise I would've called the police myself,
which I did not.
The police were called by others not present in the room who mistakenly perceived the argument
to be something other than what it was."
Actress Lucy DeCoutere, who plays "Lucy," further muddied the waters when she announced
she was leaving the show with a tweet that read "If I find out that somebody is abusive,
I cut them out of my life.
It's very easy."
However, the show's publicist contradicted this statement, insisting that DeCoutere had
informed producers she was quitting weeks earlier.
DeCoutere later tweeted "the TPB cast and crew are still my friends and there are no
bad feelings between us."
Burger time
During their recent live tour, the boys earned some extra cash by having fans come up on
stage to buy hamburgers for $10 a pop.
At some shows the burgers were cooked live on a George Foreman grill, while at other
shows, they apparently were just McDonald's cheeseburgers wrapped in paper.
VICE later estimated that Julian raked in at least $1,500 at a show in Oakland, with
drunk and stoned audience members queuing up on stage to buy the burgers.
In an interview to promote the U.K. leg of the tour, John Paul Tremblay insisted that
the stunt "wasn't a scam!
Those people got their cheeseburgers!"
It certainly could have been worse.
[Burp] “Ricky, there’s onion ring fragments on
me!
Get them off!”
It won't end anytime soon
After over 10 seasons, multiple movies, an international live tour, and numerous minisodes
and specials, the boys could be forgiven for wanting to take a break.
But they show no signs of slowing down.
As the boys told Metro News,
"It's funny to watch the characters get older… where 20 years from now you see Ricky, Julian
and Bubbles who are in their late 60s…
We want to continue shooting until our fans say 'Guys, it's time to shut it down.'"
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