Noah Reid
Noah Reid is an actor, born 1987.
Long before Schitt's Creek, Noah Reid was a voice on Canadian children's television. He was Franklin the turtle, and Pom on Babar, and Screwy on Rolie Polie Olie, which means a substantial number of Canadians now in their thirties heard him daily without ever seeing his face. He then did what child performers do if they are lucky, which is keep working: Tommy in Pippi Longstocking, a stretch of Canadian series, a small role in Titanic.
Patrick Brewer changed the situation. Arriving after Schitt's Creek had already established its own rhythm, Reid played a man whose defining quality is steadiness, opposite a character assembled entirely from anxiety and performance, and the show found a centre of gravity it had been missing. He took the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy in 2019. It was also the point at which his music, which had already earned him a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Original Song for People Hold On, stopped being a separate career running alongside the first one.
The work since has deliberately avoided the warmth: Billy Tillerson in Outer Range, a debt-collection comedy in Buffaloed, a chilly Canadian mystery in Disappearance at Clifton Hill, a supporting turn in Murder in a Small Town.
Movies (4)
TV (12)
Where to start with Noah Reid
Schitt's Creek is not a controversial recommendation and there is no point pretending otherwise. Watch from the first season rather than jumping ahead to Patrick's arrival, because the change he makes to the show only registers if you have felt the shape of it without him.
Outer Range is the interesting follow-up, a strange neo-western where he plays a man you cannot read, and the strongest evidence that he is not only a warm presence. Buffaloed is a fast, loud comedy about debt collectors and he is the straight man in it. Disappearance at Clifton Hill is small, cold and underseen. If you have children, or nostalgia, Franklin is still Franklin. Murder in a Small Town and the upcoming The Vampire Lestat are the current work, and the second of those is the least predictable thing he has ever taken on.