Edmonton-raised actor Jennifer Wigmore hits streaming in Prime crime drama Cross

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Jennifer Wigmore didn’t have much research to do when she was offered a role in the new Amazon Prime series Cross.

“That’s one of the most beloved characters in American fiction,” exclaims Wigmore, who plays April Anderson in the eight-episode TV show based on author James Patterson’s serial killer hunting homicide detective and psychologist of the same name. “I think I‘ve read six or seven of them, and I definitely have about 15 at the house that I’m slowly making my way through.”

The Edmonton-born actor might be very familiar with the title character, but her own role has been created especially for the series. She’s the Chief of Police in Washington, D.C. and immediate superior to Alex Cross, played by Aldis Hodge, who has been given the task of investigating the murder of a local activist even as he battles his own considerable demons. You won’t find that plot line in any of Patterson’s 32 books about the detective, and Wigmore is pleased with that.

“It was a great call from James Patterson and our showrunner, Ben Watkins,” she says. “How do you have any suspense if you know how everything ends? I think what Ben has done is great, taking the world of the characters and building new stories around them. I think people will love that.”

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Millions of readers already love the character of Cross, though the new series is not the first time that viewers will have been introduced to him on the screen, small or large. Morgan Freeman most famously played him in his weary glory in two late ‘90s films, Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider, forever sealing the image of the detective in the brains of viewers of the time. Tyler Perry attempted to pick up the mantle in 2012 with a reboot entitled Alex Cross, but audiences weren’t having it.

Cross lay dormant as a property in the eyes of Hollywood until Amazon Prime decided to have a shot at him. As Wigmore notes, he’s an irresistible character to play around with.

“He’s a deeply complicated and sometimes flawed person,” she says. “I think that’s what makes him really interesting. He’s something of an anti-hero in some ways. We love him, but we also like rooting for him to stop making so many mistakes.”

Wigmore’s path to Cross, which debuted its first episode on Thursday, has been a surprising one given the fact that she had opted out of acting for a number of years. Her attraction to the stage was likely inevitable given that her father Ron Wigmore managed the Jubilee Auditorium from the time of its opening in 1957 to his retirement in 1989, while also co-founding and running the Walterdale Theatre. She recalls being surrounded in her youth by actors and artists of all stripes, thus cementing the notion that a career in the arts was possible.

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Wigmore moved to Toronto in 1995 to do a play, which was cancelled as soon as she arrived. Still, she decided to stay and try her luck. Acting, however, is a precarious occupation and Wigmore discovered that for women it’s especially so. After a few lean seasons, she opted to concentrate on painting, another skill she had developed in her youth.

“I went full Joni Mitchell,” she laughs. “I went back to painting school and left acting for almost 10 years. I needed to focus and not be distracted by acting, which can be a very time-consuming thing. You put an awful lot of work in before you actually get any jobs because there’s many, many auditions that you don’t get. I needed to really switch gears and recharge, so painting became a way for me to do that.”

It may have started as a way to recharge depleted artistic motivations, but Wigmore’s side step into the fine arts also turned into a successful occupation. Work by her made its way into collections across Canada, the U.S. and England, and she even crossed back briefly to the front of the camera when a canvas she painted of actor and writer Gordon Pinsent won her first place on the Bravo series Star Portraits. A very apt win given that Wigmore is also an artist of many talents: actor, painter, writer.

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“It’s totally normal to me that I act, I paint, I sing, I write, I teach,” says Wigmore, who in fact has taught various disciplines at such institutions as Toronto Metropolitan University, Randolph College, George Brown College, and the Art Institute of Chicago. “To me they’re just branches of my artistry and it makes perfect sense to me. They all come from the same place within me.”

Inevitably Wigmore was pulled back into the acting world in 2018 as a favor to a playwright friend mounting a small production. But what started as a fun excursion from the world of painting turned into a complete about-face as the offers tumbled in. After an appearance in Suits in 2018 she was off and running, with multiple episodes of Designated Survivor, a recurring role in the BBC series Malory Towers, yearly appearances in a variety of Toronto-shot Christmas movies. As Wigmore says, it’s been straight uphill since.

Wigmore has a lot going on in her life right now, even as she enjoys the brief respite from the rigour of working on a high-profile television series. Currently, she’s finishing up a screenplay and doing some work for ACTRA, the Canadian entertainment industry’s labour union. With another season of Cross already shot and ready to go she’s got a bit of time to relax, but she’ll be ready to go when she’s called.

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“It’s just been absolutely great doing this,” she says. “I really love how our showrunner has a feminist message running through this. Like, in the books Cross is surrounded by men. I think that Ben (Watkins, showrunner) wanted to instead surround Alex Cross with very powerful women. Like the matriarch of his family, or me, his boss. His amazing and powerful girlfriend as well. These are very strong women and I think that that’s another great update to the story.”

Cross premieres on Prime Video Nov. 14

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