'I felt my grandpa by my side the whole time.' Bones of Crows' Phillip Forest Lewitski tells a powerful story
Lewitski hopes that the series will be an awakening for Canadians
"What I learned out of Adam, I'll never forget," says Phillip Forest Lewitski.
The Calgary-born film and television actor calls his experience on Marie Clements' epic five-part miniseries Bones of Crows a "complete humbling honour." As soon as filming wrapped, he felt lighter, he says, like a load had come off his shoulders. "Anytime I've felt that, that's my intuition telling me that that's exactly what I needed to do at this point in my life."
'Bones of Crows' is a saga of Indigenous resilience
Likened by its creator Clement to the landmark TV series Roots, Bones of Crows is a family saga of Indigenous resilience told through the eyes of Cree matriarch Aline Spears (played by Grace Dove), a survivor of the Canadian residential school system. The miniseries follows how the trauma reverberates destructively through her family tree, while Aline mounts a lifelong battle for truth and justice. Lewitski plays Adam, Aline's husband and a residential school survivor himself, who has returned from the Second World War badly injured and haunted by the horrors of both the school and the battlefield. While his love for his family is undeniable, the hurt he lives with is considerable.
The actor tasked with this challenging role has been an entertainer all his life. Lewitski was schooled at home, where the arts were an important part of his upbringing. Each of the eight Lewitski children learned an instrument. So, in addition to the violin, piano and drums, Phillip got involved with drama when his mom signed him up for a home school theatre production. By the time the play made curtain call, he was hooked.
"What I love about this medium," Lewitski says, "is the fact that we're able to tell stories that impact people from all walks of life." He remembers a promo event for Wildhood — the warmhearted coming-of-age drama from 2021, featuring a breakout performance by Lewitski that earned him a best actor nod from the Canadian Screen Awards. There, a young fan told him he'd never seen himself reflected on screen before and that the film changed his life. "Storytelling in its simplest form," Lewitski says, "can have that much of an impact on someone."
Lewitski to also to appear in upcoming 'Masters of the Air'
Today, the 26-year-old is a rising talent both at home and abroad. Besides his portrayal of the two-spirit Mi'kmaw teenager named Link from critically acclaimed Wildhood, Lewitski is best known for his lead role as Apollo 4 from the CBC Gem original sci-fi series Utopia Falls. His resume also includes appearances in Supernatural, Vikings and Alaska Daily. Audiences will get even better acquainted with the actor, as Bones of Crows launches this month (watch now on CBC Gem), and, later this year, he'll appear in the hotly-anticipated Apple TV+ Band of Brothers sequel Masters of the Air, produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
Lewitski received the Bones of Crows script while in London shooting Masters of the Air. Working at blockbuster scale under tight COVID protocols, the production was exhausting. He wasn't keen on taking new projects, but he fell in love with Clements' epic tale — and he recognized its gravity right away. "I was really scared to be a part of it," he says. "I wanted to make sure that I was the right person to tell that story." However, the more he spoke with Clements, the safer he felt in the director's world. So it was from one mud pit to another, he says, trading in the fatigues of an American bombardier for the uniform of Canadian infantry in what felt like "a very long experience of war."
Series highlights the struggle of Indigenous people in Canada
When asked what he found most challenging about playing Adam, the actor, who comes from French, Ukrainian and Mohawk ancestry, answers: "Everything." Everything was challenging. "The story isn't about any one character," Lewitski explains. "It's about everyone, and the common struggle Indigenous people went through — and are still going through today … What was so challenging for me was to live through that. I definitely felt my grandpa by my side the whole time."
What a lot of people don't understand, the actor says, is that the history the series portrays isn't a thousand years old; it's a recent history and people are walking around today with these traumas. Canadians have been shown so few depictions of these darkest, most shameful chapters in the nation's past, so Bones of Crows will be "a very powerful awakening for a lot of people to the harsh realities of our history," Lewitski says. "It's like my grandpa always told me, 'History repeats itself unless we tell the story.'"
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