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Local talent nominated for Leo Awards

The Leo Award nominations were announced on Tuesday and the Prince George community has players in the game.
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The Leo Award nominations were announced on Tuesday and the Prince George community has players in the game.

The annual awards show for the screen arts industry celebrates movies, television, documentary, animation and web projects that were created in B.C.

Prince George's Madison Smith is one of the actors on the shortlist, as is Fort St. James actor Dylan Playfair.

Playfair is a finalist for the Best Performer of Host-Music, Comedy or Variety Series. Playfair's nomination is for his work in the hit comedy Letterkenny, and one of his cast-mates, fellow British Columbian Tyler Johnston, is also in the running for the same trophy.

Also shortlisted in the same category are Andrea Bang (Kim's Convenience), Anja Savcic (Loudermilk) and Priscilla Faia (You Me Her).

Smith is also vying for a Leo with a cast mate. Both he and Aleks Paunovic co-star in the show NarcoLeap, up for Best Performance Male-Web Series.

They are joined in the category by Alex Barima (Rachel), Andy Canete (Shrink-Wrapped: The Web Series), and Matt Hamilton (The Actress Diaries).

Smith gets his nomination only days before he comes back to his hometown as a VIP at Northern FanCon.

"Seems like it was all part of a master plan," he said, laughing.

NarcoLeap has been attracting acclaim from a number of sources.

The sci-fi drama is the creation of veteran filmmaker Kate Green and the lead star is Chelsey Reist (The 100, Dark Harvest, The Tomorrow People) about someone with narcolepsy who, when she falls into her unscheduled sleeps, ends up inhabiting the bodies of other people for brief, meaningful interludes.

The show was awarded $100,000 in project funding by the StoryHive,funding program, it was picked up for television by OptikTV and web viewing on cbc.ca. NarcoLeap is also in the running at the Writers Guild of Canada's Screenwriting Awards, and was up for an Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television's Canadian Screen Award (the winner was How To Buy A Baby).

Joining Smith and Playfair on the nominees' list are a couple of musicians who have connection to this area.

Bryant Olender, a former resident of Prince George, is up for the trophy in the Best Musical Score-Short Drama category for his work on the show Exhibit Man (the project has a total of eight nominations).

Dan Mangan is formerly of Smithers and is up for Best Musical Score-Dramatic Series for his work on Unspeakable - Heat Treatment.

It's a big week for Mangan, a two-time Juno Award winner, who just performed (April 16) as the musical guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

The Leo Awards will be handed out May 25-26 at the red carpet gala at the Sheraton Wall Centre in Vancouver.

(If you know of anyone else with Prince George connections who is in the running for a Leo Award, please email the information to news@pgcitizen.ca)