Cait Brown on 15 Years of Producing

Cait Brown

In this profile series, Revry is highlighting authentic contributors to the LGBTQ media and entertainment community. We ask questions to find out who they are and where they are going in the future. The questions remain the same but the answers tell their unique story. It’s time to explore and celebrate true representation beyond the limits of Hollywood. 

Cait serves as Executive Producer and President of Harlow Creative. With fifteen years of experience in television and digital media, she has developed a cutting-edge slate of projects. In the past she worked as an independent producer for Accent Entertainment, and as a long serving development executive at Prodigy Pictures. Through Prodigy, she worked on twelve cumulative seasons of cult classic Lost Girl (Showcase/Syfy), the sci-fi drama Dark Matter (Space Channel/Syfy) and international co-production XIII: The Series (Canal+/Showcase/ReelzChannel). At Accent Entertainment, Cait developed This Blows and TallBoyz, the critically lauded sketch comedy for CBC. Most recently, she executive produced and developed the award-winning camp comedy, Queens (CBC Gem), featuring some of Canada’s finest drag talent. Her current collaborators at Harlow include such names as Degrassi’s Ian MacIntyre, Wattpad’s Emma Rose Szalai, Surrealestate’s Duana Taha, Diggstown’s JP Larocque, The Retreats’ Pat Mills and more. 

What are you best known for? 

The comedy Queens (CBC Gem), most recently, which gay marries camp classics like Clue to our super innovative, brilliant drag scene in Toronto. Of course my years on Lost Girl, now a queer, supernatural cult classic on Syfy and Netflix! I was also very proud of my work and the amazing team over at Tallboyz for CBC.

What is the first thing you produced?

The first show I produced on was Lost Girl. At that time (not so long ago) queer characters and storylines were still very much taking a risk. We still have a very long way to go but it’s been amazing to see the transformation in the industry in the past few years. It was really special to be part of that team for the whole 5 seasons. The crew, cast and writers were all very dear to me  — we were like a big fae family. I’m so proud of what we all built together. 

What are you working on that no one knows about yet?

I started my own company, Harlow Creative, with Queens. Since then, we’ve launched a bunch of development. Our focuses are comedy, supernatural and some queer drama too. My mandate in my 15 years of producing has always been to get queer and BIPOC stories made, and I don’t want to hold back or sacrifice the real parts of these stories. I think too often in the past queer and biopic stories got pushed to the sidelines, as if networks had to check a single box and fulfill it. There is still so much discrimination against queers and representation in TV and film. It’s changing now, slowly, but its important not to underestimate the challenging road we face ahead. These shows are and should be as popular as anything else. Someone once called my taste “alternative,” but the truth is I love pop culture, I just want to change who gets a voice and face in it. It’s what inspired me to start my own company. 

Right now we’re working on shows like, ‘Please Welcome To The Stage’ from the innovative writer Johnnie Walker, with the talented Pat Mills directing. It’s like a queer Fleabag and we absolutely love it. Another is ‘Near or Far’ with our awesome super partners at Wattpad Studios and are developing with CBC GEM and pitching out to potential US partners right now. It’s about twin sisters from northern Canada that live parallel lives after one moves away. They both have different interpretations of the past, a la The Affair, and things get complicated. (And of course it’s queer, smart and dramatique)

The other show we just started developing is called ‘Postmodern Family’ with the talented Michael Hanley. It’s like a queer, sexy Succession.