TORONTO – Canadian actor Callum Keith Rennie has played a drinking buddy to David Duchovny’s Hank Moody on “Californication,” a foil to Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer on “24,” and chased confused amnesiac Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) during a memorable scene in the movie “Memento.”

But in “Shattered,” premiering Wednesday night on Global, the actor mostly known for his supporting roles plays the lead, Det. Ben Sullivan, a troubled homicide investigator with multiple personality disorder.

“What attracted me (to the show) was it was a procedural that would never follow a straight line,” Rennie said during a recent interview in Toronto.

“I’d never played a leading man cop before and I thought that would be interesting. I thought the dimensions of trying to figure out how to play somebody suffering from multiple personality disorder in an authentic way would be a challenge, and it was.”

Rennie, a longtime veteran of the big and small screen, is more in demand than ever coming off his slew of high-profile roles, also including parts in “Battlestar Galactica,” “FlashForward” and “Gunless.”

He won a lot of fans playing a carousing, out-of-control record producer on “Californication,” a role he got while hanging out with Duchovny on the set of “The X Files: I Want to Believe” in Vancouver.

“There was an announcement about a Golden Globe nomination for ‘Californication’ and I congratulated him but said I hadn’t seen the show,” Rennie recalled. Duchovny sent him some DVDs, which Rennie flew through in one night.

“I thought it was one of the best things I’d ever seen and told him so. To which he said, ‘Do you want to do it? Like maybe do a three-episode thing?’

“‘Uh, yeah, OK!,’” Rennie responded.

“That turned into five (episodes), which turned into eight, which turned into the whole season. It was phenomenal, the writers on that show are phenomenal. The way it’s set up, David’s spirit on the show and how it works, it was an unbelievable experience.”

With “Shattered,” Rennie sought out a producer credit, which gave him a greater degree of control over how the show was developed.
“It was just nice to have a say,” he said. “Hopefully at least you get to put in your two cents worth, maybe they listen to one cent of it, who knows, but you do get a voice and get to guide it along a path you see fit.”

One of the key decisions for Rennie was how he would portray his character’s struggle with multiple personality disorder. He spoke to experts, read books, watched videos and worked with an acting coach to find the right nuanced approach.

“It was trying to find a responsible way to play it and have it portrayed so it wasn’t like a hook,” he said.

Over the course of the first season, Rennie’s character experiences four different “alters.” The audience may have trouble recognizing the slip into another personality, but Rennie says that reflects the real-life experience of those who suffer from the disorder.

“If you were working with Ben you may or may not get it, so as the audience you may or may not get what’s going on with him. Is that just him acting up? That’s what he does, that’s his thing?

“There’s a subtlety to it in that a lot of cases are undiagnosed and people go through their lives going, ‘That’s just the way he is sometimes,’ to the other extreme of completely different voices, multiple personalities and blackouts.”

“Shattered” airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

I’m so excited about this. I had the privilege to catch a pre-air of the pilot thanks to the wonders of the internet and it’s amazing. His performance is outstanding; and I’m so grateful to Mr. Rennie for actually doing all the research. It really shows through. I didn’t notice every switch when it happened at first, often times I would realize it had happened when he switched back to Ben and that was great because it does happen like that.

This looks to be a very exciting show. I hope that it does well. For more information Shattered on Global TV. I’m so bummed that I’m not going to get to watch the show and support it directly but I will keep it with it via the wonder of the internet.

A discussion on my support group reminded me of our different tastes in foods. Most of us don’t like tomato, and so far none of us have been able to tolerate mushrooms. There’s a big debate going on currently about the combination of peanut butter and chocolate which is not a common mixture in the UK but is over here.

Our music, reading and television show tastes are widely different also. Several of us have more teenage tastes, for example Ami, when she was still around often listened to Savage Garden. She might have been caught looking for Taylor Swift tickets, or watching programs on Nickelodeon, while others are more interested in Shakira, or Disturbed or Skindred. My husband often teases because she spent a lot of time reading “The Uglies” series of novels which are primarily targeted at tweens, while he was reading “Frankenstein” and “Dante’s Inferno”.

We have good insurance which we’re lucky to have. I liken it to rv insurance for the teeth at times but still, we’re good with it, it’s a lot better than most insurance and it means these things are getting sorted out before I wind up having to have a root canal or something else that would be so much worse and more traumatic. We’re not talking about going next week to have our wisdom teeth taken out, what we’re talking about doing is having three fillings and a partial mouth cleaning. It shouldn’t be difficult at all. Still there’s nerves. There are worse nerves than when we went to the dentist that week and so many things have changed with dentists that we may as well have been going for the first time ever.

All of this goes back to us being our own worst enemy. Things would be fine if we could just stop making them worse for ourselves.

We’re working on sorting out our internal environment a bit more. It’s been sort of loose and fluid which is good to a certain degree but we need to have some areas which are a bit more stable. We’re constructing some steel buildings within our head-space so that noise from the dentist office can be muted some more. We worked pretty well the last time tuning out but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

Also the issues with the car that we’ve had have finally been able to be sorted out. Mum and her boyfriend have fixed my car’s radiator today so we’re not having to get new vehicle insurance quotes and a new vehicle just yet, which is nice. It gives us a few more months of leeway for me to find a job and get our finances back on track.

We’re looking into a credit card settlement program also to help us in that regard.

I’m starting to feel a bit more relaxed about how things are going.

The search was scary. I looked all over the country, California, Chicago auto repair everywhere, and the cheapest I found for the part was $500 not including shipping. I was going to start looking at the local scrap yards, and calling around to see what the Buick dealers had, though I figured that if I called a dealership they would expect me to bring the car to them so they could charge me the extortionate prices they have for repairs. I also started looking at other cars, maybe if “Cash for Clunkers” starts up again I can get myself a Toyota Corolla or something else. One of our friends has a really nice Honda.

In the mean time though my Mum and her boyfriend have bought the part I need for the car, which actually only costs $90 by itself, I apparently didn’t need a whole radiator? I don’t fully understand these things, but they’re fixing her for my birthday so that will be good. Every other time we go out with her now she threatens to overheat. Poor thing is so far gone.

Our exams and cleanings are covered 100%, we pay nothing. Other things such as crowns and fillings we pay 20% and have a $50 deductible. I almost dropped the phone when I found that out. I mean, we have a $3000 deductible for our normal health insurance and that covers anything that you’re doing whether it’s blood work, chiropractic visits, shots, consultations or therapy, so essentially 75% of the year you’re paying at least $100 for almost anything you need, except prescriptions where you may be fortunate enough to get a generic; but there are no generic doctors and I probably wouldn’t want one.

I’m striving to be grateful that I can at least go to the doctor but the state of our insurance means that most of the time I only go if it’s an absolute emergency, such as the time I was up from midnight until 2 a.m. unable to breathe properly and it turned out I was a day shy of pneumonia.

Anyway, both hubbie and I are looking forward to going to the dentist for the first time since before the munchkin was born. I imagine there will be some lectures and some issues but at least we’ll be able to get things sorted out in that regard finally.

I suppose if I could narrow down a field of work it might help; but where we most like to work, while it is not something we’d really need additional schooling for, it’s a very elite area so there’s not much call for it in our area and it’s hard to break into fresh due to all the legislation about clairvoyance and hypnosis.

Then the other night there was some lost time due to Rachel being out for a while after we watched “Alice in Wonderland”. It’s been illuminating though. Previous to this trying to piece together her interpretations of things and reasons was like trying to fix a bicycle with Ferrari parts. Now there’s more understanding. For reasons previously unknown to us she’s been extremely paranoid, particularly around night time and afraid that something or someone is going to come into the house and take her (us).

The fact that she not only spoke to Kore but took Kore’s word that the windows and back door were safe and only checked the front door are pretty huge. Also the fact that she touched and stroked Emmit, Kore’s cat is pretty big too. She’s very anti-touch. Through the course of this excursion of hers she spent some time examining electronics in the house and rearranging things so that they lined up properly but she also spoke about the fact that animals don’t talk which seemed to have been spurred by the fact that Kore was having a one sided conversation with Emmit, and the fact that certain things are the product of an overactive imagination such as animals talking, and people hurting each other, which leads to the conclusion that aliens are the ones that hurt you.

So, as we unravel the mystery we can sort some more things out and hopefully continue this healing process that we’re attempting.

Ah, well. I’ve been trying to take it easy but there are so many things which need to be done. Hubbie let me sleep in this morning and took the munchkin to school, so that was something. I just wish I could breathe through my nose, because breathing through my mouth is not helping the throat being dry and slightly sore. Ah, well. I’m sure things will work their way out. Though if I’m still all stuffy after the weekend I will be trekking my unhappy butt to the doctor, on Tuesday. As I think the doctor’s office will probably be closed on Monday for Labor Day, thinking about it.

Here’s hoping I’m feeling better soon. I’m very frustrated right now because I don’t like feeling useless.