Tuesday around lunchtime our doorbell rang. This sent the dog into an explosion of hysterical and frantic barking. I picked her up under my arm like a football and opened the door to find a woman standing there holding a green sheet of paper. The first thing I thought was that she was about to file a noise complaint based on the barking of our dog, but no, she was with the television show Nikita and was serving notice that they were going to be shooting on our street on Friday.<\/p>\n

Me: Are you Nikita?<\/p>\n

Woman: No, it\u2019s just my job to hand out these notifications.<\/p>\n

Me: Who is Nikita?<\/p>\n

Woman: The role is played by Maggie Q.<\/p>\n

Me: Maggie Q?<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Woman: Yes, it\u2019s her third season in the role. She leads a black ops organization in charge of hunting down rogue spies all over the world. Very thrilling and dramatic!<\/p>\n

Me: That sounds like a job with a lot of responsibility. Am I suspected of being a rogue spy?<\/p>\n

Woman: Well, I\u2019m not sure, I\u2019d have to ask Nikita.<\/p>\n

Me: Could you do that, please. I\u2019m going to have to juggle a few things around if I\u2019m going to be hunted.<\/p>\n

To my surprise the woman seemed amused and picked up her phone and called Maggie Q, the actress who plays Nikita.<\/p>\n

Woman: Maggie, hi, it\u2019s Janet. I\u2019m just doing a flyer run on the street where we\u2019re going to be shooting on Friday and a man here needs to know if you\u2019re going to be hunting him down as a rogue spy. Yes, I think he must have a past.<\/p>\n

Me: Let me speak to her.<\/p>\n

Woman: Maggie, he has me hostage. He has spy skills. He\u2019s demanding to speak to you.<\/p>\n

The woman then handed me the phone.<\/p>\n

Me: Maggie, what sort of assurances can you give me that I won\u2019t be harmed during the shooting of this episode?<\/p>\n

Maggie Q: You have full assurances.<\/p>\n

Me: I need to know more about what\u2019s going to be shot. I frequently take the dog for a walk and for a spy I\u2019m surprisingly clumsy. Are you going to be kicking people or wielding a sword? I would consider those hazardous activities.<\/p>\n

Maggie Q: Mostly, I\u2019ll be looking sultry and intense. My hair will be messy but still sexy and I\u2019ll be forced to point a gun at somebody. My look will suggest it hurts me more than it hurts them.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Me: (Covering the phone and speaking to the woman who was now scratching the ears of our dog, Heidi) She says she might have to kill somebody.<\/p>\n

Woman: Well that\u2019s unfortunate. Let me speak with her, maybe I can persuade her to change her mind. (The woman turned her back to me and there was muffled talking.)<\/p>\n

Woman: Okay, here\u2019s the deal, Maggie will pass on the killing if you agree to be an extra in a shot, we think an older-dad type walking his little dog down the street might be the perfect illustration of how Nikita keeps the innocent and helpless safe from the dangers of the world. What do you say?<\/p>\n

Me: But I\u2019m a rogue spy.<\/p>\n

Woman: (Smiling) Oh, no, I\u2019m sorry, but you\u2019re so not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday around lunchtime our doorbell rang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[139,867,868,138,866,863,585,865,117,861,864,151,860,96,862,38,851],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2853"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2917,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions\/2917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}