How Yannick Bisson arrived at his starring role on Murdoch Mysteries

He was in his mid-30s, married and the father of three daughters. Worried about his family, he found himself renovating and restoring older homes and flipping them. “I really enjoyed it and learned a lot,” he says.

“It was something I could see myself doing. I don’t tackle a whole lot of electrical, but I could build you an entire house. I worked as a professional framer, as a tile-setter, did a lot of my own plumbing; I taught myself,” he says.

Bisson also hawked cars, delivered pizza, sold long-distance phone service, bartended and plied some voice-over work.

All of that odd-job experience was not wasted when Bisson, 46, was offered the role of Detective William Murdoch in the long-running series Murdoch Mysteries 10 years ago. That enduring character is enjoying a reincarnation as Ovation in the U.S. airs the new Season 9 of The Artful Detective (which has already aired on CBS), renamed to coincide with the artistic bent of the network.

Related:

Fans show their love for all things Murdoch MysteriesEND

Murdoch Mysteries TV series inspired by real Toronto detectiveEND

“Any aspect of life can help you be a better actor because what are we doing except living life while somebody’s recording it?” he says. “You just sort of hop into different contexts and say different words, but that’s been mostly my job on Murdoch is taking the audience through the story and being the audience’s feelings and eyes.”

Bisson insists he’s not at all like Murdoch. “He’s too stuffy. There’s a lot of work to being Murdoch, there’s the (Victorian) shirt and the things, and a lot of pomp and circumstance. I’m a little bit more laid-back than that.”

He’s earned the chance to be laid-back. Bisson started in commercials when he was 13. His dad built bridges and the blended family (a sister, a half-brother and two stepbrothers) moved often, constantly transplanting Bisson and his siblings.

“It’s a matter of becoming a professional adapter and you do it like your life depends on it for so long, then it becomes an easy thing to make a living at. So the tricky things can be that you lose yourself in all of it. That’s not necessarily good. So it’s important to have a strong sense of self if you’re going to really capitalize on that aspect of your life.”

He did harbour a strong sense of self and rebelled at 15. “I sort of packed it in. I was focused on my career, so my father, brothers and sister went to places like Korea, Thailand, Malaysia. I was left with my mom part of the time (his parents had split when he was 6). But then I was living on my own from about 15 on,” says Bisson.

“It wasn’t easy, but I just wanted to stay put, lay down some roots and do what I was doing. It was more of a reaction. I didn’t really think of it as a choice. It was a way of reacting to the things I didn’t agree with. I didn’t want to move around anymore, I didn’t want to be pulled out of another activity or lose more friends, whatever — things that are important to you when you’re a kid.”

When he was about 16, he met his future wife — actress and former pro cheerleader Chantal Craig. But she had a boyfriend and would have nothing to do with him for four years. Finally they found themselves auditioning for the same Pepsi commercial. “We go in there and we’re supposed to kiss and I was in heaven,” he recalls.

“Then I found out from her friend if she was single. I asked her out and she said yes. And we’ve been together ever since.” (Neither got the part in the Pepsi commercial.)

Their girls are 26, 24 and 19 now, permitting Bisson and his wife to concentrate on their work. Craig is writing her third book and Bisson is chasing the criminal element of Toronto as the intrepid detective.

Unlike Murdoch, Bisson admits that he can only concentrate on one thing at a time. “I can’t even exit off the highway if somebody’s talking to me,” he says. “But on the flip side, there have been instances where I’ve been followed and had to ditch a tail and my wife thinks I’m as cool as James Bond because I’ve had to do that a couple of times. I’ve managed to switch into action mode and my wife said, ‘Babe! That was awesome.’ It’s one of the few times in my life when my wife was really impressed with me,” he smiles.