Netflix subscribers are likely to have seen 39-year-old New Brunswick-born actor Tricia Black in Mae Martin’s hit thriller Wayward.Photography by Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
Hey, it’s that person!
Tricia Black may not be a household name, but subscribers to most streaming services will recognize her face after a busy season in American and Canadian TV.
So, too, will followers of certain controversial figures in the MAGA movement – but let’s hit pause on that unfortunate side effect of Black’s increased screen time for a moment.
The 39-year-old New Brunswick-born actor is up for best supporting performer in a TV comedy at the Canadian Screen Awards this weekend for her role on CBC’s Small Achievable Goals. She plays Robyn, a true-crime podcast producer with slippery ethics.
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But Netflix subscribers are more likely to have seen Black in Mae Martin’s hit thriller Wayward, where she played a gullible counsellor named Mule working at a creepy boarding school.
Trekkies, meanwhile, will have spotted Black as Lieutenant Rork on the deck of the teaching ship USS Athena in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy on Paramount+.
And fans of quirkier sci-fi/romcom hybrids (and Matthew MacFadyen) watched her on Crave’s The Miniature Wife, where she played a lawyer named Hel.
That was a role that, unlike the titular one played by Elizabeth Banks, gradually got bigger as the season continued.
“It was an exceptional year for sure,” says Black, humbly and a little sheepishly, during an interview at a local coffee shop in Toronto’s West End. “I’m working very hard to continue that momentum.”
As a critic who first enjoyed Black’s work on stage as part of The Sketchersons and Second City Toronto troupes, it’s been a treat seeing her face on screen so much in recent years.
Black has already won multiple Canadian Screen Awards for her work on web series and as a voice actor.
But a few vocal viewers feel otherwise – and are actively trying to keep faces like hers off their TVs. Those hateful hecklers include such powerful figures as Elon Musk and Stephen Miller.
After Starfleet Academy’s first episode premiered, X account End Wokeness shared a short clip featuring three female characters: a bespectacled Holly Hunter as chancellor Nahla Ake, Gina Yashere as cadet master Lura Thok and Black’s Rork.
The caption was: “Star Trek 2026… Beyond parody…”
Miller, Donald Trump’s polarizing deputy chief of staff, quoted it with his own comment: “Tragic. But it’s not too late for @paramountplus to save the franchise.”
Meanwhile, Musk, the owner of X, amplified a different negative post featuring the same clip: “Turns out they banned Ozempic and LASIK in the future lol.”
In the replies, social-media users piled on nastier, unprintable stuff.
The complaints were superficial, insults based entirely on how the three actors looked in one short scene from the YA-leaning Star Trek spinoff.
“It was all about how, basically, we were queer and gay and fat and all this stuff,” is how Black summarizes it.
Black is in a long-term relationship with a woman. She presents, in her words, as “gentle masc; not quite butch,” uses the pronouns she and they, and likes to rep the full spectrum of Canadian fashion. (On the day of our interview, she was sporting a Western-style shirt over merch for Mo Kenney, an East Coast singer-songwriter.)
She plays down any hurt caused by the online hate hurled in her direction. “There were moments where I was like, ‘This sucks a little bit, ouch,’” she says, adding she appreciated the support she got from Trek colleagues Yashere and Robert Picardo. “But then you go: ‘It literally has nothing to do with me.’”
Instead, Black has decided to try and capitalize on the moment. “I want to take this opportunity and do something with it ... The richest man in the world is tweeting about me and my face.”
Black is just that kind of make-lemonade person – a sweet, sunny salt-of-the-earth type originally from Quispamsis, just outside Saint John.
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Shifting her allegiances back and forth between sports and arts in high school, she eventually landed on pursuing a career in the latter thanks to an influential drama teacher named Suzanne Doyle Yerxa. (Her legacy in the New Brunswick arts community is fresh in mind, as she passed away in April.)
Black later took theatre and music at Mount Allison University – before earning a more informal degree in comedy by spending a year in Chicago watching as many improv and sketch shows as possible.
At Second City Toronto, she gradually made her way from student to a troupe member and director of revues. Though, her screen career took off after Baroness von Sketch’s Carolyn Taylor spotted her at an indie queer sketch show called Extravaganza Eleganza.
Black got her union card after Taylor recruited her for the CBC sketch show – and she has since been an informal member of the Baroness extended universe, acting alongside Meredith MacNeill and Jennifer Whalen on Pretty Hard Cases and Small Achievable Goals. “They’re such great advocates for people and women and queer folks in the industry,” Black says of that funny female crew.
Both on-screen and on-stage, Black is particularly adept at playing, as she puts it: “Idiots who think they’re high status, but they’re really low status.”
But her grounded approach to comedy and her general good vibes mean casting directors often end up getting her in a show, one way or another.
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Indeed, for both Wayward and The Miniature Wife, Black auditioned for one role and then was cast in another.
The next big question for Black – who has already won multiple Canadian Screen Awards for her work on web series and as a voice actor – is whether she can leap from supporting roles to lead ones. To that end, she’s developing her own projects.
“My goal is to create really good sapphic TV where nobody dies and there’s no trauma,” she says.
This may be a time when the President of the United States and his allies are putting pressure on Hollywood to be less “woke.” But it’s also a time when a certain explosively popular gay hockey show has made Canadian and queer TV hotter than ever.
So while Musk and Miller may not be able to imagine a future with Black’s face in it, hopefully the industry will continue to do so.