Meet the Women of Sloppy Jones on International Women’s Day 2021. We’re thrilled to be a female directed, female produced and female mentored series.
Sloppy Jones: The Director
The Sloppy Jones trailer was directed by super talented Winnifred Jong. Not only did she bring out the best in the amazing performers but she also helped find a fantastic location to shoot in and mentored the creators as they punched up and shortened the script. Named 2018 Playback’s 5-to-Watch, Winnifred Jong is a Toronto-based filmmaker and an alumna of the Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) and Ryerson University. Her recent directing work can be seen on CBC’s highest-rated new one-hour drama, Coroner, as well as audience favorite Heartland, on eOne/Global Television’s Nurses and Private Eyes, Hallmark’s Mystery 101: Dead Talk and Hulu’s Endlings. Winnifred created comedic web series, Tokens.
Developed with WIDC and financed by Telefilm Talent-to-Watch and the Bell Fund, it won the 2019 CMPAPrime Time Throwdown and been viewed over 500K times and counting. Garnering four nominations at the 2020 Canadian Screen Awards (including Best Direction and Best Writing for Winnifred) and two nominations at ACTRA Toronto (including a historic first for Best Ensemble), Tokens also won Best Representation of Communities of Color and Best Comedy at Minnesota WebFest and Best Director in a Comedy at the Asia Web Awards. Selected for the inaugural BANFF Spark Accelerator – Cohort 1, Winnifred has twice attended as a participant of the Netflix-BANFF Diversity of Voices Program.Winnifred Jong is represented by Jordan Drage of Integral Artists.
TOKENS INSTAGRAM
TOKENS YOUTUBE
Sloppy Jones: The Producer
Susan is a dynamic Independent Producer and President of Hop To It Productions with over 20 years of experience in marketing, discoverability, advertising, event management, and content production. She has strong communication and project management skills, and good creative judgment.
In June 2006, she formed Hop To It Productions Inc. with Nina Beveridge and Paul Hart of Beevision Productions to create, develop, produce and market relevant, compelling and unique programming, content for a range of ages across different genres. The programming promotes diversity and strong female roles. Hop To It projects have the potential to work on multiple platforms, and have strong international appeal.
Susie’s most recent Talent Hounds Project has won awards for the TV documentaries (including Houston Worldfest Platinums and Golds) and for the 400+ digital videos including comedy web series Backseat Barkers (including US Pet Video of the Year).
Susan and Nina have always been digital pioneers. They launched multi-platform youth project www.hip-hoptv.com, half-hour TV series Hip Hop in the T-Dot on air on Rogers Television, branded video series on Pizza Pizza screens, a scripted web series Big Break for Rogers and one of the first YouTube Partner Channels in Canada. They were winners in the Telefilm Great Canadian Video Game Contest with innovative multi-platform project Create A Date and RomCom Web Series Cupid’s Cafe. They were also won a Telus Innovation Award and were finalists in Banff iPitch. They have produced over 20 stand alone and convergent websites plus digital content working with CBC, CBC Kids, TVO, TVOKids, Rogers, OMNI, YTV, ECG, The Pet Network and other Canadian and International broadcasters, publishers and platforms.
Sloppy Jones: The Female Writers
Jamie Hart is a co-creator and actress. She stars in the role of Harper Shelley on Sloppy Jones.
Jamie Hart is an actor and writer currently living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is the creator of Vaccine Gaea, Jane Slayer, Captain Jenny and Spell Bent. She was also a creative consultant on the romcom Pippy Love. Her previous acting credits include voice work for Pop It! on TVO Kids, Sophie’s Kids’ Camp and Kids’ Pet Club (V/O) by Hop To It Productions. On stage she performed in Vagabond Theatre’s Julius Caesar. On screen she starred in Spell Bent by Beevision Productions, The Rot directed by Jonathan Brito and Kill Lot directed by MEL.
Jamie studied at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts, Armstrong Acting Studio, and The Vagabond Apprentice Theatre Company while attending Queen’s University. Jamie has worked with experts Amanda Walsh, Jill Golick, Judy Croon on Sloppy Jones and Sugith Varughese on Spell Bent.
Jamie’s passions are feminism, LGBT representation, and escapism through writing. She believes that everyone deserves representation in their favourite film, literary or television genres. Most importantly, she believes LGBT people deserve to see themselves on screen without their sexuality or gender being the character’s conflict. Jamie’s biggest influences are Libba Bray, Joseph Heller, Mary Shelley, and her mother’s heavily marked up copy of the Riverside Shakespeare.
When Jamie isn’t writing or acting, she enjoys reading, cooking, and DMing for her weekly Dungeons and Dragons group. She’s also an IRL bartender with a passion for stirred martinis and mediocre bourbon. Because of this she comes to this project with a history of authentic comedic moments and experiences to inform her writing. You can’t serve martinis to business cougars for years and not come out with a few stories.
Jamie holds a black belt in taekwondo from Desantos Martial Arts under Veronica Desantos. She studied ballet at The Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre, Pegasus Studios, and For the Love of It School of Dance.
Sophie Nation is starring in the role of Rory Woods in Sloppy Jones.
Sophie Nation is a Toronto based writer, director, and actor. She is one of the three writers/co-creators of the Sloppy Jones Series.
She studied at Rosedale School of the Arts in her teen years. Later graduating from the Theatre Program at Concordia University where she further developed her skills acting and playwriting.
Sophie is currently the writer and director of an independent documentary short, Apology for my life and created and edits and writes on a mental health website Coping Continued.
Previous acting credits include appearing in the Spell Bent series by Beevision Productions, Follow me down, a feature film by Blueprint tv, The Backseat Barkers millennial web series on Talent Hounds, the Bopstars, Kids’ Pet Club and Pop It! series, and a Mccormicks Sloppy Joe Mix commercial. She has performed in theatres in both Montreal and Toronto.
Having worked as a server in several restaurants over the last 4 years, she has many stories to share. Drama has been added and situations are heightened but almost everything that is in the series has taken place in some way in the lives of the creators so there is something really relatable about these stories.
Sloppy Jones: The Female Cast
Linda Kash got her start at Toronto’s famous Second City comedy club both writing and performing with the troupe. She has gone on to become an award-winning Canadian icon appearing on stage, film, and television. You may recognize her as the beloved, Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese Angel. One of Canada’s most successful advertising campaigns running for more than 15 years.
She was a series regular cast member on The Comedy Mill, Max Glick, Variety Tonight in Canada, and SheTV, Minor Adjustments and Style and Substance in the US. Kash has been a guest on Seinfeld, Third Rock from the Sun, Everybody Loves Raymond, Ellen, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She worked on Ken Finkleman’s new series for CBC, “Hotel Metropolitan” and the pilot for “Sex Life” on HBO which was directed by Barry Rozema. Kash has also co-created several television shows including My Talk Show, Lovin’ Spoonfuls Go Girl! and had her directorial debut for The Joe Blow Show.
With an IMDB page of over 100 film credits, Linda has appeared in many fan favourites including Best in Show and Waiting For Guffman directed by Christopher Guest. She appeared in the multi-nominated Cinderella Man directed by Ron Howard and most recently Man of the Year directed by Barry Levinson. She has been nominated for many awards including a Dora Award and Gemini Awards – one of which she won for best actress in a guest role in Finkleman’s At the Hotel.
She remains an active film and television and supports new talent by teaching sketch comedy writing and improv at Humber College and corporate workshops for Beyond the Boy.
We are thrilled to have her play the role of Momager, Deb Jones.
Lory Mpiana is a creative consultant for Sloppy Jones and plays Cassie Ley.
Lory Mpiana is an African- Canadian Actor currently living in Toronto. She was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and immigrated to Canada in 2002. French is her first language, and she learned to speak English while attending Wexford Public School in Toronto.
Lory fell in love with the arts at 8 years old, when she began training and perfecting her craft. Lory attended French Elementary school, St. Jean de Lalande where she joined the improv team and competed professionally. Lory believes that “improv is a very essential tool for the Actor. It makes you think quicker on your feet.”
Post-secondary, Lory studied at Armstrong Acting Studios with Dean Armstrong, Andrew Runge, and Amos Crawley. She was also very fortunate to have the opportunity to train at the Cindy Tanas Acting School, “I believe that as an actor studying with Cindy was a turning point in my young adult life because we really went in-depth working on our lives which really made me think of acting from a different point of view. I am forever grateful for this life-changing experience.”
According to Lory what she loves about Acting is that “there is always personal growth that is being achieved while working on your craft. It has made me empathetic towards others and more open-minded. I believe that everyone should take an Acting class at least once in their life, whether you are an Actor or not. It will definitely awaken something inside of you.”
Follow Lory on IG @lorympiana
Isabel Kanaan is a Second City grad and Seneca College Acting for Camera and Voice alumna. She’s been awarded the NBCUniversal Bob Curry Fellowship, which is dedicated to cultivating diversity and representation. She is a member of CBC’s sketch comedy award troop, Air Face, the Sketchersons, and Second City’s House Ensemble and Educational Company.
Isabel is a Filipino- Canadian film and theatre actress fluent in both Tagalog and English. Aside from her success in comedy, she is also known for her lead role in the series Haunted or Hoax, winner of the NYC Web Fest’s Audience Choice Award.
She regularly performs with the Asian Canadian theatre company fu-GEN Theatre and the Filipino Canadian theatre company Carlos Bulosan Theatre. She even co-wrote and performed in CBT’s production Anak.
Follow Isabel on Tik Tok @izzykayeh
We are thrilled to have her in the comedic role of Detective Blake Guinto.
Sloppy Jones: The Mentors
Amanda Walsh is a writer/performer whose credits include CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (HBO), LOST GIRL (SYFY), and the critically-acclaimed DIRK GENTLY (BBC America) opposite Elijah Wood. As a writer, Amanda has built upon her start writing and producing her own sketches and commentary as a VJ on MuchMusic. She spent two seasons as a Story Editor on SCHITT’S CREEK (CBC/POP/Netflix) and her work on this series garnered her a WGC Award for Best Comedy Script. Her one-act play, “Lucky“, was part of Hollywood’s Unscreened Series, and starred D’Arcy Carden. She also co-wrote a pilot, The Untitled Walsh Gallo Project, that was optioned by 20th Century Fox. Often in demand to lend her talents as a script consultant, Amanda finds joy helping her fellow writers hone their ideas. Amanda is repped by a respected talent agent and super nice guy who we worked with Paul Hemrend at ETM, as well as ICM, and Dave Becky at 3 Arts Entertainment.
Jill Golick writes character-driven coming-of-age stories that are relatable for audiences of all ages. She believes that coming of age is a process we go through over and over throughout our lives whenever things get hard. These stories are particularly relevant now because audiences want to believe they have the power to make themselves happy.
Jill Golick has been fortunate to work as a screenwriter, story editor, and creative producer in many genres, including children’s (Sesame Street, Annedroids), soap (Metropia), prime (Instant Star) and digital (Weirdwood Manor). She is best known for Ruby Skye PI, the interactive web series she created and showran for three seasons.
An early adopter from an early age, Jill started a successful software company in the 80s, created Twitter’s first live comedy soap, and currently owns a robot. Her dual passions for interactivity and cutting edge technology infuse her original work.
For much of her career as a writer, Jill has been an advocate for artists. She served as president of the Writers Guild of Canada from 2010-2018 and as Executive Director of Women in View from 2018-2019. She is co-author of WIVOS19, Women in View’s most recent research study on the participation of women in Canada’s film and television industry. Jill mentors writers at all career stages and teaches about audience-focused series development. She is author of the Pandemic Pilot Program: a step-by-step guide to writing your script while maintaining physical distancing. She taught screenwriting courses at York University for many years.
Find out more about Jill at jillgolick.com
Judy Croon Canada’s Keynote Humorist, TEDx speaker, comedian, radio host, Second City stand up coach, and author has been wowing audiences for over 20 years. Judy leaves no comic behind!
She has worked with many celebrities including; John Cleese, Jon Stewart, and Joan Rivers.
Her specials have appeared on NBC, CBS, CTV, and The Comedy Network. She is a co-author of ‘From the Stage to the Page: Life Lessons from Four Funny Ladies!”
Judy draws from her standup performance and coaching experience to entertain, inform, and inspire.
Leave a Reply