By David Topping

Erin Karpluk, photographed during TIFF, while momentarily not Being Erica. Photo by aleslinger6 from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Being Erica—the new season of which started last night—will soon have a new co-star: the National Post! Yes, even though the parent companies of the show and the paper are each intent on covering the other’s financial problems, the Post will (apparently) be playing itself in an upcoming episode, which’ll see Erica go to the (real) Post to confront a (fake) Post critic who slams a book that she edits.
So says Jeremy Barker, National Post staffer and former Torontoist contributor, who described the scene at the Post‘s newsroom during filming yesterday morning, and his turn as an unintended extra:

Extras were dispersed to fill up the desks, making their faux newsroom much busier than our real one. They were also, for most part, overdressed. Ties and jackets are the exception at work, not the norm. The extras were also given pretend tasks to mime in the background, making for a lot of studious staring at proofs in-between conversations about their previous credits and making up back stories for their characters. “My guy used to be from Owen Sound and his favourite hockey team is the Montreal Canadiens.”
It was soon discovered that I was a “real” and actually working (somewhat unsuccessfully) during the shoot. A makeup artist scooted over to touch up a “blemish”—can’t have real fake people looking blotchy—and after a joking warning from a friend behind the camera not to stare into the lens, rehearsals and filming began.

As usual, though, Being Erica‘s reception was mixed: just after 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Financial Post reporter Matt Harley tweeted: “Someone from the set of Being Erica (a CBC show, I’m told) keeps telling us to be quiet, because they’re filming in the newsroom.” Whether real or fake, it seems the Post‘s employees aren’t easily pleased by Erica Strange’s work.