Lea Thompson and Stacey Farber on playing ‘two nosy redheads’ in CTV series ‘The Spencer Sisters’

One of the stranger reactions Lea Thompson gets in relation to her star-making role in the “Back to the Future” films is from fans who wonder why she “quit acting” after those movies came out in the 1980s and early ’90s.

Well, no, check her IMDb page, where there are a hefty 109 TV, movie and video game credits listed — including multiple seasons as the lead of mid-’90s show “Caroline in the City” and as a main character in 2011 series “Switched at Birth” — plus 14 directing jobs and counting.

Her latest project is the CTV original series “The Spencer Sisters,” in which Thompson stars as a mystery writer turned sleuth. The twist is that Thompson’s Victoria solves crimes with her ex-cop daughter, Darby, played by Canadian Stacey Farber.

Farber, herself, knows something about fan recognition. She said she gets stopped at least once a day for “Degrassi: The Next Generation,” in which she played Ellie Nash for eight seasons.

As it happens, Farber hadn’t seen “Back to the Future” before meeting Thompson — bear in mind the first movie came out two years before Farber was born — but she was impressed that the American star travelled to Winnipeg to make “The Spencer Sisters.”

“That was a huge draw for me,” said Farber, 35. “I was like, ‘Oh, she’s coming up to do it? Hell, yeah.’ ”

There was mutual admiration apparent between the two actors when they sat down for an interview at Bell Media headquarters in downtown Toronto. By contrast, the mother-daughter relationship in “The Spencer Sisters” is decidedly chilly, although one suspects it will thaw as the season progresses.

Thompson’s Victoria is rich, pushy and “outrageous,” to use Thompson’s word, although her career as a novelist is on a bit of a downturn. She lives alone in her big house until Darby reluctantly moves back in, having hit a snag in her own career as a police officer. And the two discover, despite their strained relationship, that they make a good crime-solving team.

“It’s kind of like ‘Murder She Wrote’ in a way but with this mother-daughter element, which is endlessly fascinating because we’re all fascinated with our mothers, and being a mother and a daughter,” said Thompson, 61.

The Minnesota native said she’s kind of playing her own mother in the series.

“My mother was very honest, to a fault. She’d be like, ‘How come you got so fat?’ ” Thompson said. “She couldn’t help herself. She had to say what she had to say. And she was an artist and my character’s an artist, too. She’s a writer, a mostly bad writer, but a famous bad writer. And I really enjoy playing her.”

Farber, luckily, didn’t have an adversarial relationship with her own mother to draw on — “I have a great relationship with my mom” — but she could relate to Darby’s discomfort at moving back into her mother’s house.

“In my late 20s, I would go to L.A. for pilot season, spend all my money and then come back to Toronto and live with my parents. And that was hard, sometimes fun. And they loved it … But, you know, I wanted my own place,” said the Toronto native.

Farber is no slouch herself when it comes to acting credits. She has appeared in Canadian series like “18 to Life,” “Saving Hope” and “Diggstown,” as well as American shows like “Superman & Lois” and the popular Netflix drama “Virgin River.”

She and Thompson both started in the business as adolescents. Thompson said she’s been acting since she was 12. Farber began work on “Degrassi” at 14, with a couple of short film credits before that.

She recalled watching an early episode of “Degrassi” at a friend’s house (she doesn’t own a TV) and hating her performance. “I was very green and it’s painful to watch those episodes … but it’s where I started and I do think I got better as the show progressed.”

Indeed, Thompson said she had seen and enjoyed Farber’s work before reading with her for “The Spencer Sisters.”

Thompson got cast without auditioning.

“They offered me the role without reading me or anything. I must have been on some list,” she said. But there’s always a risk taking a part without reading it out loud since you sometimes discover you’re not right for the show, she added.

But “when I got to read with Stacey, it all came together and I was like, ‘Oh, this is gonna work. I can play this character with this person.’ And when you talk about ‘Back to the Future’ there’s a certain magic that occurs or doesn’t occur … And I believe that that magic exists in this show. It’s something that is ephemeral and precious. Yeah, (we’re) lucky.”

There’s something else that made it worthwhile for Thompson to travel to Winnipeg, where shooting began in summer and ended with an October blizzard, and where she caught COVID-19 — “Weirdly, I’ve been to a million Comic-Cons … and not a mask or a vaccine in sight and I get it in Winnipeg” — and that was the chance to play an interesting female character over 50.

“A woman of my age, it’s very rare to see one that’s kind of sexy, vibrant, trying something new and, you know, chomping at life, and I think it’s really important and it’s too rare,” Thompson said. “So I just want to say bravo to CTV for making that happen.”

She believes viewers will enjoy “The Spencer Sisters” because people love mysteries, and this one is “comforting. It’s fun. It’s light, but it’s also emotional … I think you can tell we really like each other and that there’s a deep chemistry, and I think that’s really fun to watch, too.”

(The “Sisters” part of the title is a bit of a gag since characters repeatedly mistake the mother and daughter for siblings. Thompson and Farber joked they wanted to call it “Two nosy Redheads.”)

And, by the way, Farber did eventually see “Back to the Future,” on a plane to London after production wrapped on “The Spencer Sisters.”

“I understand why people come up to you constantly, or when guest actors would come to our set and, like, have a little freakout at the opportunity to work with her,” she told Thompson. “Because it’s such an amazing performance. And you deserve all of the praise and fame that has come from it.”

Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo

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