Final day of shooting Diggstown 'very emotional,' says creator

The creator of the CBC show Diggstown says it wasn't difficult to decide to end the show after four seasons, but it didn't make saying goodbye to the cast and crew any less emotional. 

Floyd Kane's made-in-Atlantic-Canada legal drama premiered in 2018, and has tackled everything from a lack of diversity in surfing to birth alerts and land titles issues. The show finale will air on Nov. 16.

Diggstown follows a successful corporate lawyer — Marcy Diggs, played by Vinessa Antoine — who changes her career and decides to work at a legal aid office in Dartmouth.

Kane, the show's creator, showrunner and executive producer, spoke with Information Morning host Portia Clark about the past four seasons and what's next. 

Their conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You can listen to the full interview here:

Floyd Kane talks about the final season of Diggstown

2 years ago

Duration 5:34

Diggstown, the CBC television series filmed in Atlantic Canada, is in its fourth and final year. Floyd Kane, Diggstown's creator, says the hardest part of the series coming to an end will be saying goodbye to the cast and crew. He says he's proud the show has addressed important issues in the legal system and broken new ground in other areas.

I'm wondering how you feel even hearing me say that this will be the last season?

I haven't really processed the whole idea of it being the final season yet, to be honest. We're still in the process of making the show so …I'm going to miss the annual getting together with the cast and obviously coming home and spending four months in the Maritimes making the show.

Was it difficult to make the decision even if you're not really focusing on that right now?

No. I feel like as a writer, I like the idea of wanting to do other things and Diggstown [takes up] my year. You know, we start writing in February and we finish posting the show in November so it doesn't leave a lot of time for me to do other things. 

You've been with the same group of people who are part of the cast, and many of the crew for these four years, what's been the response from them?

It's been very emotional. The last day of the shoot was incredibly emotional. There was this weird energy ... We actually had the whole Diggs family, all the actors who play [Vinessa Antoine's] parents and her sister were all there on the last day of shooting, and we ended up wrapping Vinessa in the middle of the day. We were shooting it in my best friend's house out in Musquodoboit Harbour, so just the energy was very emotional. A lot of tears.

When you look back at the last four seasons, I mean, you've broken ground in so many different ways with this show. What stands out for you as what you're most proud of?

I'm most proud of the fact that the show allowed people who hadn't been in the industry before — or who hadn't been in the industry in the way that they knew they could — actually have an opportunity to participate and actually achieve those goals and take their careers to the next level.

Specifically, I'm talking about directors like Sharon Lewis or Cory Bowles, who hadn't directed an episode of prime time TV and who are now working on Law & Order and other shows in the US. People who never had the chance to work in a hair department, who are now running hair departments. That's the thing that I'm really proud of in terms of the show. 

There were challenges with getting crews together, I gather. Can you tell us about some of those and why the show eventually, for this last season, was mainly filmed in P.E.I.?

When we came back to Halifax to shoot Diggstown in season one, like we were the only show. We had a clear runway in terms of being able to access crew. And by the time we got to season three, I just remember thinking like, wow there are four shows here. And we're losing crew in the middle, like in the last two weeks of our show, to go work on another show.

This season was extremely challenging, but artistically I think this season really stands up.- Floyd Kane, creator of

I've got to figure out a way to lock down the people who are working on our show and figure out how we can do this. And, you know, we'd gone to Charlottetown to shoot for one day during season three and after having a lot of conversations we decided, OK well, let's create a story that will play across the four Atlantic provinces and we'll kind of split the shoot between P.E.I. and Nova Scotia.

I will say this season was extremely challenging, but artistically I think this season really stands up. Like last night's episode, the season premiere, I am extremely happy with … and I think these episodes just keep getting better as we get towards the finale ... I had always decided I wanted to direct the last episode of the show regardless of when it  happened. And I just think the way that we ended the show was perfect. 

Do you have a sense of where you'll be moving next and what stories we can look forward to hearing from you next?

I love the legal genre, so I'm busy developing a new legal show, which I'm really excited about. I'm also working on a cop show that I've been developing so I'm hoping that we get a chance to tell that story.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.