With The Slack, Vanessa King is proving
New Brunswick can make world-class television and building momentum for a homegrown film industry.
Vanessa King wakes up most mornings in Smithtown to a wall of fog outside her window.
“I wake up and there’s fog in front of my house. It’s creepy… but beautiful,” she shares.
Most people would call that weather. Vanessa thinks of it as a genre.
Her new mini-series, The Slack, premiering February 5 on Bell Fibe, leans into that mood. Shot in St. Martins, Hampton and Smithtown, the series follows Mae, a natural resources protection officer recovering from a brain injury while trying to solve the disappearance of a fisherman. Mae can’t fully trust her memory. The mystery unfolds inside her head as much as it does on the water.
Vanessa co-wrote the script and then stepped into the director’s chair for the first time. The story is personal. Eleven years ago, she suffered a brain injury in a car accident, an experience that reshaped how she understands identity and perception.
“It not only changes who you are as a person, your personality actually changes, but your perception of the world around you also changes.”
“It not only changes who you are as a person, your personality actually changes, but your perception of the world around you also changes,” she explains. “You work on it, you do the exercises your neurologist tells you to do, and you get better. But you’ll be different. You’ll be changed.”
That reality became the emotional backbone of Mae’s character. Vanessa describes her as a faulty narrator. Unless something is written down, it’s gone. Memories arrive in flashes that don’t line up cleanly. Mae’s brain isn’t just part of the story. It’s one of the characters.
“People don’t talk enough about head injury,” Vanessa says. “It’s not something you just shake off. There’s so much more to it.”
The Slack follows Mae, a conservation officer with a brain injury trying to solve a disappearance she can’t fully remember.
The series was filmed over four days in October, an unusually tight shoot even by independent production standards. The turnaround to an early February release was faster still. Vanessa laughs about surviving post-production on protein shakes, but the speed came down to preparation and a local crew that ran like a machine. The entire team, aside from the composer, was New Brunswick talent.
“New Brunswickers are some of the hardest working people I’ve ever worked with in my entire life.”
Despite more than two decades working in film and television in New York City, directing was new territory. On the first day, the weight of that role hit her.
“It took me like half the day to settle into, ‘Oh… they’re not going to move on unless I say move on.’”
Professional actors were waiting for her call. The production stopped and started with her voice. For a moment, imposter syndrome crept in. Then instinct took over. The shoot finished early every single day.
The cast reads like a local all-star lineup. Saint John-raised actor Lenny Parker leads the series alongside Maestro Fresh Wes as police officer Tom, Clem McIntosh as fisherman Gillis and Fredericton performer Ryan Griffith rounds out the cast as Vaughn. Vanessa also slipped in quiet local touches, including a Hampton Brewing hoodie worn during a key scene — a nod to the trivia nights she still makes time for.
“We don’t have to move away.”
Vanessa spent 22 years in New York because there were no jobs for her here. Now she’s watching a wave of New Brunswick film professionals return home after building careers elsewhere. To her, that pattern is a shared hero’s journey.
“You start somewhere, you learn elsewhere, and then you come back and you bring what you’ve learned back to help grow the area where you’re from.”
She sees the province at a turning point. Film, she argues, isn’t a niche art scene. It’s an economic engine that feeds hotels, restaurants, transportation companies and small businesses. Nearly all of The Slack’s budget circulated through New Brunswick vendors and services. She’s even working with other local industry pros, including Steven Foster, to partner with NBCC and film unions on a new grip and lighting micro-credential program. The short, union-recognized course is designed to create a film-set-ready workforce and keep young technicians from needing to leave the province to find work.
The goal is simple: young creatives shouldn’t have to go elsewhere to build a career.
“We don’t have to move away.”
Vanessa wants New Brunswick to claim its own cinematic identity. If Iceland can have Nordic Noir, she believes the Fundy Coast deserves Maritime Noir — stories shaped by fog, isolation and the uneasy beauty of the shoreline.
“I want people to be jealous,” she says. “Look at what I get to wake up to every day.”
The Slack is a mystery series, but it’s also a signal. It shows what can be made here, by local crews, at a professional level that competes anywhere. Vanessa is already developing her next projects. The fog isn’t a backdrop she plans to leave behind.
The Slack is now streaming on Bell Fibe. You can watch the trailer online.