If landing a role in Score! A Hockey Musical has gone to Allie MacDonald’s head, she didn’t show it at the Atlantic Canada premiere on Thursday night.
Stepping out of a limo with Canadian indie-pop icon Hawksley Workman, the Port Hawkesbury-born actress had hardly laid foot on the red carpet before running over to hug family and friends who came out to the premiere at Oxford Theatre.
“I got 30 hugs,” laughed the 21-year-old as the 30th Atlantic Film Festival kicked off. “It’s such an honour to open all these festivals across Canada, but to me, Halifax is so close to home that it’s the most important to me.”
MacDonald, who spends time in Halifax when not working in Toronto, said the circumstances around this particular homecoming felt almost dream-like.
“It’s a little surreal because I’m driving around in a limo seeing all old neighbourhood places,” she said.
MacDonald was joined by co-star Workman and Score! director Michael McGowan for the premiere. McGowan joked the idea for a hockey musical came to him while he was drunk one night.
“I wanted to do a musical for about five years, and thought of this ridiculous idea of doing a hockey musical and just started writing a story around that,” he said.
The red carpet was filled with more than Toronto glitterati.
Premier Darrell Dexter walked the carpet in what he described as an “early Moore’s” original.
