Don't tell anyone on the West Coast, but returning to Toronto felt completely natural for Erin Karpluk.
"I'm based out of Vancouver, so flying over the CN Tower, it was like coming home," Karpluk admits.
The diminutive redhead was returning to Hogtown to film the second season of Being Erica, the hit CBC comedy that has made Karpluk a Canadian celebrity. Viewers loved the show's unique premise – an insecure young woman enters magical therapy that sends her back in time to fix past mistakes – and, last month, Being Erica was awarded with an impressive nine Gemini nominations, including Best Dramatic Series and a Best Performance nod for Karpluk herself.
"I'm really excited. I’m so happy the show got nominated," the 30-year-old actress gushes. "What's great about that is that people are responding to the show, and I'm just happy that people take something away from the show."
But despite the show's success, the Being Erica writers realized that their titular character had evolved to the point that repeating the first season's formula wasn't an option. While Erica will still feature plenty of time travel, Season 2 focuses more on the mysterious Dr. Tom, how this unusual therapy works and whether there's any other magic to be found around Toronto.
"You don't want to see Erica, episode after episode, in the same predicament of going back and solving her past problem. Erica, in Season 2, she's a little bit more evolved, not only in her time travel but what she’s taken from that, personally," Karpluk explains. "It seems like they've upped the ante a little bit. Instead of saying, 'We've got a good thing going; let's keep doing this,' they're saying, 'How can we make it better?'"
This is good news to the show's critics, some of whom found Erica overly judgmental in Season 1.
"Maybe in certain situations," Karpluk admits reluctantly. "But the reason I'm drawn to the character is that I find that she really does see the best things in people and in life, and wants the best for her life. If she were a perfect character, she'd be very boring; I like that she's awkward and underachieving and she's stubborn and vulnerable. She's a big rainbow of neuroses."
Of course, most other Being Erica viewers found the character's neuroses part of her charm, and Karpluk is frequently approached by fans eager to reveal very personal regrets of their own.
"I've had people come up and say, 'I wish I knew who my biological parents were,'" says Karpluk. "And I'm just an actor; I'm not a Dr. Tom. I can only listen. But I'm not tired of people coming up to me and giving comments on the show; it's fascinating for me to see the different types of people responding to it."
However, it can get a little tiring for Karpluk to be asked, over and over again, what her biggest regret is.
"It's a natural question to asked, given the nature of the show, and of course there are things I would redo," she says. "But some of the regrets Erica deals with are very personal and awkward, and if I think about my own personal and awkward mistakes, there's no way I'm going to tell everyone about it."
Suddenly, Karpluk blushes; in a hushed voice, she reveals that there's something she might regret once the second season of Being Erica has aired.
"For some reason, in Season 2, there's a lot of singing and dancing," she says, embarrassed. "For my part in that, I apologize to Canada in advance."
Season 2 of Being Erica premieres Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 9 p.m. on CBC.
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