Meet David Webster, the rising Canadian talent starring alongside Russell Crowe and Jacob Tremblay in Netflix’s Unabomber. Following standout roles in Hallmark’s The Way Home and Netflix’s Luckiest Girl Alive, this dynamic actor-screenwriter is quickly becoming one of the industry’s most versatile names to watch.
You’ve been working professionally since you were 12. What’s something about being a working actor that you completely misunderstood when you were a kid?
Something I definitely misunderstood as a kid was that it would always be really easy. I was initially very shocked by how well taken care of actors are on set, and figured it was a very easy job because of this. While those things are still true, and it certainly isn’t working on an oil rig, it can be VERY emotionally draining.
It’s not a job you can clock into and go through the motions, you have to be “on” and present all the time. That’s not even mentioning scenes that are distressing, which can nuke your energy and mental state for the rest of the day depending.
You’ve been on sets with people who have decades more experience than you. Was there ever a moment where you deliberately stayed quiet and watched how someone worked because you knew you were witnessing a masterclass?
While working on the second season of The Way Home, I was shadowing the showrunners and able to witness much of the 1800s material of that show. During my time watching, I watched Chyler Leigh put on one of the most impressive performances I’ve seen over the course of the season.
Her grit and tenacity with that material is largely what brought me to realise how challenging this business can be and gave me loads more respect for my profession.
You started writing at 15. What were you writing about at 15 that you’d be embarrassed for people to read now?
When I started writing at 15, I wrote the first of a five season historical drama set during the opening months of the First World War. Totalling 13 episodes and over a thousand pages, there are certainly parts in there which very much reflect that they were written by a 15 year old and I’d rather not see the light of day. With that being said, I’m always a little pleasantly surprised coming back to it.
As an adult now I’m altering the idea into something more palatable and will hopefully have something new to share about it someday.
There’s an interesting tension in your career: you’re building a life in front of the camera while also creating behind it. Which side do you think ultimately has more of your personality in it?
I think that my writing demonstrates who I am creatively more than my acting work because it’s entirely my own vision and world being brought to life, but with that being said, I often tend to want to tell stories that I’d like to see rather than stories that represent who I am (at least on a surface level).
What you see when I’m acting I think is more akin to different parts of myself that I’m leaning into and making into the performance.
What’s a part of yourself that you’ve accidentally discovered through playing other people?
In my normal life I’m not a crier. It’s just not a thing that I do really even if really awful things are happening. However, I worked VERY hard on The Way Home S2 to bring myself to a place where I could be free enough to let it happen and managed to get there eventually. I now know that I can take myself to that place if need be.
What would 12-year-old David think of the career you’ve built so far?
I think this is an important question to ask for any working actor. It’s easy to be hard on oneself while building a career, so it’s very important to look back at where you started and what you might have considered to be success at the time. With that in mind, I think I have definitely satisfied what 12 year old me would have wanted, and then some!
Title photo credit: Denise Grant
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