Kenji Maeda

Endgame is a new TV series airing on Showcase here in Canada. It stars many wonderful actors. In the image below, from left to right: Katharine Isabelle, Melanie Papalia, Patrick Gallagher, Shawn Doyle, Carmen Aguirre, and Torrance Coombs.

A chess grandmaster becomes a master detective in Showcase’s new original drama Endgame. Premiering Monday, March 14th at 10pm ET/PT, Endgame stars Shawn Doyle (Big Love, Lost), as the former World Chess Champion Arkady Balagan. After witnessing the murder of his fiancée, Balagan develops a debilitating case of agoraphobia. Unable to leave his hotel and running out of money, the arrogant and charismatic Russian inadvertently becomes a detective – using his fierce analytical skills to solve the crimes that baffle others.

Balagan relies on friends and hotel employees to do his legwork; from conducting interviews and trailing suspects to bringing back clues. Balagan then uses his strategic thinking to stage imaginative, and often amusing, reenactments in his own mind-until he finds the solution.

I had the great opportunity to work on this show’s second episode, entitled Turkish Hold’em (originally aired March 21 2011), working alongside some great actors.  My character, Chi Tang, is a math genius who gets involved with a high stakes poker game in one of the hotel suites.

Thus far I’ve seen the first two episodes and I truly feel that it’s a beautifully shot show and I really like the characters and how the story is told.  I’ll continue watching for sure.

Will my character ever come back in future episodes? Fingers crossed. ;-)

Check out their IMDB page for more details about this show and episode. Endgame also has a great website where you can stream the episodes online and check out their online interactive episode.

Other great poker playing actors I had the privilege of working with in our scene were:
April Telek (Twitter | IMDB), Zachary Throne (IMDB), Edward Foy (IMDB), and Harvey Gold (IMDB).

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Wicked! I just found the Kohl’s Department commercial I did back in 2003.

It was one of the first commercials I shot and it was short and sweet. We filmed at a house just off of Cambie & 49th in Vancouver. It was during the summer so it was interesting to see Christmas lights fill the lawn of the house we were using as well as the neighbours across the street.

The song used in the commercial is “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Grammy Award winning duo Captain and Tennille. Much like the famous variety show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour which aired in the early 1970s, Captain and Tennille also had a variety show on the ABC network during the 1976-77 season.

Watch the commercial below. You’ll see me at the 17 second mark, standing right next to the real life Captain and Tennille. Granted, I didn’t really know who they were when I met them, but they were super nice.

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Upcoming on Untold Stories of the ER

November 7, 2010
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Back in September of this year I had filmed two episodes of the show, Untold Stories of the ER which airs on The Learning Channel (TLC), a subsidiary of Discovery Channel.  We were filming the 5th season of the show here in Vancouver (specifically in Coquitlam’s Riverview Hospital, a BC Mental Health & Addiction facility.) [...]

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Dancing with Boca del Lupo

March 2, 2010
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Over the past couple months I’ve been busy working with Boca del Lupo, a theatre company here in Vancouver. It’s been a great experience meeting new people – artsy and creative people. I had the distinct pleasure to meet Jay Dodge and Sherry J Yoon, Artistic Producer and Artistic Director, respectively, of Boca back on [...]

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DJ Earworm and His Mashup Goodness

January 7, 2010

This video has been viewed just under 4.5 million times as I just checked and it’s definitely one of my favourite videos lately. DJ Earworm does a mashup of the Billboard Top 25 hits of 2009 and I enjoy it immensely. For those of you who don’t know what a Mashup is, essentially when you [...]

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Welcome To My New Site

January 3, 2010
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Welcome to the new KenjiMaeda.com website. It’s been, I think about 5 or 6 years since this site has shown anything but the “under construction” page. I knew I couldn’t put my previous site up even though I loved (and still do) the design but my needs and the purpose has changed. So here I [...]

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