Drake Recalls Learning His Degrassi Character Would Be a School Shooting Victim

Drake’s time on Degrassi: The Next Generation is so much more than a footnote in a storied career.

As the actor-turned-rapper, billed as Aubrey Graham on the Canadian teen drama, reveals, he had to dive into emotional depths during his time playing Jimmy Brooks from 2001 to 2009. In the new documentary Degrassi: Whatever It Takes, currently screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, both Drake and Degrassi creator Linda Schuyler look back at “Time Stands Still,” the school shooting episode that changed Jimmy’s fate.

Schuyler explains that she began to consider the idea of incorporating a school shooting into the show after the shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. On that tragic day, two students opened fire on their classmates and teachers, killing 13 people and injuring 23 before turning their weapons on themselves.

At the time, the third series of the franchise, Degrassi High, had been off the air for nearly a decade and buzz was starting to build for a fourth series. Degrassi: The Next Generation debuted in 2001. The two-part episode, titled “Time Stands Still,” came in season 4, in 2004.

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“I didn’t know about the end of ‘Time Stands Still’ until I was in the read-through. Somebody told me to mentally prepare for today’s script, but they didn’t tell me there was going to be a shooting at the school and that it was me,” Drake, 38, says in the documentary.

“There was shock and sadness. We were holding hands and crying in the read-through. It was dark. It was intense.”

Ephraim Ellis, who played the shooter, says of his character, “Rick Murray was a really troubled young man. His peers start bullying him. He ends up coming back to school with a gun. I have always interpreted as taking his own life and taking as many people with him as he can.”

Schuyler recalls “a stillness to the cast and crew that day,” and adds that she herself “felt physically sick.”

Jake Epstein, who is also featured in the episode when his character, Craig, discovers Jimmy lying on the ground in the school hall, says, “There was a different energy than any other episode I’d been in.”

“It felt like the show lost its innocence. It was a scary storyline,” he adds.

Schuyler says that the heavy storyline was meant to demonstrate that “these things have consequences, and there’s nothing more visual than the consequence that we saw, as our star athlete spending the rest of his time at Degrassi in a wheelchair.”

It was hard for Drake to understand that Jimmy’s entire character would be altered moving forward.

“My question was ‘What now? I don’t want to spend the rest of my years in a wheelchair. I want to be with everyone else, what do you mean?’ Unfortunately, that’s not how life goes,” he says.

Archival footage shows the actor discussing how he spent time with a teen in a wheelchair to understand the struggles they faced.

“I think that was why I think that show’s so good, because life is f—ed up and they weren’t afraid to let you know that,” he acknowledges.

“A lot more went into playing Jimmy after I got shot, for sure. It gave me something to study. It gave me homework.”

Produced by WildBrain and Peacock Alley Entertainment, Degrassi: Whatever It Takes is screening at the Toronto International Film Festival through Sept. 14 as part of TIFF’s 50th edition.