Q with Tom Power CBC Arts & Entertainment

The Canadian actor Tonya Williams spent two decades playing Dr. Olivia Winters on “The Young and the Restless,” which made her one of the first Black actors to star on a soap opera. In 2001, she founded the Reelworld Film Festival to lift up other racialized actors and filmmakers. Now, she’s being honoured with the Changemaker Award from the Canadian Screen Awards in recognition of her barrier-breaking work. Tonya joins Tom to look back on her career, the festival, and how playing a doctor on TV leads to a lot of oversharing from fans.

Tom’s conversation with Mick Jagger has won gold for best interview at this year’s New York Festivals Radio Awards! The Rolling Stones frontman sat down with Tom in London last year ahead of the release of “Hackney Diamonds” — the band’s first album of original material in 18 years. Mick reflects on six decades of the Stones, the changing music industry, and the loss of their drummer, Charlie Watts.

Fred Nguyen Khan is a trilingual actor and stunt performer from Montreal who’s been studying martial arts since he was four. That resume helped him beat out countless actors in a worldwide casting call for his latest role on the new HBO miniseries “The Sympathizer,” which is based on the Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name. Fred talks to Tom about the series, shooting fight scenes with a legendary action director, and mastering kung-fu at the Shaolin Temple in China.

After three decades, the Canadian pop-punk band Sum 41 is calling it quits. But when frontman Deryck Whibley started writing the group’s latest album, “Heaven :x: Hell,” he didn’t realize it would be their last. He joins Tom to explain how the writing process helped him reach a decision he’s been debating for years, and how he told the band he was ending things.

Leanne Toshiko Simpson is looking at romantic comedy through a new lens. The fourth-generation Japanese Canadian writer has just released her debut novel, “Never Been Better,” which tells a love story set at a psychiatric facility. Leanne lives with bipolar disorder and has spent time in a psych ward herself. She joins Tom to tell us why she wanted to use the rom-com format to talk about mental illness.

Alex Garland’s latest film “Civil War” is unsettling even in its premise — maybe because of how real it feels. Set in a dystopian future America, the film follows a team of journalists who travel across the country during a rapidly escalating second American civil war. Alex joins Tom in studio for a conversation about his feelings on journalism and media, what inspired the film, and why it’s not just a warning about conflict, but the loss of a collective truth.

Plus, the Canadian medical drama “Transplant” became a surprise hit during the pandemic that completely changed the life of its star, Hamza Haq. On the heels of the series finale, Hamza talks to Tom about his groundbreaking character, saying goodbye to the show, and his latest film “With Love and a Major Organ.”