There’s a particular kind of erasure Canada specializes in. Quieter than the American kind. Less photogenic. But no less ruthless. In 1988, Ben Johnson won the 100-metre sprint at the Seoul Olympics in a time so fast it seemed inhuman, because, as the world soon learned, it was. Within days, the gold medal was gone. So was the Canadian passport, at least symbolically. The sprinter from Scarborough became “the Jamaican” overnight. A nation toggled its pride into shame with devastating efficiency.

Decades later, Shamier Anderson—actor, producer, and another Jamaican Canadian kid from Scarborough—wants to complicate that story. Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story, a six-part satirical mockumentary premiering March 26 on GameTV (and March 27 on Paramount+ in Canada), is part cultural reckoning, part absurdist comedy, and entirely unafraid.

“It’s a chocolate-covered vitamin,” Anderson says of the series. “Easily digestible for folks that can’t handle the heat.”

And make no mistake, behind the laughs, the heat is very much there.

{https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWB1iR2jTbl/}

A story that felt like home

Anderson was already a recognizable face in Hollywood — Bruiser, John Wick: Chapter 4, Stowaway — when the call came in for Hate the Player. What made him say yes wasn’t the role. It was the familiarity. “Most roles I’ve played in my career are so far from who I am, where I’m from, and my upbringing,” he says. “This is the one story that felt very familiar.”

But familiar didn’t mean easy. He had six to eight weeks from offer to camera. He worked with trainer Derwin Phillips and Stealth Health to physically transform. He wallpapered his dressing room with Post-it® notes and diagrams, obsessively anchoring himself in the humanity of a character the world had reduced to a punchline.

What he didn’t do was conduct a formal interview with Johnson. Instead, 48 hours before shooting began, Anderson invited Johnson to his mother’s house in Scarborough for dinner. Curry goat. Rice and peas. Oxtail. His aunts didn’t know the guest was coming. Andrew Bachelor (who plays Carl Lewis) was there. It was, Anderson says, “a family affair.”

“I didn’t want to feel like it was an investigative piece. I wanted to meet the man, the human.” He pauses. “It felt like I was shooting the shit with my uncle.”

Power, on purpose

That instinct, to lead with kinship rather than extraction, runs through the entire production. Anderson didn’t just star in the show. He negotiated executive-producer credit before he agreed to sign on. Even one of his own representatives reportedly didn’t understand why. He didn’t need them to.

“I’m the Jamaican guy from Scarborough who’s on the box,” he says plainly. “If this thing goes left or right, chances are they’re gonna look to me.”

His production company, Bay Mill Studios, partnered with New Metric Media for a Black powerhouse creative team. The showrunner is Anthony Hugh Farrell who used to write for The Office, and the director Corey Bowles - you may remember from Trailer Park Boys and as the director of Black Cop. And Ben Johnson himself was part of the decision-making process, his co-sign allowing the team to confidently calibrate the absurdity of some of the scenes. Having Johnson’s blessing wasn’t the point. Having real authority over the storytelling was. 

{https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVbv1jECbtW/}

The most unexpected collaborator on set? His mother

She served as Shamier’s cultural acting coach, not for scene mechanics, but for specificity. The Jamaican dialect. The community texture. The particular emotional posture of a Jamaican Canadian man of Ben Johnson’s generation. She is roughly the same age as Johnson; she grew up in the same world. Every morning of production, she sent voice notes. She came to set and altered his performance in real time.

“I’ve never had a moment with my mom in this capacity,” Anderson says, still sounding slightly amazed by it. “But it was fluid. It was organic. She really took my character to the next level.”

It’s evidence of what’s at stake when stories like Ben Johnson’s are made without the people closest to them. 

A win. And a warning

Hate the Player arrives at a moment when Black Canadian stories are being told, but still far too rarely, and far too often underfunded. Anderson is acutely aware of the pattern. This project nearly collapsed. It was made quickly and with limited resources. He sees it as a win — “a check mark” — but also as a question: what comes next?

“It can’t just be one a year. One every two years. One every three years,” he says. “We need to allocate the same level of commitment and resources to these stories in order for them to have permanence.”

For the generation that only knows Ben Johnson as a cautionary tale, or worse, as a trivia answer, Anderson has a direct message: understand him. Not just what happened in Seoul. Why he is who he is. What it costs a Black man to carry a nation’s ambition on his body and then be abandoned by that same nation the moment the story becomes inconvenient.

“This man has a beating heart and a brain and feelings,” Anderson says quietly. “He was put through the wringer.” 

Anderson is alluding to the fact that Johnson was crucified for what’s now known as the “dirtiest race in history,” given that only one of the top five finishers ended their careers without testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs at some point in their career. 

Hate the Player is an attempt to give him something back. Whether Canada is ready to receive it, that’s a different race entirely.

Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story premieres on GameTV on March 26, 2026, with new episodes streaming weekly on Paramount+ Canada starting March 27.