Life has a way of throwing you curveballs. One day you’re up at the plate swinging away and knocking the stuffing out of fastballs, the next day Life throws you something you are not expecting. Sometimes you get a hit, sometimes you whif.

When I first met Luc Poirier about 16 years ago, he was operating a small tech company on the corner of Waldon Road and S. Main Street in downtown Clarkston. It was called Slick and Bubba’s Elite & Expeditious Websites. With a cleaned shaved head, he was Slick. Six years ago his company “merged” with another and soon his life changed. Today, Luc (we can’t call him Slick anymore) is all about acting.

He finished shooting for an upcoming television show, Street Legal. “It’s a fast-paced, roller coaster ride of Detroit crime, law enforcement and the legal system,” Luc said. “I play Detective Wolf, a seasoned cop whose troubles at home make him a difficult person at work. The long work days have complicated his relationship with the wife and kids so he takes things out on criminals and colleagues. Yeah, Detective Wolf is a smart mouthed jerk.”

Luc said when he was still just Slick he started to get website gigs for studio and production companies who were coming to Michigan to do films. “A big part of my job was meeting with and learning about the needs and goals of these companies, which ultimately lead to side opportunities to do small, on camera background work. Then it grew from there.”

Luc, 48 and his wife Michele have lived in the Clarkston area since 2000. He says Michele and their children Gabi, Joseph, CJ, Amber, Levi and Jazz have been supportive of his choice to pursue work in the entertainment industry.

He admits working in the entertainment industry is as glamorous as it seems.

“On a day where everything is on track and the actors know their lines and the equipment doesn’t break and the unicorns are frolicing with monarch butterflies in the adjoining meadow it’s a six to eight hour day,” he said. “Otherwise, 10 to 12 plus hour days are typical. Acting, in and of itself, is a job, so there is a little bit of glamor. However, there is a whole lot more grunt.”

When he started those small parts were considered “background” parts.

“As a background actor, it was my job to make movies and TV shows look and feel more authentic by playing non-speaking roles in the background, like a restaurant guest or someone walking in a park or whatever the scene called for, in order to make the primary actors—the ones with speaking parts—appear more genuine and believable in the foreground of the scene.”

He was also the longtime host of “Michigan Film News,” a weekly web series that talked about Michigan film industry news, casting alls and crew jobs and he’s made multiple appearances on TV One’s “Fatal Attraction,” a true crime reenactment series where he portrayed different detectives.

“I’ve even done sitcom pilots,” he said. “The Hardwood Diaries was one where I played an ex-football coach trying to build an amateur basketball team. It was critically acclaimed but right before the second episode was shot the creators had creative differences and the series died before it could score.”

Luc said with the Street Legal gig this was the first time he was able to film an entire season of a television series as a recurring character.

“It was tough work. We worked seven days a week. Monday through Friday on various sets either at the studio or around Michigan, then the next week’s script would come out and we’d have table reads Thursday and Friday nights after the filming concluded for the day. Saturdays were spent rehearsing because we were expected to be off book by the final Sunday rehearsal so we could get right to business first thing Monday morning. This process repeated every week, for every new episode, until the complete first season was done. It was very fast paced, the expectations were set very high but the results will speak for themselves,”

Filming was wrapped up in March, he said and it is currently in post production. He expects the show will be picked up and aired this fall.

“The first season of Street Legal is a mini-series with six episodes but if it gets renewed it will likely expand to 12 or 14 episodes a season. It’s slated for the Fall but with the writers’ strike going on it may get released sooner as content will be needed for networks and streaming platforms.”

In the meantime, he is busy with a local project.

“I’m producing a family-friendly, proof-of-concept comedy that was filmed at Clarkston United Methodist Church on May 26. We had actors from Clarkston and as far as Chicago work on this project, which is now in the post-production – or the edit-the-heck-out-of-it phase. For some of us it was a 20 hour day. The staff at CUMC were amazing and supportive.”

  don rush, don’t rush me, luc poirier