As Playback counts down to the end of the year, we’re rolling out our Best Of stories from our Winter 2012 issue. Playback’s director of the year Jeremy Podeswa has helmed episodes of top-rated, edgy U.S. dramas and major Canadian copros, including Homeland, Boardwalk Empire and The Borgias. Read on for more on his journey towards becoming “U.S. cable-approved.”

Director of the year: Jeremy Podeswa

Homeland, American Horror Story: Asylum, The Newsroom, Boardwalk Empire, The Borgias, Camelot. With recent or upcoming directorial credits on episodes of these household-name status U.S. shows and major Canadian coproductions, Jeremy Podeswa was certainly on a roll in 2012.

In addition to soon taking the helm on episodes of the next season of HBO hit The Newsroom and FX’s American Horror Story: Asylum, the director says he’s keen to get more work that’s close to Los Angeles, where Podeswa primarily works, even though he still calls Toronto home.

While he’s spending most of his days currently working south of the border, Podeswa, who earlier this fall nabbed a Directors Guild of Canada award for best direction for The Borgias‘ episode Death on a Pale Horse, remains a close follower of industry developments back home. That arms-length distance perhaps allows him to critique the overall approach to growth the Canadian industry is pursuing.

While he applauds efforts by the industry to become ever more business oriented, he cautions that emulating the Hollywood model is misguided, since the U.S. industry is so many times larger and private funders much more plentiful, whereas the Canadian system remains dependent on public funds. “Our industry should not simply be an entertainment factory. It has a cultural mandate and does not have to always be as populist. There are virtues in creating culture and not just blockbusters,” he says.

To up-and-coming Canadian directors who may want to follow his Hollywood trail, he recommends that they remain true to themselves. “Everyone has to carve their own path,” adding that it’s a career misstep to be conformist. He says producers at marquee channels like HBO and Showtime “are looking for strong creative vision, and uniqueness and distinctiveness are what is valued.”

“That’s the biggest thing I could impart to someone: trust your own gut and your own sensibility as much as you can,” he says.

So how does a Canadian film director become a much-sought-after Hollywood TV director? Podeswa, who studied film at Ryerson and afterwards attended the American Film Institute in L.A., credits his success to two breaks, both of which occurred within a matter of months. The first came after his 1999 feature film, The Five Senses, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight. Alan Poul, an executive producer and director of Six Feet Under who now executive produces The Newsroom, saw the film and had also read the script as a member of the selection committee when it was submitted to the Sundance screenwriter’s lab.

Later, they met and chatted at the Toronto International Film Festival where The Five Senses was screened.

In the mean time, his second break came in 2001 with the meeting of producer Sheila Hockin, who tapped him to work with her on Showtime’s Queer As Folk, for which Toronto stood in for Pittsburgh. “That became my first American TV show,” he says, noting that as recently as 2001 “it was a rarity for Canadians to get U.S. work shot in Canada.”

He soon also landed an episode directing gig on Six Feet Under.

Podeswa was then, as he calls it now, “U.S. cable approved” and worked on Queer as Folk for four seasons and Six Feet Under for five.

From there he went on to work with Hockin on the Canadian multi-national coproductions The Borgias and The Tudors.

Podeswa is repped by Untitled Entertainment and the Creative Artists Agency stateside, and Green Light Artist Management in Canada.

Photo: Podeswa (left) on the set of a Homeland second season shoot, with DOP Nelson Cragg and B camera operator Bob Newcomb. By Kent Smith/Showtime.