Heartland writers/executive creative consultants Leila Basen and David Preston

Leila Basen

1. In film school at York University, some guy paid me to appear topless in his student film about massage parlors on the Yonge Street Strip. He either paid me five hundred dollars or fifty bucks, I can't remember. But it seemed like a lot at the time. Anyway, I took the money and took off my shirt.

2. While deep in the throes of domestic hell, instead of going to therapy, I became a standup comic in clubs around Montreal.

3. When I was five, my father bought me a pony named Lemon Meringue. I am still that horse-crazy girl who has so far owned seven horses and counting.

David Preston

1. In Grade 10, my friend Rob Harvey and I became the first boys in the history of our high school to take typing. We thought it would be a good way to meet girls. A dozen or so years later, I got my first actual paying job in the Canadian film and television industry... typing someone else's script.

2. I once played a singing cowboy in a film and wore a Nudie suit.

3. According to IMDb, an Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode I wrote about a kid who didn't know he was dead was the inspiration for M. Night Shyamalan's movie The Sixth Sense.