Five years ago, Cecilia Lee was standing on the other side of the camera, measuring focus marks and helping shape scenes from behind a monitor. Today, she’s flying helicopters across Northern Ontario in SkyMed, one of Canada’s fastest-rising TV dramas.
And, on this day, Lee sits down across from me at Balzac’s in the Distillery District to talk about her latest role and what’s next in her fast-rising career.
The Toronto actor stars in Season 4 of SkyMed, which premieres May 21 on Paramount Plus, as Maya Chang, a new pilot with “a little bit of a chip on her shoulder,” as Lee describes her, but also an unmistakable hunger for life.And for Lee—whose recent résumé also includes Fear Street: Prom Queen and the upcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy—the timing feels less accidental than inevitable.
Before working as an actor, and after going to school for acting in Toronto, Lee worked behind the camera as a focus puller, a highly technical role requiring precision and nerves steady enough to survive the chaos of a film set. She speaks about film production with the fluency of someone who understands exactly how difficult filmmaking really is, not just for actors, but for everyone involved.
“We are really as actors just a cog in a bigger machine,” she says. “We’re all working together to make something look good.”
There’s no mythology in the way Lee talks about acting. It’s open and honest. She approaches performance the way an athlete approaches her sport or a musician puts bow to string: disciplined, technical and requiring commitment.
Which makes sense, considering she has done all three at high levels.
Long before stepping in front of a camera, Lee spent years in competitive hockey, swimming, climbing, and formal classical music training. She studied piano to the Royal Conservatory’s ARCT level while also training in violin, viola, cello, and voice. Ask her whether that discipline translates into acting, and she answers like she’s considered it many times before.
“You learn a lot about putting your reps in,” she says. “And the mental fortitude it takes to become good at a very subjective art form.”
And before that, as a child, she loved the worlds created in iconic stories and films like The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Pirates of the Caribbean.
There’s no reinvention story with Lee. She’s the same person she has always been, evolving, yes, but staying grounded and dedicated to her craft whether as the athlete, a musician, a technician, or even a fantasy-obsessed kid practicing accents inspired by Keira Knightley after watching Pride & Prejudice.
Creative, but driven.
It’s a duality that explains her unusually fluid path through the industry.
The behind-the-camera years weren’t a detour so much as a serendipitous apprenticeship. She learned lenses, lighting, framing, crew dynamics—how stories are physically built. Returning to acting gave her an unusually holistic understanding of film life.
That understanding proved useful on SkyMed, which films amid the rugged landscapes surrounding North Bay, Ontario. The production shoots deep enough into Northern Ontario that cast and crew are basically sealed off from city life, creating the kind of intimacy unique to location work.
Lee arrived as one of several newcomers joining an already established ensemble cast—a dynamic that can easily resemble transferring into a high school halfway through the semester. But instead of getting shoved in a locker, she found warmth.
“It really just felt like we were immediately brought into the fold,” she says. “It was so lovely.”
She also discovered one of the fun perks of playing a television pilot: aviation training. Ahead of filming, Lee trained in a flight simulator and learned cockpit communications from a real pilot connected to the production.
“I felt very Tom Cruise,” she says, flashing a smile.
The role itself demanded more than technical preparation. Maya Chang enters the series carrying both confidence and defensiveness, traits Lee admires.
“She wants to live life to the fullest,” Lee says. “She’s not gonna let anybody keep her down.”
That spirit can be see in Lee herself.
Though her career is taking off toward that next Hollywood step so many young actors take, she has little interest in abandoning Toronto for sunny Los Angeles. She speaks about the city with affection. She loves the west-end nabes near her Swansea home, the green space, the lakefront, the vibe.
Her favourite Toronto spots are similarly split between late-night Chinatown staples like Juicy Dumpling and House of Gourmet, alongside big nights out at La Vecchia or the Peruvian-Japanese restaurant Chotto Matte near Union Station.
And, with the turn in the weather, she’s out exploring the city taking up new hobbies and activities, continuing to grow, not just for her burgeoning acting career but as a person. Always striving.
