Winnipeg fans of a Canadian classic television franchise will have the opportunity to watch the movie that saw high school end with heartbreak along two of the original stars of Degressi High Saturday.

Stacie Mistysyn and Pat Mastroianni, who played Caitlin Ryan and Joey Jeremiah on Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High, are in Winnipeg to watch School’s Out, the feature film that aired on television after the series ended and told the story of what happened after graduation.

The movie will screen twice on Saturday. As of Friday evening, there are still tickets left to the matinee showing, and Mastroianni told CTV’s Colleen Bready they’re thrilled to be on tour with the film.

“It allows us a chance to say thank you to our fans,” said Mastroianni. “We didn’t have that opportunity back in the 80s and 90s, because there was no social media. There was no Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. And now we actually get to walk up to them, shake their hands, take a photo with them, give them an autograph.

“And this evening that we’re going to have at The Park showing School’s Out is a celebration of that, and it allows us to say thank you and connect with them on a personal level.”

Degrassi is well known for breaking ground as a series that saw young people dealing with issues like pregnancy, drug use and suicide.

Mistysyn said while they were aware of the importance of the subject matter, the impact exploring it would have wasn’t obvious.

“I think at the time we knew we were hitting on some pretty heavy stuff, some very serious stuff, and we definitely wanted to make sure we were telling the stories properly. I don’t know if we had any inkling into how significant it was until after the fact,” she said.

“They wanted to make it like real life. And not everybody lives happily ever after, and, like true life, we all went off in our different directions.”

“And things don’t wrap up in a nice little bow, like most people wanted,” said Mastroianni. “Everybody wanted to see Caitlin and Joey come together at the end of School’s Out. And our head writer recently said publically that that was never going to happen.”

Mastroianni said there are reasons why fans love to go back to the original series, decades later.

“I just think it’s great that we can still have these gatherings with our fans and meet them and just remember back to a time when we lived in this analog world, where things seemed simpler, maybe. But for some of us, it wasn’t.”

You can watch the full interview with Stacie Mistysyn and Pat Mastroianni and CTV’s Colleen Bready above.