[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
Thursday night, Hallmark Mystery kicks off its inaugural Miracles of Christmas lineup as the new network, and first up, Alison Sweeney and Niall Matter star in This Time Each Year, a holiday-timed drama about a fractured family that mends itself under the initial guise of a ruse. Produced by Sweeney, written by her Hannah Swensen co-star, Juliana Wimbles, and directed by Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe, the film follows the story of Lauren and Kevin, an estranged couple still navigating the fallout from a DUI-instigated suspended license that pushed them into a separation.
Now, a year later, they’re co-parenting their young son, Charlie (Ezra Wilson) as the holidays approach, and forced to look at the progress they haven’t made in repairing their relationship when her mom, Janet (Laura Soltis), descends upon them with little notice, and hasn’t been told of their current status. To ease a short stay and avoid awkward, overdue conversations, they pretend to still be happily married. And then she doesn’t leave and they have to explain themselves.
Meanwhile, his boisterous family, parents Patricia (Colleen Wheeler) and Joseph (Dean Paul Gibson) and brother Bart (Victor Zinck, Jr.), are all in on the holidays per usual and still welcoming Lauren as family while also somewhat skating over the simmering unspoken things of Alex’s sobriety.
Earlier this month, I spoke with Sweeney about the project, a labor of love that she says is now her favorite of all 30 films she’s done for Hallmark Media, dethroning her longtime favorite, The Irresistible Blueberry Farm. “I’ve been developing it for over two years. And I would never have thought that for all the low moments as we thought it would never get made, that it would become my favorite,” she shares.
“It was this brilliant script that I absolutely loved written by a wonderful man named Michael [Christopher]. And it’s a long road to get [from a script] to a Hallmark movie. There were a lot of complicated political things that happened in our industry that slowed down our process. So finally here we are in the middle of the summer, able to shoot a Christmas movie and I’m thinking, ‘I spent two years trying to make this happen in the winter.”
“When it all came around, Juliana wrote the script and I’ve been producing it from the beginning. She and I worked hand in hand to bring it to what Hallmark wanted and the story we wanted to tell and honoring the heart of this story, which is about a man who is trying to stay sober and earn his license back.”
“We wanted to tackle what is a pretty serious and difficult subject that people really struggle with, and especially at the holidays. People always say how hard the holidays are to stay sober. And so we wanted to handle that issue, but delicately and with kindness and love and with the Hallmark heart that all the Hallmark movies have. It was just a balance to tell that story.”
The film is careful about the language around what happened to make Alex lose his license, and we never hear the specifics of what transpired. Sweeney says that was somewhat a conscious choice in the Hallmark of it all.
“I do still think it’s Christmas for the audience and I didn’t want to overwhelm people. Hallmark is expanding the stories they wanna tell, but I wanted to do it in a way that didn’t shock people. I think especially in families like that, and part of their story and their struggle, like when he has that talk with his dad at the hospital is … I relate to this on so many levels with my own family, but this is a family that uses euphemism,” she shares.
“And especially something difficult to talk about, something that’s hard, you find ways around saying it. You don’t wanna say that to your mom. That would be a hard thing to admit. I think that’s part of who they are as people … they dance around these topics. He’s the only one who says, ‘I’m sober and I made mistakes,’ while everyone else tries to use expressions and other ways to talk about it.”
The film intertwines that narrative with the family story of Lauren’s complex relationship with her mom, whose bon mots to her as a young girl were more damaging than she realized, and Alex’s relationship with his parents and brother, as well as the love story of a couple trying to figure out if they want to let their marriage go or do the work to repair it.
“We wanted to tell a real story about a family and how parents and generational relationships affect who you are as a person. My character, Lauren, is the way she is and struggles the way she does in some ways because her mom is the kind of person who takes a Christmas cruise that gets canceled,” she explains.
“It’s part and parcel. And then to see those relationships grow and change through the course of the movie and see two characters really take ownership of the mistakes they’ve made in the past, and they’re not gonna do that anymore, I thought was really beautiful and important and something people could relate to.”
“Then [there’s] also the heart and the fun of the McCall family. They are just a family I would wanna be with at Christmas. I fell in love with the whole family and their dynamic. And the brother relationship … Crystal looked at me and said, ‘You really like that sibling relationship, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes. I have a great relationship with my brothers and I love watching brothers interact in that way, so that is a precious relationship to me. And I really enjoyed letting that shine in this movie.”
“And then of course the romance. I think it’s a super romantic movie, even though they are already married. Recommitting to each other, finding their way back to each other, believing in their love and working through it is a beautiful message.” Sweeney isn’t kidding about the romance – look for a swoony date night dance scene that she says was all Lowe’s doing.
While Sweeney and Matter are Hallmark staples, their paths hadn’t yet crossed on a project, and when he was pitched to join her here, it was a little scary to invite him into something she’d invested so much time, energy, and heart in. “Niall and I had never worked together. We knew each other through the Hallmark family, but not well, so I was nervous about it,” she admits.
“My Hallmark executive [Jennifer Kramer] recommended him as the right guy for the role and told me, ‘You gotta meet him.’ I told her, ‘I trust you. It’s just, I’ve been on this project for so long.'” I was nervous about any guy and wondering, ‘How’s this gonna go?’ And the minute I met him, I was like, ‘Oh, this is perfect. This is amazing.’ And he brought so much to the role and just such heart and compassion and his willingness to jump in.”
The credits sequence is a fun Christmas cards through the years sequence that Sweeney says was Lowe’s idea, and it helped her and Matter find their rhythm. “I just thought that was so brilliant. We did it the first day and it gave Niall and I a chance to get to know each other, to be funny, to fall in love, in the arc of the story,” she recalls.
“And then after we were done filming that, Crystal and Niall and I spent like six hours going over the entire script and working through it, talking about how the scenes are gonna go, listening to her explain her vision for each thing. He went from, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be in a Christmas movie,’ to us doing this master class and ripping apart the script, making it our own, and pulling out all the gems from it.”
“And it just turned into something bigger than any of us anticipated in a way that was so special. And just personally when I watch the movie, I hope the audience feels our passion for it, too.”
This Time Each Year premieres Thursday, October 24th, and 8 pm/7c on Hallmark Mystery and streaming on various outlets in the US. Here are a few sneak peeks. [Update 12/22/24: the film is now streaming on Hallmark+.]
Photos courtesy of Lighthouse Productions/Hallmark Media. Video courtesy of Hallmark Media.
