[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
Thursday night on Hallmark Mystery, Alison Sweeney is back for her 11th outing as Hannah Swensen in Reality Bites. Adapted by Sweeney from Joanne Fluke’s “The Blueberry Muffin Murder” and directed by Kevin Leslie, the film finds Hannah’s shiny new cafe turned into a crime scene after a visiting celebrity baking show lands in Lake Eden to shoot an episode and the producer winds up dead.
Last week, I chatted with Sweeney about the project. She hadn’t set out to write this one, but when she was the de facto choice, she was excited to do it. “Everyone looked at me in the room when it was time to pick a writer. And I said, ‘Oh, okay. I’ll do it again,'” she laughs.
“I don’t want to force it on my producing partner or the network or everyone else because I feel I’m not objective about my own writing. So I wait for people to [tell me they] want [me] to write it. They seemed thrilled for me to write it and I was thrilled to do it.”
“And then I got great feedback back after I turned it in. It’s just been a really fun process. And of course, you know, I’ve been part of reality tv. I’ve been on plenty of cooking shows, so I had pretty good idea of how it works. And in some ways it teased a little bit of a character in a novel that I wrote many years ago.”
“So that was a fun callback and I just really enjoyed the whole process. I love writing, I love writing for these characters because I really know them well. I know the actors and I literally hear the scenes in my head as I’m writing. And then it’s just so fun and exciting to see it come to life.”
Reality Bites welcomes the return of Hannah’s bestie, Norman (Gabriel Hogan), and although they’ve settled into that BFF world, Sweeney says the door isn’t closed on them being more than friends. “I don’t want to totally take that off the table. I think there is a world in which, if they were both single at the same time, things may have gone differently,” she explains.
“He’s her confidant and her trusted friend to partner in crime and assist her any way he can. And the scenes in the dentist’s office [in this movie] were some of my favorite ever on the show.”
The potential romance that’s on the front burner is on a nice slow simmer as Chad (Victor Webster) and Hannah continue a soft courtship (in an actual courtroom) that brings her more into his world when he invites her to watch him during a trial. “It is fun to do it slowly and take their time. They are complete opposites and then there are hopefully some things they have in common,” she shares. “So it’s just fun to experience that, to discover that along the way, and, if they can, find a way to make it work. I just think it’s really fun.”
Sweeney is also loving Hannah’s continued diligence as an investigator. “What I enjoy is this idea that she is growing as a crime solver. And she has fun. She’s not settling. She challenges herself,” she says. “And I think that’s really how it would be if this was you and you were an armchair detective and then you had access, you would want it to develop and to get better at it and learn more. And so I think that’s really fun. And I, so I’m enjoying that.”
Sweeney credits her dad with adding the DA angle to the films. “My dad kind of gave me grief about four movies ago. There was a movie that ended with a confession. And he said, ‘What do you mean? That’s not enough. You can’t put someone in prison for that. You don’t even have it on recording,'” she laughs.
“I realized he was right. That’s not enough. Hannah needs to actually get these people in prison. And so Chad really sort of came about through that idea. A lot of people now talk about the CSI effect, this idea that everything’s solved through forensics and there’s a lab that does the results right away. But that’s actually not how it works. A lot of crimes are not solved with forensics, unfortunately, and even if you had it, [it takes a long time] to get through the lab. “I know my movies are not near realistic, but hopefully [they] help people see that there are other ways.”
That non-forensic crimesolving also includes building out sources and there’s a fun one in hotel concierge, Bobby (Wern Lee). “He was great. Everyone watches Dateline, everybody is listening to these podcasts. And so he leans in a little with spilling the tea and Hannah’s here for it,” she says. “That was a really fun development of his character and I would love to see him again. He was fantastic.”
Sweeney loves continuing to play in this world and is grateful for the ensemble that author Joanne Fluke established with the books. “I have to give Joanne Fluke credit for developing these great characters, giving me so much fuel to come up with for the scripts because so many of these ideas are from her wonderful books,” she shares.
“She has you developed these really thoughtful characters and in a book, of course you have 300 pages and for me, when you have 83 minutes, you have to really pare it down. So the beauty of having now 11 movies is I can shape these characters up a little bit, give them a little more, and it gives the audience credit for having seen the past movies that we’re going to build off of that we don’t have to establish who these people are from scratch.”
In Reality Bites, Dolores (Barbara Niven) has moved on a bit from her PI career and is leaning more int her acting, but she marries both skillsets when she finds an opportunity to interview suspects without them realizing that’s what she’s doing. “Barbara [Niven] is delightfully hilarious and when we’re talking about the development of the next idea, everyone pitches the ideas of funny things Dolores could do because it’s just funny and she’s so good at it that that’s the first thing people think of,” she explains.
“But I don’t want it to be one note. Dolores is good at it and she is smart, and she has a sense of drama and fun, so it’s sort of mixing in the productive information that she can really glean while still [doing the funnier bits]. She can do all of it.”
With Sweeney as the writer of record, the executive producer, and the star, the cast had fun riffing dialogue on the day, including a scene in Hannah’s home that finds Norman, Dolores, Hannah, and Lisa discussing theories in Hannah’s kitchen. “We’ve really built this atmosphere where we do that at the end of scenes especially, but we like to keep it people on our toes. It was my idea in the script that Norman is dissecting it in his mind as he’s trying to think of the mystery. But Barbara had the idea that she’s really grossed out [by his idea],” she laughs.
“So then I told Gabe to lean into it, so that he’s describing doing something scientific or that she can really visualize that and get grossed out. Sometimes those ideas just come on set like that, where we are just pitching ideas as we go and doing the jokes on the fly in certain takes. You can really foster the opportunity for gold when you have an atmosphere like that.”
Reality Bites: A Hannah Swensen Mystery premieres Thursday at 8 pm/7c on Hallmark Mystery and streaming on various outlets, and will stream on Hallmark+ starting Friday. Sweeney will be live Tweeting (Xing) the premiere and is excited to chat with the fans. She says fan engagement is key to them continuing to make the films, so warm up those thumbs and share your thoughts on social media. And look for Sweeney to give away a couple of signed aprons during the premiere. Here’s a sneak peek of Reality Bites.
Photos courtesy of David Asorga; videos courtesy of Hallmark Media.
