It’s been just under two years since we had a Luke Macfarlane Hallmark movie on our screens with 2024’s CrimeTime: Freefall, but he’s back this Saturday, starring opposite Rachael Leigh Cook in Caught by Love, a romcom/mystery set and filmed in Malta. In the film, Cook is Annie, a bank teller gifted by her BFF with a trip to an exclusive wellness retreat, whose good-natured affability unintentionally makes her the ideal third for Macfarlane’s Jake, a PI who’s posing as a guest, and his partner, Lara (Amanda Victoria Vilanova), who’s posing as an employee, as they try to find a stolen million-dollar necklace.
Macfarlane was last in the Hallmark universe in Hallmark+’s Home Is Where the Heart Is, his home restoration series with interior designer Olivia Westbrooks. It’s a project he’d love to revisit if it’s renewed and scheduling permits, but making Hallmark movies—this is his 18th—is his sweet spot.
“I’ve said this a million times, I’ll keep saying it. I love making Hallmark movies. I love it. But I also always have a lot of other things I’m doing when I’m not doing Hallmark moves, and I think that keeps my gratitude for Hallmark really strong. So when they do call and they say, ‘Come play with us,’ I say yes because it’s always one of the most joyful kinds of experiences I get to have as an actor,” he shares.
That made Caught by Love, which was directed by his Taking a Shot at Love director Kevin Fair, an easy yes, and he was equally excited to visit a new part of the world for the first time and work with Cook. Even better, he was able to wrap a Christmas film he was shooting with Brittney Bristow (coming in 2026) before heading to Malta.
“I really liked the script [by Marcy Holland] off the bat. It felt a little old-fashioned. I’m used to seeing the movie through the female lead’s eyes and I do feel like this was as close as they come to being kind of 50/50,” he says.
“Rachael was great. I immediately thought, ‘Oh, I like her.’ She’s a lot of fun. And she has that kind of no-nonsense professionalism of someone who understands we’re going to make a high-stakes action movie in 13 days. We move pretty quickly, and you’ve got to look after yourself.”
As we’ve chatted about before, Macfarlane loves architecture and structures that tell a story, and Malta was full of both. “I had to look on a map where Malta was,” he laughs, “But then of course I fell in love and started to understand the history and the culture of it. I read books about the Siege of Malta and learned all about all the various people who had come and gone there and spent my day off with a private tour guide.”
“One of our crew’s fathers was on the Maltese tourist board, and his mother had written a book about the French occupation. So, I got everything that I want from a vacation as far as finding the history. I got lost with an audio book in my ear the entire time on the treadmill in the morning before I went to set, trying to understand this place, the religious histories, specifically, the amazing artwork, the baroque and rococo architecture that came out of there. It was fascinating. I loved it.”
Macfarlane has also banked a one-off guest spot on ABC’s Tim Allen sitcom, Shifting Gears, airing January 28th and streaming the next day on Hulu. It’s his first foray into a multi-camera comedy. “It was a great gig. My dear, dear friend Michelle Nader is a starry, amazing showrunner on Shifting Gears and she brought this up to me [and asked], ‘Do you want to be Tim Allen’s son?’ And I said, ‘Yes!’ I remember visiting the set last year, which hilariously is on the same stages where I did Brothers and Sisters,” he recalls.
“I went and visited and it didn’t work out because I was doing Platonic. And while I was there that day on set, I charmed Tim and made sure that he thought I was worthy to be his son. I got his approval. I loved it. It was so much fun [with] a live audience. I’m a sucker. I just love to ham it up. It’s one episode and I want to come back.”
“It was really fun to work with Tim. He had a lot of ideas about who this character was and we had to find it. It’s really nice to be in a place in my career where I’m [working with someone I grew up watching]. I was so confident in what I had to offer that it made me think about myself as a younger actor and how hard it is when you first start off because you’re so afraid to say things. He was a really good collaborator.”
You’ll also find Macfarlane in theaters on February 20th in the ensemble (that included FROM‘s Corteon Moore) zombie horror film based on the Courtney Summers book, This Is Not a Test, written and directed by Slasher and Hell Motel director Adam MacDonald, who he adored. “He’s great. I’m going to work with him again. We just had a love fest. It’s that funny thing where you show up for a few days and the rest of the cast have all been hanging out and bonding,” he explains.
“And then I showed up. I was playing their teacher. It was really funny … I came to set that first day and [asked Adam] to take me to the place where my character comes into the school. I wanted to talk to the logic of that and [suggest a wording change] and I think I freaked him out a little bit.”
“I needed that information because when it came to the day and I had a two-page monologue, I just got to do it because I had done all [the pre-work]. My character’s the one that comes in the middle and definitely changes the temperature of that movie. I’m always really grateful for those parts. They’re really showy. I enjoyed it. I have no idea what people will think, but it was really fun to make.”
Next up, Macfarlane is running the London marathon to raise money for diabetes research, and then he starts work on the just announced Into the Deep Blue in March. “I’m really excited about it. It’s a great script based on a YA book,” he shares. “It’s a really moving love story between two young kids who meet in a grief counseling group.”
Caught by Love premieres Saturday, January 24th, and 8 pm/7c on Hallmark Channel in the US and W Network in Canada and streaming on various outlets in the US. It will also be streaming the next day on Hallmark+ and StackTV. Here are a couple of sneak peeks.
Photos courtesy of Dominic Catania for Hallmark Media and Raymond Liu for Disney; video courtesy of Hallmark Media.
