Cinephiles glaze over when it comes to a Hallmark Channel movie.
For some, that crisp, red Hallmark banner promises aspirational storytelling with subtle double entendres, great bankable chemistry between actors, and a cozy Nancy Meyers aesthetic, whether it be for thrillers like “Mystery 101” and “Curious Caterer” or the beloved (and now iconic) Countdown to Christmas banner, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year.
For other, more cynical film fans, Hallmark content can easily be written off as a made-for-TV movie — never mind that some of the most iconic smaller productions in decades past started as made-for-TV films (the original “It,” anyone?). And Hallmark, much like “Law and Order,” has been a rite of passage for actors, with a fair share of famous alums ranging from Sarah Paulson to Carrie Fisher.
But what about the staple Hallmark stars synonymous with the brand itself after a decade of leading dozens of features per year? Does Hollywood only label them as “Hallmark actors,” despite writing, directing, and producing projects outside the network?
Nikki Deloach, the lead in over 20 films across Hallmark’s various channels, including the upcoming “Our Holiday Story” out November 2, likened the assumptions around Hallmark to how “The All New Mickey Mouse Club” was perceived in the ’90s. Deloach joined the kids show when she was 12, along with Britney Spears, Ryan Gosling, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, and Keri Russell. Her career later spanned series “Awkward,” “Mad Men,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “9-1-1,” and “Castle” before cementing herself as a Hallmark Channel multihyphenate across all the brand verticals.
“Coming to L.A. as a young girl, the messaging was very clear: You pick a lane, and you stay in the lane. That’s what we told young up-and-coming actors at the time; you can’t be an actor and also a writer and also a director, you can do one thing and you put your focus into that. It’s a really tricky thing to navigate in our industry when they tend to put people in boxes. And I think, haven’t we learned our lesson?” Deloach told IndieWire. “It’s very unfortunate. People are forgetting the fact that before I ever aired on Hallmark, I did really gritty, highly dramatic roles. I played characters that were based on true stories where I was a veteran who was raped in the military. Also, ‘Awkward’ was a very raunchy half-hour single camp comedy that I did for six years of my life.”
In fact, when Deloach first told her then-manager in 2015 after working for LD Entertainment that she wanted to develop a Hallmark movie, she was scoffed at. This was also after Deloach took “The Collection,” a $15 million indie movie, through post-production and went to Sundance as a buyer with LD. She knew what she was talking about, and even still, Hallmark was deemed a preposterous career pivot.
“I was laughed out of the room because it was Hallmark,” Deloach said of voicing her desire to write and star in the network’s films. “I don’t think you guys understand what’s happening here. I don’t think you quite get the way that these movies are making people feel.”
Deloach wanted to do her first Hallmark movie because her grandmother and her friends couldn’t resonate with the “racy” series Awkward. That one decision for her “nana” opened Deloach’s career up to a whole new international audience.
“The reaction that I received from my hometown — shoutout to Blackshear, Georgia — I have never really felt anything quite like it. I mean, it was joy and warmth and the happiness that they exuded when they were talking about these movies,” Deloach said. “And I sat with that and thought, ‘There’s something happening here’ because back then, it wasn’t in the zeitgeist yet. So then I started watching Hallmark and going, ‘Oh, I see what this is.’ They get to watch it with the whole family. It’s safe. You want to live in these places, you want to go there for Christmas, you want to be their friends, you want to kiss that guy. There’s always a happy ending, and in a world where so much is unknown, audiences want to be able to turn something on and know that for those 90 minutes, they can escape into a world that is full of love and hope. And honestly, that’s magical realism.”
But the dedicated Hallmark audiences — those who match donations to the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles or the Mind What Matters organization because Deloach is on the board — are still overlooked by industry insiders, she said.
“It’s a shame because what they don’t understand is Hallmark, every Friday, every Saturday, every Sunday night, is number one on cable,” Deloach said. “And Netflix and all these other networks are now just copying our Christmas content. Netflix is fully doing Hallmark.”
Unlike Netflix, though, Deloach cited that Hallmark is based on the individual appeals of its core stars, which also include Lacey Chabert (who has newly joined Netflix’s holiday slate with “Hot Frosty”), Andrew Walker, Tyler Hynes, Paul Campbell, and Kristoffer Polaha — who like Deloach is expanding his empire into the indie world.
“The fans fall in love with their favorite actors, and then you become the faces of the network,” Deloach said. “There’s no other network that really does that. You don’t look at Apple or Netflix and associate a specific actor with them. But Hallmark is the space for that. It’s like the old movie system. And because of that, the fans also follow us to other projects.”
Fellow Hallmark star Polaha, who joined the network in 2016 with the now-viral “Dater’s Handbook” alongside Meghan Markle, told IndieWire that Hallmark is most akin to Frank Capra‘s Liberty Bell Pictures or Roger Corman‘s low-budget horror genre films.
“When it’s done right, these movies can be as good as any other film,” Polaha said. “When you look at Old Hollywood, and you go back to ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ the studio made that […] was basically a Hallmark. They were making very low-budget films, and they were making a high quantity of films. And then if you look at Roger Corman, Louis B. Mayer, they were these very rugged individuals who were scrappy and making movies quickly and for less. And now, you’ve got this group of people who are making movies for Hallmark. To me, it’s wildly impressive what they’re able to pull off year after year. You’ve got a studio that’s making 100 movies in a year. It’s relatively unheard of.”
Each holiday season, Hallmark makes 47 seasonal films in addition to their ongoing slate. Movies have about a $3.25 million budget per feature. Productions last 15 days on average.
And that turnaround time for a quick production poised Polaha to venture out on his own and make his directorial debut with the upcoming “Mimics,” a “creepy little love story” about a struggling actor whose agent pairs him with a demonic puppet that transforms his career.
“I wanted to tinker with this audience that I have with Hallmark, and I wanted to take them on a ride and sort of explore a different way to tell a love story,” Polaha said of his feature directorial debut that he also stars in.
Polaha returned to the “weird world” within his hometown of Reno, Nevada, to spotlight the underbelly of comedy clubs, ventriloquism, and fame. “Mimics” is written by Polaha’s former elementary school classmate, and Polaha’s dad even has a cameo. It’s bringing the family focus of Hallmark IRL, even though Hallmark didn’t want to take the creative leap with Polaha at first for an in-house directorial effort.
“To be really honest with you, there’s a guy at Hallmark named Randy Pope [the senior vice president of physical production for Hallmark parent company Crown Media Family Networks], and back in 2019, I said to Randy, ‘Hey, man, I want to produce, I’d love to direct, and I’d love to create my own movies at Hallmark,’” Polaha said. “Randy was like, ‘Nah, man, if you want to direct, you’ve got to go direct something, and if you want to produce something, bring me IP.’ And so I took that as a directive and immediately just started creating things. [Now] I don’t know if I would want to go and direct a Hallmark movie at this point because it’s a very different job.”
Polaha did, though, take Pope’s advice and began co-writing romance novels with the “Coming with Love” series with installments “Moments Like This” and “Where The Sun Rises.” He also directed the short film “Work of Art,” which premiered at the Filmmaker Showcase in Cannes.
It helped that Polaha was already used to working below the line on Hallmark features across his 18 films for the brand. (To note, that seems like a more frequent occurrence with actors stepping in to edit scripts, as Deloach did a “page one rewrite” for “Taking the Reins,” which she had developed as a producer. The film went on to top the Hallmark charts.)
“If you like the movies that I do, there’s a lot of sort of quality control that comes along with me saying yes to a job,” he said. “We go through the script, and we sand things down. [Back in 2015,] it was a network that not a lot of people were running to be on. It was going to be a quick way to make some money, get in, get out.”
He continued, “I was working with the costume designer on ‘Dater’s Handbook,’ and she was like, ‘You know, it’s just a little Hallmark film.’ And I was like, ‘You can’t apologize because it’s my face. It’s my name.’ I treated it like I was making a Martin Scorsese film.”
Polaha was later told by director Monika Mitchell, who helmed his second Hallmark film “Heart of Christmas,” that a “populist” approach to filmmaking could serve the industry better.
“She’s like, ‘I want to make something that a lot of people are going to see. I’ve made movies that are independent feature films, and they win awards, and maybe a hundred thousand people see them. With a Hallmark movie, I have all the room in the world to make a great movie, and then we get 80 million unique views during the holidays,’” Polaha said.
For “Mimics,” Polaha knows his Hallmark audience will show up to theaters when the film gets distribution.
“I did a movie called ‘The Shift’ last year, and the people who love my Hallmark movies were going to the theater. One woman went 12 times, and the studio noticed it,” he said. “The audience is as fervent in Hallmark as it is for DC or for Marvel.”
Polaha also was part of the DC universe with a role in Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman 1984,” briefly playing a Chris Pine lookalike (billed as “Handsome Man” on IMDb).
Like the superhero franchises, Hallmark has “certain expectations” for its stars to live up to off-screen. Casting directors like Penny Perry already suss out the backgrounds of each actor before they join the brand. Polaha credited his past roles on CW show “Life Unexpected” and faith-based film “Billy: The Early Years” as reasons why he was invited to join Hallmark. “Billy: The Early Years” starred Armie Hammer as Billy Graham; Polaha added that Hammer is a “great guy,” saying, “He’s a good dude. I never had an issue with Armie, and he was a friend, and then his world blew up.”
But would Polaha’s Hallmark career be in jeopardy if he, say, starred in an arthouse or more extreme film?
“No, I haven’t done a ’50 Shades of Grey’ or something. I wonder if, once you cross that, it’s like a rubicon, and you could never go back,” he said. “I’m trying to trip the metric with ‘Mimics.’ I’m going to push it. I want to see how far people are willing to go.”
Polaha cited fellow Hallmark alum Alicia Witt’s “Longlegs” role as starkly outside the brand.
“At the end of the day, we’re all actors, and I’m not under contract. I’m a free agent,” he said. “I can go do what I want, but I think that there’s a responsibility that I have to the fans to sort of represent…I think there is a code of conduct that you agree to, you know what I mean? When you think of the brand of Hallmark, you think of family and connection and community. I think you have to just behave like you would at Thanksgiving. Actors know where their bread is buttered, right?”
Newly minted director Polaha wants to reunite with Jenkins again, and work with Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg (“this is starting to feel ridiculous,” he joked about voicing his aspirations). And Polaha also shouted out his “Life Unexpected” director Adele Lim, who is having a “supernova rise” in Hollywood. Lim was recently tapped to direct “Princess Diaries 3,” which could give Polaha a chance to also body-swap once more with his “Wonder Woman 1984” co-star Pine, who appeared in “Princess Diaries 2: The Royal Engagement.”
“Could you imagine if you just spoke that into existence?” Polaha said of the possibility of overlapping with two former collaborators on “Princess Diaries 3.”
Meanwhile, Deloach has a “Horry County Heiress” true crime show in the works about Bambi Bennett, who was charged first-degree murder for allegedly killing her parents with boyfriend Richard Gagnon. Bennett was later released after a lack of evidence after serving six months in prison. Deloach also has the “True Justice” series in development inspired by the Innocence Project, and is launching podcast “Mind What Matters,” based on the aforementioned organization for caregivers.
“If this industry wants to pigeonhole me or anyone else because I choose to bring content to people that made them feel that way [with Hallmark], then there’s nothing I can do about that except for continuing to write and continuing to put content out there that is undeniable[ly good],” Deloach said. “We have to work double as hard to get people outside of our world to read us and go, ‘Oh wow, these girls can actually really write.’ I do believe that our Hallmark audience is going to support the movies, and they’re going to be in the brand no matter what. I think there is space for all of it, and it’s also how we have to survive as artists.”
Deloach added, “By the way, I want to do the ‘Succession’s of the world and the ‘Veep’s of the world. I want to do all of that. But I also want to be a part of this: I want to be a part of making content that makes people feel this way. To be able to bring people joy and peace and hope and happiness sometimes in their darkest valleys…I would trade that for nothing.”
“Our Holiday Story” premieres November 2 on the Hallmark Channel.
