Heavy/Hallmark Andrew Walker in Hallmark's 2024 adventure movie, "For Love & Honey"
With too many rom-coms on his resume to count and his mystery franchise with buddy Nikki DeLoach still going strong, longtime Hallmark star Andrew Walker is pumped for his next adventure in movie-making.
Days before the premiere of Hallmark Channel’s “For Love & Honey” on June 1, 2024, Walker told Heavy that the action-packed movie — which he likened to the uber-successful “Indiana Jones” franchise — was so fun to make, he hopes many more “destination adventure” films are on the horizon for him.
“Who knows where they’re gonna take me next, but we’re hoping ‘For Love & Honey’ does well and we can start building a kind of mini wheel off of this character,” Walker told Heavy of the movie, which was filmed on the island of Malta. “It’d be a destination adventure series. That is the hope for this, because there’s really no adventure series out there for Hallmark.”
In ‘For Love & Honey,’ Andrew Walker Reveled in Outdoor Adventure Scenes
HallmarkMargaret Clunie and Andrew Walker in Hallmark Channel’s “For Love & Honey”
According to Hallmark’s synopsis of “For Love & Honey,” Walker plays an American archeologist searching for treasure as part of a research project. On his adventures, he meets a local Maltese beekeeper named Eva, played by Margaret Clunie, who “uncovers an ancient fresco while rescuing a hive.” Austen thinks her discovery is critical to his research, but because the bees are nationally protected, he is only allowed to explore Malta and “study the bees’ golden trail” under her watchful eye.
A travel buff and nature lover who was fascinated by the resilience and history of Maltese bees, Walker was in his element filming on the island country, located in the central Mediterranean Sea.
“It was the Spanish knights in the 1500s (who) actually built Malta up to what it is today — all these beautiful castles and castle walls that surround the island,” Walker told Heavy. “There’s 13 towers that surround the island, and when the island was being attacked, each tower would light up at nighttime, like each tower could see each other, and in the daytime they’d notify each other through smoke.”
“So we were shooting on cliffs’ edges with the Mediterranean behind us,” Walker continued. “We’d shoot in 3000-year-old aviaries.”
Overseen by prolific Hallmark director Kevin Fair, who’s shot dozens of movies for the network since 2014, including the popular “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” franchise, “For Love & Honey” had the actors and crew moving “nonstop,” Walker told Heavy, calling it “an extremely ambitious movie.”
“We were on the road constantly,” he said. “We were hiking. We were in caves. We were on the move.”
It’s not the first time Hallmark has shot in Malta; Lacey Chabert and Will Kemp filmed their first “Dancing Detective” mystery there in 2023. On the “Swing My Heart” podcast in April, Walker said he hopes to follow in Chabert’s footsteps and start filming more frequently at various locations around the world, rather than just in Vancouver, where the majority of Hallmark movies are filmed.
Having now filmed his new movie in Malta and 2023’s “A Safari Romance” in South Africa, Walker told Heavy he’s grateful Hallmark execs have paid attention to his love of filming in a wide variety of places.
Andrew Walker Says Dialogue in ‘For Love & Honey’ Was Challenging to Memorize
HallmarkMargaret Curie and Andrew Walker in Hallmark Channel’s “For Love & Honey”
In addition to all the physical action that filming “For Love & Honey” required, Walker told Heavy he also had to keep his mind sharp for the complicated script.
“I don’t think I’ve had to memorize as many lines for any Hallmark movies as I have for that movie,” he said. “And very technical stuff, you know, because there’s a lot of archaeological jargon. Kevin made sure that we were that we kept it very interesting. It’s just a very fast paced (movie) like you’d expect from an ‘Indiana Jones.'”
Though Walker loved dipping his toe into the world of action movies and is hoping for more, he still has plenty of other opportunities to star in the Hallmark rom-coms, comedies and mysteries his fans love. In early 2024, he reunited with Paul Campbell, Tyler Hynes and Kimberley Sustad to film a sequel to their 2022 smash hit, “Three Wise Men and a Baby.” The follow-up — “Three Wiser Men and a Kid” — will premiere during the channel’s 15th annual Countdown to Christmas programming.
Walker told Heavy he also has fall and holiday movies coming up, and a fifth “Curious Caterer” mystery movie with DeLoach to film. Given that their most recent movie, “Curious Caterer: Foiled Plans” did so well with viewers, he said it’s likely a sixth movie will get greenlit, too.
On May 17, he and DeLoach uploaded a dance video on Instagram to celebrate the success of the latest film in their franchise, writing that it was “the #1 most-watched original movie premiere of 2024 AND you doubled the audience in playbacks, making it the second largest growth in network HISTORY.”
“For Love & Honey” premieres on Hallmark Channel at 8 p.m. Eastern time on June 1. A replay of “Curious Caterer: Foiled Plans” will air on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Hallmark Mystery.