Hallmark Nikki DeLoach and Andrew Walker star in Hallmark's "Curious Caterer: Grilling Season"
Andrew Walker thinks his Hallmark colleague and longtime friend, Nikki DeLoach, has special powers. So much so that he called his co-star a “witch” during a new interview while promoting their latest movie, “Curious Caterer: Grilling Season,” which premieres on February 5, 2023. Walker revealed that DeLoach received a vision of their mystery movies before they became reality, which is part of an intuitive gift the actress, writer, and producer said she pays close attention to and credits for her thriving career at Hallmark.
Nikki DeLoach Says She Knew Intuitively That She Belonged at Hallmark
HallmarkLuke Macfarlane and Nikki Deloach in her first Hallmark movie, “Christmas Land”
DeLoach told Us Magazine last week that she began brainstorming an idea for the “Curious Caterer” movies in late 2019 or early 2020, after feeling inspired to create a mystery “wheel” for her and Walker. He pointed out that once DeLoach gets a vision for a new project, it’s bound to happen.
“Her visions come true,” Walker said, and then jokingly added, “Nikki Deloach is a witch. She’s a witch living amongst us.”
DeLoach didn’t argue with Walker’s assessment. Visions of projects, partnerships, and movie scenes intuitively come to her and she knows to pursue them, she said.
“If it’s dropped into me, it’s almost like something gets channeled and I will have, like, a flash of an image of something — or I will dream of, like, a scene or something will come to me,” DeLoach told the magazine. “And this was something that came to me and I was like, ‘I think you and I have to do a mystery wheel together. I don’t exactly know what it is yet, but I saw it. I saw us doing this.'”
DeLoach has previously credited her thriving career at Hallmark to trusting her intuition. In a December 2022 appearance on the “Jesus Calling” podcast, she recalled the gut feeling she got after her first Hallmark movie, which her grandma encouraged her to go after. “Christmas Land” co-starring Luke Macfarlane aired right before Christmas 2015, when she was visiting family in her hometown of Blackshear, Georgia.
“And let me tell you, the reaction after that night when that movie aired, the reaction that I received from my hometown people, I had never received a reaction like this,” she recalled. “The joy and happiness and warmth and love and hope, it just poured out of them. And I thought, ‘Whoa. There’s something happening with these movies that is making people feel a certain way. And I want to be a part of making people feel that way.'”
However, DeLoach felt deeply that she not only wanted to continue acting for the network, but that she wanted to contribute to developing and writing the stories it tells. So she interned at a friend’s production company, she said on the podcast, and was promoted to a creative executive position, where she learned more about and fell in love with producing. DeLoach said she then got a meeting with Hallmark executives and that they loved the ideas they pitched.
“We moved forward with developing. In the process, they kept hiring me,” she shared. “And you know what? It’s a great thing that I had that instinct and I followed that. It’s like that divine, kind of like when you really listen to yourself.”
She continued, “It’s like that part inside of you that’s saying, ‘Wake up and pay attention. I’m whispering to you about the direction that I want you to go in.'”
Andrew Walker Says Working With Nikki DeLoach ‘Doesn’t Feel Like Work’
HallmarkAndrew Walker and Nikki DeLoach in “Curious Caterer: Grilling Season”
“Curious Caterer: Grilling Season” is DeLoach and Walker’s sixth movie together. The duo appeared in four rom-coms together before taking on 2022’s “Curious Caterer: Dying for Chocolate,” in which Walker played detective Tom Schultz and Deloach played amateur sleuth Goldy Berry.
During a joint Facebook Live session on February 3, DeLoach said the movie was one of Hallmark’s top 5 non-Christmas movies of 2022, which convinced the network to let them make another. They reprise their roles in the second installment, which they said includes lots of action scenes as they search for the killer of a local realtor.
“The only reason we get to come back and do this is because of all of you who tuned in to watch the first one,” she said. “So, from both of our hearts…thank you so, so, so much for the love, for the support, for tuning in.”
Walker said he considers himself especially lucky because no other Hallmark star gets to work so often with DeLoach.
“Hallmark is so lucky to have her,” he said. “And then I get this opportunity to be working the most with Nikki, which is just such an awesome place to be. She challenges me. She’s there for me and she supports me. It’s great. We got the same work ethic. It’s a beautiful thing we got going on.”
And during their Facebook Live, he said, “It doesn’t feel like work when I’m working with you. It’s just so much fun, all the time.”
The feeling is mutual, DeLoach told Us Weekly.
“I truly love Andrew Walker so much, like family,” DeLoach said. “The fact that we get to go do that and work together and do these movies, it’s so cool.”
“Curious Caterer: Grilling Season” premieres February 5, 2023, on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries at 7 pm Eastern / 6 pm Central.