Hallmark Benjamin Ayres in "True Justice: Family Ties"
Filming the first Hallmark mystery movie of the year was a true labor of love for actor Benjamin Ayres.
Fresh off starring in Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ most-watched movie of 2023, December’s “Miracle in Bethlehem, P.A.,” Ayres will appear next in “True Justice: Family Ties,” premiering January 12, 2024.
Even before reading the script, written by fellow Hallmark star Nikki DeLoach and her writing partner Megan McNulty, Ayres told Heavy he said “yes” as soon as DeLoach asked him to be part of the project — even if it was for free — because they love working together so much.
On January 9, Ayres joked on Instagram that he convinced DeLoach to invite him to join the cast by “ordering her many🍸🍸🍸 That’s how!”
“I do love a good martini,” DeLoach replied to Ayres on Instagram. “But what I love even more is a friend who is brilliant who will say yes to my crazy ideas!!! Love you friend!!”
Here’s what you need to know:
Benjamin Ayres Said Nikki DeLoach Joked She’d Pay Him With Dinner for His Role in New Movie
HallmarkNikki DeLoach and Benjamin Ayres in “True Justice: Family Ties”
During a Facebook Live session on January 11, DeLoach said she and McNulty got their “dream cast” for the movie. “Love, Classified” actress Katherine McNamara plays Casey, a law student who “gets the biggest case of her life when her brother is wrongfully convicted of a murder,” per Hallmark’s synopsis. Frequent Hallmark star Markian Tarasiuk plays one of the classmates she calls upon for help, in addition to cast members Marisa McIntyre and Sabrina Saudin.
Though DeLoach and Ayres aren’t the movie’s primary stars, they do play significant roles. DeLoach plays the classmates’ professor, while Ayres plays District Attorney Quinn.
Ayres told Heavy that he was in the midst of filming another upcoming movie, “Love & Jane,” with Alison Sweeney in the spring of 2023 when DeLoach called him about “True Justice.”
“Nikki calls me up and she goes, ‘Ben, I just finished this incredible script, Hallmark has greenlit it and we’re going to shoot it,” he recalled. “She said, ‘We’ve got this incredible, young cast. If I send you the script, will you read it?’ That’s all I thought she wanted me to do is read the script. And I was like, ‘100 percent I’ll read it.'”
But then DeLoach clarified that she actually wanted him to play a role in it.
“She’s like, ‘There’s no money involved but will you play this (part)?’ I’m like, ‘You want me to be in it? Nikki, I’ll do anything! I’ll be a background performer!’ And she goes, ‘No, there’s no money, but I’ll pay you — we’ll go out for dinner! And I’m just like, ‘Nikki, 100 percent send me the script. I’m so excited. Thank you for thinking of me. I would love to do anything you’re doing.'”
DeLoach had been hoping to work again with Ayres for a while, which she told him in April when she spontaneously joined an Instagram Live session Ayres was doing for his Romance University community.
“Ben, we really have to work together, I have to see you,” DeLoach told him. “I don’t know if you guys know this, and I say this all the time, but nobody makes me laugh more than Ben Ayres. You just make my soul so happy when I’m around you. It’s like you just are contagious!”
Benjamin Ayres Says He Was Blown Away by ‘True Justice’ Script
Hallmark“True Justice: Family Ties” cast Alexander Nunez, Marisa McIntyre, Katherine McNamara, Sabrina Saudin, and Markian Tarasiuk
Because he was in the midst of filming with Sweeney when DeLoach first called him about “True Justice,” Ayres didn’t think he’d have time to read the whole script right away.
“Honestly, I was just gonna kind of skim through and kind of read my parts,” he said during the cast’s Facebook Live.
But Ayres told Heavy that as soon as DeLoach sent it, he began reading it and couldn’t stop.
“I could not put it down,” he said. “It is so good and complicated in the right ways, and smart and fun and dark and funny. I’m really, really excited for her.”
DeLoach acknowledged during their Facebook Live that writing a mystery was a fun challenge for her and McNulty.
“Mysteries are so hard to write and put together, especially one like this because you’re also dealing with two systems that have a lot of rules and structure inside of them, which is our police department and our justice system,” she said and then joked, “We’re now experts on Pennsylvania law. All I have to do is go to law school, I can be a judge!”
Her hope, she added, is that the movie sheds some light on what happens when people are wrongly convicted of crimes.
“We really wanted to tell that story of redemption and the people that are heroes in our world who fight to get it right when it’s not right,” DeLoach said.
After appearing at the summer Christmas Con in Kansas City in July, Ayres and DeLoach flew together to film in Ottawa. When the two posted funny videos of themselves at the airport together, many fans speculated that they might be filming a sequel to their popular 2020 movie, “A Cranberry Christmas,” which Ayres said he’d also be down for.
“I do still think there’s room for another ‘Cranberry Christmas’ out there,” Ayres said.
“True Justice: Family Ties” premieres on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries on January 12 at 9 p.m. Eastern time.