Longtime Hallmark Star Lands Starring Role on NBC Series

Heavy Shooting a TV show

Just two months after landing a multi-episode role on NBC’s “Chicago Fire,” Hallmark star Jocelyn Hudon has been promoted to a series regular, according to Deadline.

On June 20, 2024, the outlet revealed that Hudon will return for season 13 of the hit drama, which chronicles the professional and personal lives of firefighters, rescuers and paramedics from Chicago’s Firehouse 51.

Hudon, who has starred in many Hallmark movies including two starring roles in the first half of 2024 — in “Falling in Love in Niagara” and “Romance With a Twist” — shared the news on her Instagram feed, celebrating with a series of emoji: “🐦‍🔥❤️‍🔥🐦‍🔥❤️‍🔥🐦‍🔥❤️‍🔥”

Jocelyn Hudon Plays a New Paramedic in Firehouse 51

HallmarkJocelyn Hudon in “Romance With a Twist”

Hudon’s hire is part of some casting changes at “Chicago Fire,” according to Deadline. Season 12 guest star Rome Flynn wrapped up his time on the show, the outlet said, and longtime regulars Kara Killmer and Matt Casey left the series after their characters wed and moved to Portland in season 12, per Yahoo.

Hudon first appeared on the show in April, playing new freelancing paramedic Lyla Novak, who “reluctantly agrees” to partner with Violet (played by Hanako Greensmith) as a full-time member of the team at Firehouse 51, per Deadline.

On June 25, Hudon shared an article in her Instagram Stories about her joining the cast as a series regular and circled a line that said, “She can disarm a gun very, very fast.” Hudon put a smirking emoji (😏) next to it. Hudon is also proficient with nunchucks, which she used to her advantage in a “Chicago Fire” scene.

When her new role was announced in March, Hudon wrote on Instagram that she was “Beyond beyond beyond grateful.”

Fans have been thrilled about her news, too, flooding her Instagram posts with congratulatory messages, including one who wrote, “We love you in all your Hallmark movies and are so excited that you are coming back to Chicago Fire 🔥. Congratulations!”

Hudon’s new role on “Chicago Fire,” which is filmed throughout the Windy City, doesn’t necessarily rule out a continuation with the Hallmark family, which she’s been a part of for nearly a decade, first appearing in a 2015 episode of “Good Witch,” per IMDb. Her first starring role with the network was in 2019, opposite Ryan Paevey in “From Friend to Fiancé.”

Hudon also appeared in three season 6 episodes of “When Calls The Heart” and reprised her role of Grace Bennett in the 2019 spin-off series, “When Hope Calls.”

Jocelyn Hudon is One Half of a Real-Life Hallmark Couple

Hudon is also married to one of her Hallmark co-stars, actor Jake Manley, with whom she co-starred in 2023’s “Love in the Maldives.”

The actress told ET Online in 2020 that she met Manley, 31, best known for Netflix’s “The Order” and the streaming crime drama “Infamous,” through their mutual “self-tape coach — the person who films our auditions” and learned they had the same agent. They then drove together to a summer party thrown by their agent in 2015, she said, and “have been together ever since.”

On their fifth anniversary of dating, in August 2020, Manley surprised Hudon with a romantic proposal inspired by one of Hudon’s favorite TV shows, “Gilmore Girls,” which she told Parade in 2019 was the one show she could binge-watch “all day, every day.”

“We had just driven six hours from Toronto to Montreal and got to our Airbnb, which is about six floors, and after a sweaty walk up all of the flights of stairs, we went up to the rooftop terrace and waiting on the patio was 1,000 red roses,” she told ET Online.

“I was so shocked,” she continued. “I thought maybe production had sent them or it was a mistake, or maybe the Airbnb was storing them up there, and then Jake said, ‘1,000 red roses,’ which is from one of my favorite episodes of ‘Gilmore Girls.’ Then he got down on one knee and I was like, ‘Oh my god, is this real!?’ and then he asked me to marry him! I just kind of fell over and said, ‘Yes.’ I’m still in shock. I love surprises.”

In 2021, they were so busy filming different projects that she and Manley decided on a whim to elope to Las Vegas on her favorite holiday, Halloween.

“I tried to mentally prepare my mom for a strange wedding,” she told ET Online. “I told her that this isn’t going to be a perfect, traditional wedding — we’re going to get married next to a Cadillac, in a tunnel, and Elvis is dressed as a zombie. But luckily, zombie Elvis went above and beyond what I expected, and my dad walked me down the aisle, which was awesome.”