Pixabay Stuffed bunny in baby's room
The star of Hallmark Channel’s dazzling new musical, “A Holiday Spectacular,” Ginna Claire Mason, says the movie has been a highlight during a year she calls “one of the most challenging years of my life.” Mason vulnerably revealed in a new podcast interview that among the hardships her family has faced in 2022, she suffered a miscarriage at the beginning of the summer — a loss she is still grieving. She hopes that by sharing her experience, other women will feel less alone.
Ginna Claire Mason Reveals Difficult Year, Including Miscarriage
HallmarkGinna Claire Mason in Hallmark Channel’s “A Holiday Spectacular”
On the first episode of stage and screen actress Amanda Jane Cooper’s new podcast, “A Time to Live,” which premiered on November 20, 2022, she talked in-depth with Mason about filming her new Hallmark movie, but also about the trials and tribulations she’s faced this year.
Mason, who recently wrapped up a multi-year run as Glinda in “Wicked” on Broadway, filmed “A Holiday Spectacular” in New York City and upstate New York at the start of 2022. While her Instagram page may look happy and sparkly, she told Cooper those good moments are only part of the story.
She said, “It’s so easy to be like, ‘wow, I’m not going to put any of the downer stuff on Instagram! I’m gonna, you know, put the happy highlights…that feels easy and digestible for anyone following along. So, deciding when and where and how to be vulnerable, too, I think is important.”
Feeling safe enough with Cooper, a longtime friend, and ready to share openly, Mason said, “This year has been, I’d say, maybe one of the most challenging years of my life, in ways I never expected.”
“When summer hit, things got really hard,” she said, saying that she’s leaned into her faith to get her through the hardest times, including several deaths in her and her husband’s families — including the loss of her grandmother — at the beginning of the summer.
“And I found out I was pregnant, which was really exciting,” she said. “And then I had a miscarriage and that was really hard. I’d never gone through anything like that before. And since then, I’ve met so many women who have gone through that. And, you know, in your head, it’s one thing to be like ‘oh, it’s so common’ or ‘this is a statistic,’ but then suddenly to be the statistic…to hear the stories of other women, someone else going ‘me, too’…is the meaning of community, I think.”
Mason said she is still working through the “profound sadness” of her loss.
“I still find myself going, you know, ‘I would be this many weeks’ or ‘we’d be this close to the due date,'” she said.
“I think, too, something that’s interesting and part of the sadness is, like, when you do get pregnant, your body starts to change almost immediately,” Mason continued. “And then when you go through the loss, still having some of the changes but not the baby and that feels hard and sad.”
Ginna Mason Claire’s Says She’s Leaned Into Her Faith During Trying Times
HallmarkGinna Claire Mason and co-star Derek Klena in Hallmark’s “A Holiday Spectacular”
Mason said that to make matters worse, her husband, pilot Eric Moffett, was injured on the same day as her miscarriage and still hasn’t been able to return to work. In addition, their 19-month-old son had a “scary trip to the ER” and required surgery earlier this month.
She said all of the challenges have made her come to the “super vulnerable” realization that she has to find a way to feel secure no matter what is happening to or around her. For her, the answer has been leaning into her faith.
She explained, “Realizing, you know, my security isn’t in this relationship. My security isn’t in my job title. My security isn’t in my financial situation. What is my security and where do we find our identity when you’re not playing Glinda on Broadway and when you’re not…filming a movie?”
“I think that’s why, in the midst of struggle or fear or loss or grief, if your rock isn’t Jesus, that things look really bleak,” she said. “I don’t know how to tie that up with a pretty bow, except to say that I’ve been learning a lot, I’ve been leaning into the Lord a lot.”
“A Holiday Spectacular” airs on the Hallmark Channel on December 5, 2022, at 6 pm Eastern.