Heavy/Charles & Colvard Hallmark's Skyler Samuels with her newborn baby, Spring 2024
As millions of moms are showered with love and gifts on Mother’s Day — observed in the U.S. on May 12, 2024 — it will be Hallmark star Skyler Samuels’ first one as a new mom. But rather than relaxing on her special day, Samuels told Heavy she’ll be on the set of her next Hallmark movie, with her little one in tow.
Samuels, who stars in the “Aurora Teagarden Mysteries” prequels that launched on Hallmark Mystery in 2023, kept her pregnancy out of the spotlight. But on April 21, she revealed her “new mom” status via Instagram as part of a photo shoot with jewelry brand Charles & Colvard, for which she is a new brand ambassador.
On May 6, Samuels told Heavy that she and her husband, actor Lucas Till, hope to keep their child’s name and gender private, but said that their baby is now “a few months old.”
Adjusting to motherhood while filming two upcoming “Aurora Teagarden” movies in Victoria, British Columbia, has been “wonderful” and “intense,” Samuels said, adding how grateful she is that Hallmark has made it possible for her to keep bringing her bundle of joy along for the ride.
Skyler Samuels Says Motherhood Has Opened Her Eyes to Just How ‘Amazing’ All Moms Are
Samuels, who turned 30 in April, has been acting since she was a teen, rising to fame on Disney Channel shows including “”Wizards of Waverly Place,” “The Suite Life,” and “That’s So Raven,” per IMDb. But all of those years in front of the camera feel a bit like a blur since becoming a mom, she told Heavy.
“It’s been such a special time and it really, like, marks this new chapter of my life,” she said. “It’s almost hard to remember like, before I was a mom. What did I do before this little person was in my life?”
With Mother’s Day approaching, Samuels told Heavy she has a new appreciation for the superpowers that are activated when women become moms.
“It’s like you have to go to this kind of otherworldly out-of-body experience in order to come into that,” Samuels told Heavy. “You’re like, ‘Oh, wow, I can really do things I didn’t think were humanly possible, but I’m doing them and I continued to do them and that part is pretty
astounding.’ It’s amazing what moms do just to get through the day.”
“It’s so intense and it’s rewarding and challenging,” she continued. “And there’s a lot of tears and a lot of diapers and a lot of joy and it’s just, it’s so intense across the board.”
Samuels added, “I’m finally getting into the swing of things, and just when you think you’ve like, kind of mastered it, they change completely!”
Samuels, who didn’t seem to mind needing to work on Mother’s Day, said everyone on her Hallmark projects this year has been “remarkably supportive” of her needs, from flexibility on-set for breaks to traveling with lots of baby gear, adding that “the ethos in general is very family oriented.”
Samuels also said that she and Till are figuring out a work-life balance as they go, joking that while she was filming the latest “Aurora” movies, her husband “was like Mr. Mom 24/7 while I was at work.” When her shoot was done, she took over full-time with the baby, she said, and he went to film a new series.
As a New Mom, Skyler Samuels Said She Finds Adding ‘Sparkle’ Each Day Makes Up for the ‘Spit-Up’
HallmarkMarilu Henner and Skyler Samuels in ‘Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New’
As a new mom, Samuels laughed about the fact that “there’s usually spit-up on anything I wear,” but said that her go-to pick-me-up is to add a favorite piece of jewelry, whether it’s rings passed down by her grandmother or earrings she’s picked out for herself.
“You know, (when) you’re too tired and you, like, didn’t even have time for mascara or a hairbrush — but I’ve got my earrings in or I’ve got my little necklace on,” she told Heavy. “I don’t know, it’s just a nice way to feel like, ‘Okay, I’ve got a little sparkle to get me through the day.'”
Knowing how much she loves jewelry and her desire to be a conscientious consumer, Samuels’ own mom suggested she check out Charles & Colvard. The company’s jewels are created in a lab rather than mined, per the brand’s website, and “set in responsibly sourced precious metals.” Samuels said she was amazed that she couldn’t tell the difference between their “made” vs. “mined” diamonds, so she was excited to partner with them.
She’s also excited any time she gets to wear fun jewelry in her movies, she said, and hopes she may be able to introduce the brand to her wardrobe teams on her next Hallmark project and future “Aurora” movies.
“This movie I’m off to go do, we’ve got some fun, sort of glamorous sequences and I’m hoping there’s a way to kind of pair the two together,” she told Heavy. “And I think it would be kind of fun at some point for Aurora to end up in some sort of, like, jewelry heist situation. I haven’t seen that story done before. I feel like a glamorous jewelry heist type of mystery would be really fun.”