Heavy/Hallmark Hallmark actors Benjamin Ayres, Paul Campbell, and Tyler Hynes
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fter wrapping up another hugely successful holiday season, Hallmark Media has proven in 2023 that its tried-and-true formula for making feel-good movies with a stable of familiar stars, from Lacey Chabert to Kristoffer Polaha, can consistently draw a crowd.
Every week since November 6, 2023, according to Forbes, at least one Hallmark Channel original holiday movie has been among cable TV’s most popular programs and “17 titles hit the top-40 most-watched milestone.” Even its sister channel, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, jumped from being the 13th most popular network to 6th over the last quarter.
Hallmark’s red-hot success has many Hollywood execs, producers, and stars interested in getting involved. But several of the network’s most beloved actors — often dubbed the “Hunks of Hallmark” — have warned in recent weeks that it’s not as easy as it looks.
Paul Campbell, who co-starred in 2022’s “Three Wise Men and a Baby” — the most-watched cable movie of last year, which he co-wrote with Kimberley Sustad — told Vulture this month that writing and acting in Hallmark movies is “deceptively complicated.”
Several of his colleagues have echoed that sentiment recently, revealing just how hard it is to keep churning out successful rom-coms on the channel. In fact, other actors have tried and not returned after just one movie with the network, Campbell said.
Here’s what you need to know:
Paul Campbell Insists Hallmark Movies Are Not ‘Simple, Cheesy Stories’
HallmarkPaul Campbell, Andrew Walker and Tyler Hynes in “Three Wise Men & a Baby”
Though Hallmark movies are often chided for being formulaic and predictable, including being the subject of multiple “Saturday Night Live” spoofs, Campbell told Vulture that Hallmark’s success is nothing to scoff at.
“These movies are deceptively complicated,” he said. “Everyone goes, ‘Oh, what simple, cheesy stories.’ They’re not. They’re really complex in their simplicity. They’re hard to write, they’re hard to act, and they’re hard to create the feeling over and over again that everyone tunes in for.”
During the same interview with Vulture, Hallmark star Tyler Hynes said, “It’s so rare in any business, or any corner of entertainment, to make something that people want to consume. We’ve made a formula that works … What’s interesting is that Hallmark has created its sort of own subgenre, which now Hollywood is trying to impersonate.”
Campbell described that unique genre as “a feeling you can’t articulate,” but that Hallmark aims to evoke in each of its movies. He said that the network is increasingly “telling stories about people who have more damage and conflict,” but that in the end, each movie must still provide an escape for viewers with conflict resolved and love prevailing.
“There have been a lot of actors over the years who come in, do one movie, and don’t come back because they don’t quite get it,” he added.
In fact, in June 2023, programming head Lisa Hamilton Daly told Decider that she continually fields calls from people who want to jump on the bandwagon, including an unnamed “A-list actress” who was interested in doing a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie.
Hamilton Daly said, “We’ve attracted a lot of new creative partners who would never have (worked with Hallmark before.)… I think Hallmark was always beloved, but it’s expanded its audience, it’s expanded what it’s doing, and I think it’s just on a roll right now.”
Benjamin Ayres Says Making a Hallmark Script Sing Can Be ‘Very Hard’
HallmarkLaura Vandervoort and Benjamin Ayres in “Miracle in Bethlehem, PA”
Longtime Hallmark actor Benjamin Ayres, whose 2023 Christmas movie “Miracle in Bethlehem, PA” was one of Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ most successful premieres ever, agrees that the difficulty level of filming Hallmark movies is vastly underestimated. He recently told Heavy that he frequently hears from actors who want to film a Hallmark movie because they assume it would be a breeze.
“I think a lot of people think that Hallmark acting is a different kind of acting, and it’s not,” Ayres told Heavy. “In the world of Hallmark, we’re all expressing our feelings in every scene. And that actually is very hard.”
Those who try find out pretty quickly, he said, that it’s much harder than it looks to express and evoke emotion throughout a two-hour movie without each scene feeling inauthentic.
“It’s not easy to deliver that,” Ayres said. “(It can sound) so cheesy. If you just say the words, you’re dead. So you have to be good enough to sort of know how to dance through it and really have fun objectives and make it playful. Otherwise, it’s earnest and (viewers) are like, ‘I don’t know why, but I just don’t respond to that actor.’ And that’s the reason, because it can be difficult.”
“It’s not that it’s a different kind of acting,” Ayres continued. “It’s that you actually, I think, need to commit to it in a way that just takes some learning and practice. You could probably watch some of my first (Hallmark movies) and the later ones and I’m sure you’d see a growth there.”