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With an unprecedented five Hallmark movies premiering between October 18 and November 30, 2024, Tyler Hynes is one of Hallmark Media’s busiest and most sought-after stars. He’s part of “The Groomsmen” trilogy on Hallmark+ debuting in October, the highly-anticipated sequel to “Three Wise Men and a Baby” on November 23, and the highly-publicized “Holiday Romance: A Chiefs Love Story” on November 30.
But somehow, Hynes has also found time for a side job: serving as fellow Hallmark star Kimberley Sustad‘s unofficial, always-on-call social media assistant.
Sustad revealed how much she leans on Hynes during an interview on the “Girls Gone Hallmark” podcast about her newest Hallmark Channel movie, “The Real West,” on September 28. As they discussed a rare Instagram reel she had posted, featuring picturesque behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot, Sustad said she couldn’t have done it without Hynes.
Though posting such videos is a fairly common strategy among Hallmark stars to promote their upcoming movies, Sustad felt like her video was a small miracle, given her aversion to technology and social media. Sustad revealed that not only was the video inspired by Hynes, who regularly shares Instagram reels featuring gorgeous views and creative editing, but was only made possible with his help.
“He has sat so many times trying to teach me how to make a reel,” Sustad laughed, admitting that she regularly counts on him to help her, even interrupting him on vacation, because she’s “technologically unable” to do it on her own.
Kimberley Sustad Says After All of His Help, ‘I’m Trying to Make Tyler Hynes Proud’
Sustad has become a sought-after screenwriter for Hallmark, penning hits like “Three Wise Men and a Baby” and “Christmas by Starlight” with fellow actor Paul Campbell, which means she’s spent lots of time behind-the-scenes of movies with Hynes, observing him as he collects and edits footage to share with fans.
“I have written many movies for him and I’m around him all the time on these movies, behind the scenes,” she told “Girls Gone Hallmark” co-hosts Megan and Wendy. “I’ll watch him put these things together. I’m so technologically unable that he’ll just sit with me.”
“I can’t get it together,” Sustad said incredulously. “He’ll capture everything on his phone and then, somehow, he gets it into the reels on Instagram. I have no idea how to do that.”
But she’s trying, she said, adding, “I’m trying to make Tyler Hynes proud.”
Estimating that Hynes has spent “hours” trying to help her, Sustad admitted, “He’s on vacation sometimes and I’m calling him going, ‘Ok, how do I put music to the things?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh my god, Kimmy, just Google it!’ I’m like, ‘I can’t. I can’t Google it, it doesn’t go in my brain. So please just help me again.'”
“And he’s like, ‘Oh. Oh my gosh,’ and he’ll stop what he’s doing and be like, ‘Okay, no press the thing. Great. Set it to the music. Okay, you got that? All right, bye, hon.'”
Sustad said she did notice Hynes commented on her latest reel, writing “Giddy up.” She quipped that it’s affirmation that “he knows” she’s doing her best to make him proud. But the one piece of advice from Hynes she hasn’t taken to heart is to post more frequently on the platform.
“He keeps telling me to post more because people want to see,” she said, admitting that anxiety keeps her from doing so. “Like, every time you go to post something, there’s this wildly insecure thing that always pops up. I go, ‘Oh, that’s so dumb. Like, nobody is going to think that’s cool.'”
Kimberley Sustad Did Tap Into a Lifelong Skill for New Movie
Though Sustad might not be proficient at social media, she does have a penchant for working with horses, which came in handy for filming “The Real West,” which premieres on Hallmark Channel on September 28.
The brainchild of co-star James Denton, Hallmark’s synopsis of “The Real West” says it’s about a widowed professor who “heads to Mustang Point Ranch for a family vacation with her two sons, eager to escape her busy life as she chases tenure at her university,” and finds unexpected love with Jake West (played by Lucas Bryant), a “rugged cowboy” who’s never settled down.
Sustad said on the “Girls Gone Hallmark” podcast that her mom raised Arabian horses, so “we had horses our whole life.”
Though Sustad admitted she wasn’t very passionate about horses as a kid, she said, “You know that thing when your parents used to force you to play piano or something like that, and then you have that skill and you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I really love this” when you’re an adult? It felt that way to finally use a skill that I have had for so long and never used, you know, for anything other than just going riding with my mom. So it was really lovely that Hallmark helped me realize that dream.”
On the September 24 episode of the “Dear Hallmark” podcast, Sustad said she convinced the horse wrangler on set that because of her background with horses she could “do all my own stunts.” But every time she got on one of the trained horses, she said, he wouldn’t follow her direction.
“I’m like, ‘No, I swear to you I know how to ride,'” Sustad laughed. “I’m like, doing my best to get this horse to move and it was a challenge, for sure. I thought it was gonna be a lot easier and then, of course, I built myself up to everyone and they were all like, ‘Sure. Sure you grew up riding horses.'”
“The Real West” premieres on September 28 at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Hallmark Channel.
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