The Way Home Cast Opens Up About How Different The Show Is For Hallmark, That Car Crash Scene, and What To Expect In Season 2
*** The Way Home is currently in production on Season 2 and is operating within strike rules under Global Rule 1. These rules allow the cast to participate in promotion of the show.***
In Hallmark Channel’s The Way Home, three generations of Landry women embark on a time travel adventure to find their way back to each other while learning important lessons about their family’s past. Kristen Maldonado of Pop Culture Planet spoke with Chyler Leigh, Evan Williams, and Sadie LaFlamme-Snow at New York Comic Con about how different the show is for Hallmark, exploring relatable themes of mental health and grief in this magical world of time travel, and what we can expect in season 2.
The cast was “grateful” to get the first two scripts at once to really understand where the story was going. They knew immediately this was something different for Hallmark. “Definitely one of the biggest selling points for me was the fact that we were taking something that was really groundbreaking for [Hallmark Channel],” Leigh told me. “[They] really got this opportunity to shine and do something darker and meatier.”
“Flip the script,” chimed in Williams. “I think that a lot of Hallmark viewers were sort of trained to expect a certain type of product. There's a lot of different surprising things about this show, not just the the subject matter and the way we're treating it, but also the writing. The way that you have no idea what's coming. There's so many cliffhangers, so many exciting things.”
Leigh expressed how many members of the team from writers to directors to crew members have said “that’s not Hallmark” when it comes to what this show is bringing audiences. “Not to say anything obviously against Hallmark, but that’s a testament to what we’re doing. It hasn’t been Hallmark…” she said, with Williams joining in: “But it is now.”
Something that really surprised the cast was the fan reaction to Easter eggs and trying to figure out the mystery. “Once you start going back and you watch it, it's like that sixth sense kind of thing, where you see the red door knobs. There's not literally red door knobs, we don't see see dead people. Well…” Leigh backtracked as, due to the power of time travel, we do get to see people who have past in a manner. Williams added: “We had no way of knowing how deep into this the fans were going to get. We have so many people on the Internet telling us that they've watched the show three, four times over just to try to find all the little clues and really nerding out on the predictions and what they think is going on.”
“People were getting really into the theories and I think it was something I didn't really expect because you're so emotionally invested in it,” said LaFlamme-Snow. “It was really fun for us to watch along and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, they saw it! They saw! This is so cool.’”
One of the most shocking reveals of the season happened around Colton’s car crash. “That was a night. I mean it's a huge thing to reveal so late in the season. This thing that so much of the plot has been centered around hinges on our two characters. It was exciting but we also shooting it had no idea. So it was both exciting to shoot because we knew how much of a reveal it was going to be and also like, ‘Okay, where are we going after this happens?' ‘Cause nothing could ever be the same after that,” shared Leigh. “It was a very real, raw, guttural several hours in that time. It was exhausting in the most wonderful ways because we knew what the payoff was going to be and that in and of itself was just such a gift. Jefferson Brown, who plays Colton, is just one of the coolest, goofiest, loveliest people on the planet so to be part of that experience with him was amazing ‘cause he and I hadn't really had many scenes together. Anytime you saw him it was with Alex Hook who's teen Kat. So for me it was like, ‘Oh, this is heavy.’ I got asked if I released some demons in there in those moments. I was like, ‘Yeah, I sure as hell did.’”
It all ties back to the lore of the pond and how it allows the Landry family to time travel. “Elliot is the one who trying to make sense of it all and has trying to do it for 20 years and has been all through the first season saying, ‘What happens will always happen. You can't go back and change anything.’ But, now that we know that they’re trying to change things is what resulted in things always having been the same, it ties it all in this Gordian Knot. I think that we’re going to be doing a lot of further investigation in the coming season and things just continue to spiral. There's a momentum that started at the beginning of the show and I think it's a testament to audiences that they're following us too. The idea on paper that something happens with the car crash and everything was a tantalizing idea, but then when we actually got into shooting it there was a kind of a moment in the production where everyone was sort of like, ‘Are we going to get away with this? Are audiences going to follow? Are they going to be rewarded by this?” Williams shared. “Balancing the unknown and the devastation with heart and real connection and storytelling… that is paying off.”
The actors were especially proud of how real and relatable the show has been when it comes to mental health and grief. “Making these characters flawed and making these characters really genuinely struggling with something or just really relatable, that's what we wanted to do. This was one of the greatest compliments that we got was, no matter what the audience — like the demographic — was, everybody was coming in and saying, ‘I can find myself in one of these characters somewhere.’ These are people that just like the characters are very flawed and going through real situations in real time. Even being able to speak to panic attacks or mental health and things like that, it was real. That’s how it goes,” revealed Leigh. “I’ve had panic attacks all my life, so to be able to do that and do it in a way that’s actually as scary as it really is and not just like a fluffy version of it.”
“You get to see […] with the family how it takes time for people to unpack what's happened and that people's approaches aren't wrong. I think we can like all identify with the different generations in different ways and I think that's a good thing for people to see,” LaFlamme-Snow said, with Williams adding: “It does a good job of relating to grief as a state of being as opposed to an action. Grieving is different for everybody.”
While the cast doesn’t know about potentially traveling to the future through the pond, they did share what we can expect to see more of in season 2. “The audience has an opportunity to see the founding fathers and the birth of the whole Landry lineage. What that looks like and how everything in the now for them in the 2024 started here. The spider web that was weaved,” enthused Leigh about going back to 1814. “It's so much to take in for season 2. I'm so excited for people to see where these characters came from.”
“We're really investigating a lot of the mysteries that were brought up in season 1, but any question that's answered is replaced by more and more questions and that's just the rabbit hole. There's no bottom to it,” the trio said together.
According to LaFlamme-Snow, the possibilities of where they can go next are endless. “By having that little teaser of going back to 1814 you just realize how long this — I don't know if it's a gift or a curse of the pond — is and that just opens up such a huge world of possibilities,” she shared. “I think our audience is ready for all that so we're lucky that we get to to do it again.”
Stream the first season of The Way Home on Hallmark Movies Now or Hallmark TV.
