NEED TO KNOW
- Mary McDonnell stars in her first-ever Hallmark Channel collection,Twelve Dates ‘Til Christmas, alongside Mae Whitman, Nathaniel Parker and Jane Seymour
- McDonnell tells ipromiseyoumedia about her newfound love of Hallmark Christmas films, which she says are “superb,” and reuniting with Whitman nearly 30 years after taking part in mom and daughter in Independence Day
- “She is only a gem, an absolute gem, so I am thrilled,” she says of Whitman
Mary McDonnell isn’t afraid to confess that Hallmark is her kryptonite.
The Dances with Wolves star, 73, tells ipromiseyoumedia that she wasn’t all the time tuning into the Hallmark Channel across the holidays — “generally I’d and generally not,” she says — however recently, that is modified.
“Within the final couple of years, I’ve simply gotten utterly addicted,” McDonnell admits from the Eire set of Twelve Dates ‘Til Christmas, the vacation collection she stars in alongside Mae Whitman, Nathaniel Parker and Jane Seymour.
She recollects a cellphone name along with her agent, Jonathan Energy, who known as in the midst of the afternoon sooner or later in December.
“He stated, ‘Are you busy? What are you doing?’ and I stated, ‘Nicely, I’m a little bit busy.’ He goes, ‘Nicely, what are you doing?’ and I stated, ‘Nicely, I am watching a Hallmark Christmas film.’ He goes, ‘At 4:00 within the afternoon on a Wednesday?’ and I stated, ‘Yeah, that is all I am doing proper now.’ ”
The dialog then shifted focus, “as a result of he loves them too,” she says, and when he requested whether or not she’d ever be concerned with starring in a single, her reply was: “In fact.”
“Now that I do know what they’re and the way superb [they are], and the way it’s supplying, for my part — it provides everybody — but it surely actually helps girls, as a result of romance is a really delicate factor and we’re shedding it, I really feel, as a technique to talk on this planet,” McDonnell says.
“And so whenever you go into these worlds and see [romance] enacted in such a wonderful and harmless manner time and again and once more, you actually begin to really feel prefer it’s doable. And I believe that is fantastic.”
In Twelve Dates ‘Til Christmas, McDonnell performs Delilah, mother to Kate (Whitman) and divorced from her father, Mac (Parker). Delilah is a “globe-trotting American all the time on an journey,” per the official synopsis, however she makes a shock look in Kate’s hometown of Blexford, England, across the holidays, throwing off each Kate and Mac’s plans.
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She says she was drawn to the position each due to her love of Hallmark and due to Whitman, 37, with whom she starred in Independence Day with in 1996, when Whitman was solely 7 years outdated.
“We’ve not seen one another for therefore lengthy, and he or she was so younger, but it surely actually actually felt like we had seen one another so much. There’s something there that is so simply there,” she says of reconnecting with the Parenthood star. “She is only a gem, an absolute gem, so I am thrilled.”
The primary two episodes of Twelve Dates ‘Til Christmas premiere Friday, Dec. 5 at 8 p.m. ET on the Hallmark Channel.
