‘Virgin River’ Star Alexandra Breckenridge on Mel’s Shocking News for Jack
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Virgin River Season 3.]
The good news: Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) and Jack (Martin Henderson) are back together after breaking up — she wanted kids, he wasn’t so sure — by the end of Virgin River Season 3. The bad news: There’s a major complication.
As he’s ready to propose, she drops a bombshell on him: She’s pregnant. Wait, shouldn’t that be great news? Yes, but … she doesn’t know if he’s the father. While they were broken up, she visited her sister, who reminded her of the two embryos she and her late husband Mark (Daniel Gillies) had left.
So whose baby is it? TV Insider turned to Breckenridge to get her take on that, Mel and Jack’s relationship, and more.
Whose baby do you think it is?
Alexandra Breckenridge: I can tell you that I hope that it’s Jack’s baby, but I don’t know. That might be wishful thinking.
Does any part of Mel want the baby to be Mark’s since it would be a way for him to live on?
She was pretty conflicted about that from the inception of the idea when Joey brought it up with her, so I would say maybe a small part of her. She was definitely more comfortable with that idea when she thought that Jack and her were truly breaking up. But I think once they got back together, she thought, “Well, the likelihood of me getting pregnant is so small.” I think that after she found out she was pregnant, it brought on a lot of complicated feelings for her — obviously, you can see it on her face — so maybe a tiny part. But I think at this point she mostly wants it to be Jack’s. That’s who she’s currently in love with. Of course, she loves Mark, but they’re not in a relationship anymore. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to say about somebody that’s passed away.
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Speaking of those complicated feelings, she wants to be a mother, but the timing of it…
It’s a double-edged sword for her until she knows the paternity and she doesn’t know how Jack is going to react also because she knows she has to be honest with him. Obviously, she dropped that bomb at the end when he asks her to marry him, which is the saddest thing ever. It’s a moment that you want to happen so badly and then she’s like, “I’m pregnant,” and he’s like, “Oh, that’s amazing.” “I don’t know if you’re the father,” which leads him to believe, “Oh my gosh, did you sleep with somebody when we broke up for that one day?” Luckily that was not the case. She’s just going through a lot of emotional turmoil about it and if there’s a Season 4, we’ll obviously explore that a lot. But at the end of the season, she’s very torn about it.
Speaking of the proposal, is Mel ready to marry Jack? They did just get back together.
I know. A couple of weeks have passed. That’s not much time. Mel ultimately loves Jack and wants to be with him and wants to marry him, absolutely. When he asks her, it is a little bit shocking and I’m not entirely sure, but my first inclination is she would have said yes. However, just because you want to say yes in that moment… She doesn’t not love him. She doesn’t not want to be with him. And he certainly came back and said, “I’m all in and I promise that I’ll be with you and I won’t turn my back on you again.” I think she fully believes that at this point. I want to say she would’ve said yes.
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Yeah. And there’s also just so much going on besides them because Lilly [Lynda Boyd] died. Hope’s [Annette O’Toole] in the hospital. It’s just a lot going on in a very short period of time. And then to have the pregnancy and the proposal…
It is. It’s a lot. The proposal is a huge moment for Jack and the fact that Hope is clinging to her life in the hospital makes it kind of a strange time to propose. But I think Jack’s point is that he loves Mel so much, he doesn’t want to waste another moment, seeing how fragile life is.
When Mel talked to her sister in Episode 8, she said she was considering moving back to Los Angeles but whenever she’s in Virgin River, it does seem like she’s home. Is there always going to be that pull for the city versus the small town for her?
She loves living in Virgin River. I think she’s adjusted to small-town life in a way that she wasn’t expecting when she moved there. When she moved there, she was trying to escape herself. She was trying to escape the loss of her husband and the loss of her baby and all of that emotional baggage she was running away from. But obviously, you can’t run away from your emotions and I think she’s been able to heal a great deal since being there. And I think Jack’s really helped her with that process. Personally, I think that Mel loves Virgin River now. I don’t think she wants to leave. I think she wanted to leave when she thought her and Jack were breaking up and her sister needed her. And so there were multiple things at play when she was considering that.
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You can’t blame her. Virgin River is gorgeous.
It is. And they have such a sense of community there that you don’t get in the big city necessarily.
What makes Mel and Brie’s [Zibby Allen] friendship work so well? Because I’ve really enjoyed the fact that it’s very much separate from who Jack is to both of them.
Yeah, I love the character of Brie and I love Zibby Allen who plays Brie. She’s such a phenomenal actress and the emotional arc that she carried through the third season was such a joy to watch. She’s so much fun to work with. I’m really excited that we get to continue that relationship in the future if we do have a Season 4 — hopefully that happens.
We personally as just people clicked pretty instantaneously. I think we have the same kind of sense of humor and that carried over onscreen because Brie and Mel have a similar sense of humor and they’re both smart, intelligent, independent women. But they’ve also been through incredible heartbreak and incredible circumstances. There are many layers to that relationship that they have been able to bond over, and Mel desperately needed a female friend, I think, besides Hope.
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Doc [Tim Matheson] finally confides in Mel about his health in Episode 7, but we don’t see too much of how she handles it. What might another doctor coming in as a replacement eventually mean for her continued work at the clinic? Would she stay on?
That’s a really, really good question. I think that now that Jack and Mel are back together — we’ll see though. Who knows? If there is [a Season 4], we don’t know how Jack’s going to react. We truly don’t. So if they split up again and she’s pregnant, she might move back to Los Angeles to be with her sister, because she probably wants that kind of support. And if that’s not the case, if she and Jack stay together, I’m sure she would stay on in the clinic because she loves what she does. She’s devoted to her job through and through.
Mel hasn’t been too involved in the Charmaine [Lauren Hammersley] situation. Where does she stand?
Charmaine has really been in and out. She’s not as present in the third season, mainly because she has a new relationship and she’s not trying to get Jack to stay with her anymore. She’s understood that that part of her life has ended in that way [and] moving forward they’ll have a different relationship. Mel’s fine with Charmaine. She doesn’t particularly like Charmaine. They haven’t got along very well for obvious reasons. I’m sure she’s relieved that she doesn’t have to see her that much. Because Charmaine can be difficult. She can cause a lot of problems.
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And now there’s a whole question of who’s going to be the father to the twins?
Yeah. And that’s really difficult because, with mothers versus fathers, courts tend to side with mothers, but I don’t know a whole lot about that. It just sounds very intense. That storyline weighs heavy on Jack, obviously, throughout the season.
With Brady [Benjamin Hollingsworth] insisting he’s innocent, do you believe him and who do you think shot Jack?
Well, I know who shot Jack. [Laughs] Brady certainly comes across as innocent to me in the show, regardless of the information that I know. I think he appears to be innocent, so maybe Charmaine shot Jack.
I’m a little suspicious of Mike [Marco Grazzini], to be honest.
I know! Wasn’t that an interesting little twist that they put in there where Brady comes to the bar drunk and he’s like, well, you’re not innocent either? I was like, “Ooh, what did he do?” I don’t know anything about that.
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How do you think Mel’s life would be going if she had never come to Virgin River?
I never considered that. I think that her life would be a lot more lonely than it is now if she stayed in Los Angeles. I think that she would have held onto her grief longer and probably made some poor decisions in dating.
Virgin River, Season 3, Streaming Now, Netflix
