Becca Tobin on Why Stephanie & Ben Are a ‘Great Match’ in ‘Sister of the Bride’
Q&A
Women can have it all — love and a career — and that’s exactly what Stephanie is after in the newest Hallmark Channel rom-com, Sister of the Bride.
In Becca Tobin’s latest movie with the network, she plays Stephanie, for whom everything seems to be falling into place when she’s up for tenure and her boyfriend of six months, Ben (Ryan Rottman), proposes. Upon returning home to share the news of their engagement with her family, she learns that her sister, Tracy (Chelsea Gilson), is also newly engaged.
TV Insider spoke with Tobin about Sister of the Bride and what draws her to Hallmark films.
Can you start by talking about your character? Where is Stephanie personally and professionally when the movie begins?
Becca Tobin: Stephanie is on track to make tenure as an anthropology professor, and she is in a really exciting place in her career because she’s one of the youngest in her field at the moment to be on track to doing that.
(Jack Zeman/Crown Media)
She is newly engaged to her boyfriend, and they hit a bit of a crossroads when he gets the opportunity of a lifetime for a job in Cambridge. The movie picks up in a place where they’ve just gotten engaged and he is up for this big job, so they’re figuring out what comes next.
So, let’s talk about Ben. Who is he and what makes him such a good match for Stephanie that getting engaged after six months is a no-brainer?
Ben is also a really career-driven man, and he’s kind and loving, and after six months, Stephanie talks about how she’s never felt this way about someone and even though it’s quick, it felt special and different. We’ve all been in those situations before.
They have an incredible connection, and from the beginning of the movie, you really do root for them as a couple because they have a lot of similarities with the career stuff, and they obviously are very family-oriented and they want a family of their own one day. They’re a great match, it’s just sometimes timing is really complicated with relationships.
They haven’t been dating too long, so are the challenges they face here the first real problems they’ve had in their relationship?
Yeah, they’re probably the biggest problems they’ve faced in six months and they’re pretty big problems, so they’ve been thrown into the fire off the bat.
(Brian Nolan/Crown Media)
How do the two of them work through conflict? Similar methods? Different ones?
They seem to deal with things similarly. At first, they both want to avoid and not really have to think about the different options because they’re waiting to get the final verdict on the job, and then they get the final verdict and they both are too afraid to talk about it because they love each other so much that they are both very scared to lose each other by discussing it.
Ultimately, they communicate and they voice their really true, honest opinions and feelings about the issue and they come to a conclusion.
Can you talk about Stephanie’s family? What are they like, especially in comparison to her, and how does she get along with each member?
Stephanie comes from a really, really tight family. She has a sister and her two parents, and they are all pretty similar, but Stephanie has definitely been the most impulsive of the family members. Her sister is an attorney, and she’s been very rational her whole life, and Stephanie operates a little bit more from her heart. You can see that [her family has] dealt with this her whole life, and they love her and accept her for it, but that’s definitely something that she does differently from the rest of the family.
(Jack Zeman/Crown Media)
How does Ben get along with Stephanie’s family?
At first, there’s a little bit of tension just because he’s spending time with my family for the first time, and it’s after a very quick engagement, so you can see that Stephanie’s dad is hesitant. It’s tense in the beginning, but Stephanie’s sister and mom really do love Ben from the get-go, so it is a nice thing to see.
Can you compare the sisters’ relationships? What do Stephanie and Ben admire about Tracy and Preston’s relationship, and what do Tracy and Preston admire about Stephanie and Ben’s?
Tracy and Preston have been together a lot longer, for several years before their engagement. They’re just a little bit more of the planners, but I think that Stephanie and Ben’s connection is just as deep. It’s just a different kind, but I think each sister respects the other and sees that Preston is such a good match and Ben is such a good match, even though they’re very different people.
You’ve now done two wedding movies and one Christmas movie now on Hallmark. Is there anything you’d like to tackle next on the network? Do you have anything else coming up?
Nothing’s coming up, but I always have such a good time doing these movies, so I really have no preference. I would love to do another Christmas movie. I think that that’s just such an incredible time of year for the network, and it’s just such a fun to be a part of, so that would be awesome, but again, I would do any type of project with the network because I’m just such a big fan and it’s always such an enjoyable experience.
A Song for Christmas (Christos Kalohoridis/Crown Media)
What draws you to these roles, where you know your character’s going to have a happy ending?
I really like that you know with Hallmark, you’re going to, most of the time, get that happy ending. We like seeing that, women, men, no matter where you come from or where you live or what your situation is, it’s always really nice to sit down and immerse yourself in this world of Hallmark. I’m really drawn to these projects and these characters because it’s always very positive and optimistic.
These roles are also really three-dimensional women. Stephanie, for instance, is a really family-oriented girl who wants a family of her own but also wants a really incredible career, and so that resonates with me a lot because that’s pretty much who I am and all the women in my life. I like being able to represent that for women and be able to say, “you can have it all and it’s okay to want it all.”
Sister of the Bride, Movie Premiere, Saturday, June 29, 9/8c, Hallmark Channel
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