Danica McKellar on Angie’s Determination & Humor in ‘MatchMaker Mysteries’
Q&A
If you’re looking for a bit more humor with your crime-solving, then Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ MatchMaker Mysteries: A Killer Engagement is right up your alley.
“Among [Hallmark’s] mysteries, there is quite a bit more comedy than you see in one of the others,” Danica McKellar told TV Insider. “We wanted to make that a flavor of this one.”
McKellar stars as professional matchmaker Angie Dove, who begins her own investigation when one of her couples is at the center of a murder case: her friend, Aaron (Randy Thomas) is accused of killing his fiancée. She crosses paths with Detective Kyle Carter (Victor Webster) and must find a way to juggle finding clues and interviewing witnesses and suspects with continuing to work on her popular reality show.
Here, McKellar previews the newest offering in Hallmark’s mysteries.
How does Angie’s attention to detail help her in her daily life, with her matchmaking, and during the investigation?
Danica McKellar: Angie Dove has been a matchmaker her whole life. She’s really good at reading people and she notices every detail. She’s great at body language, noticing what somebody’s saying versus what they really mean. Are they telling the truth? Are they lying? … She’s [also good at] evaluating character. When you’re talking to potential suspects, that’s very useful.
But Angie struggles with her own love life, right?
Yeah. She dates but nothing ever lasts. There might be some interest between her and the detective. In this first movie, it doesn’t get very far, but she’s not comfortable necessarily with her own love life. She’s great with everyone else’s.
(Albert Camicioli/Crown Media)
Focusing on the case, it involves one of the couples she matched, so how does she avoid letting her bias influence her own investigation?
Angie Dove knows them both really well and is absolutely positive that Aaron wouldn’t have done it. It’s not so much that there’s a bias involved, but Angie is really good at reading character and evaluating people and knowing what kind of a person she’s dealing with, even within moments of meeting them. So, it’s the fact she knows Aaron’s innocent, which is part of what makes her so determined to solve the case. That’s why she gets involved, because she knows this is an injustice going on.
Also, she’s got The MatchMaker show, and if it gets out that this couple she set up, that the guy killed his fiancée, that would not be good for business.
Speaking of Angie’s ability to read people, what’s her impression of Detective Kyle Carter and how does that change as she gets to know him?
She never says it out loud, but he is pigheaded. He’s not listening to what Angie’s saying, that [Aaron’s] innocent, in fact just the opposite. Kyle uses some of the things Angie says about Aaron to incriminate him because Emma goes upstairs at the engagement party, and when she comes downstairs, she dies, and it’s been revealed she was stabbed. Before she goes upstairs, she looks troubled. This is what Angie tells Detective Carter, so he thinks this indicates some pre-marital arguing.
Detective Carter uses Angie’s own words against her, so Angie finds Kyle to be somebody she has to push past in many circumstances and ignore to get the job done she’s trying to do, which is to prove Aaron’s innocent. They end up working together, ultimately, but even by the end of the movie, they never really got along very well, so it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves in future movies.
(Albert Camicioli/Crown Media)
If Angie was trying to play matchmaker for Kyle, who would she be looking for?
The only indication of Angie thinking about Kyle as somebody to set up on a date would be when they’re on a stakeout and Kyle says, ‘there are plenty of women who would be perfectly happy with me who I’d be perfectly happy with,’ and Angie goes, ‘uh-huh,” indicating Kyle is not easy to get along with. It would take a very particular kind of woman with probably a lot of patience to be a match with him.
Angie is still running her matchmaking show throughout the movie. How does juggling that and her investigation go?
It’s so fun, and it’s part of where the comedy comes in, the fact that we’re juxtaposing Angie’s matchmaking with solving a murder. She’ll be working on one thing when she suddenly gets an idea for the other. She’ll be undercover trying to find out about a suspect when she suddenly sees the right restaurant for this date she’s been trying to work out for two of her clients, or she’ll be on that date for the two clients filming it when she suddenly gets a realization about a piece of evidence.
What’s Angie’s relationship like with her father?
Nick Colomba is a retired detective, and he is observing the case from afar. Of course he doesn’t want his daughter to get in any dangerous situations, so at the beginning he tries to dissuade her from being involved, but he knows how determined his daughter is. He provides a little guidance here and there all the while wanting her to stay at arm’s length and not get in trouble.
What about the other people in Angie’s life? Who’s the most and least supportive of her crime-solving?
Nobody is really supportive. Even her producer, Paige, who is supportive in some ways, really wants her to focus. There are times [Angie’s] running to set and she’s late, and [Paige is] like, “What are you doing? We have a show to do.” Paige cares about the case, but mostly she cares about the show and staying on schedule. Angie’s just determined on her own.
(Albert Camicioli/Crown Media)
Will there be more Matchmaker Mysteries?
That is the plan. Next year we should see a few more.
MatchMaker Mysteries: A Killer Engagement, Movie Premiere, Sunday, October 6, 9/8c, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries
