Kristoffer Polaha Looks Back on His Hallmark Rom-Coms, From ‘Dater’s Handbook’ to ‘Small Town Christmas’
Kristoffer Polaha has done several Hallmark movies over the years, going back to his first in 2016, Dater’s Handbook and his most recent being 2023’s A Winning Team. While talking with TV Insider about the latter, he shared that one with a June wedding is on his bucket list. Is anything else?
“I love the mystery audience, and I love that genre, so I would love to get to start asking the question ‘Whodunit?’ again with Hallmark, and who knows, maybe I will in some way or another,” he shared, noting that the last Mystery 101 did end with a loose thread. “I have a couple ideas, but I also really love trusting [SVP, Casting, Crown Media Family Networks] Penny Perry. She does such an amazing job. The network knows how to take care of their actors when you’re in that family. In my whole 23-year career, I’ve never felt a greater sense of collaboration and weirdly companionship with a network that I do with Hallmark and the people that work there. It’s a really wonderful place to work.”
He continued, “I think what happens is actors in other places, they have this sense of actor-ship, but Hallmark, you genuinely start truly feeling like a coworker. There are some people in front of the camera, but most of the people are behind it. But we’re all just coworkers, and we’re joining our hearts and minds and our youthful energy to telling great stories and they’re really doing a good job at it. … I don’t think I’ve turned down [a script from Hallmark] yet. I think every script I’ve read, been offered, I’ve said yes to because each one of them, either the character is so awesome and I’ve loved it or the story itself was something that I just couldn’t not say yes to.”
Polaha also has A Biltmore Christmas coming up for Hallmark’s 2023 Christmas lineup. “When I got that script, I read it, it was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Yes, absolutely,'” he said.
We invited Polaha to take a look at some of his Hallmark rom-coms and share what stands out about them. Scroll down to see what he had to say about Dater’s Handbook, We Wish You a Married Christmas, Rocky Mountain Christmas, and more, including that cameo in 2022’s Haul Out the Holly. As for who he’d like to make a cameo in one of his Hallmark movies? Besides the actor who “owes [him] one” after his, his pick is Brendan Fraser.
Dater’s Handbook (2016)
“That one was a great entry point because Meghan [Markle] and I hit it off like gangbusters, and we had the best time making that movie. If you notice, we go to play miniature golf, and there are dinosaurs in the miniature golf course it was almost like a time travel thing because I ended up doing Jurassic World about two years later. That movie became special because, obviously here was a movie that we didn’t think many people would see beyond — we didn’t understand what Hallmark was at the time, neither one of us. And then of course, Meghan met Harry later that year and the entire Commonwealth watched that movie over and over and over again. That was kind of the high point of that, getting to know her.”
Hearts of Christmas (2016)
“Emilie Ullerup up taught me ‘glædelig jul,’ which means Merry Christmas in Danish. And we had a great time filming that. I remember Chris McNally had a really small part as a dad of a NICU baby. That movie, when it aired, touched a lot of people’s hearts because a lot of people had experienced the kindness of nurses and the kindness of doctors in the NICU unit and had gone through that themselves. And so that was a really beautiful movie to tell. And I got to meet Monika Mitchell, who was our director, fantastic director. She said something very interesting to me. She was like, ‘Hallmark movies, millions of people watch them. I spent three years directing an independent feature, which I think a total of maybe a hundred thousand people have seen. And sure it won some awards. But I want to be a populist.’ That was my second movie. And I thought, ‘You know what? She’s not wrong. Better to tell the stories that everybody sees than to tell a story that not that many people watch.'”
Rocky Mountain Christmas (2017)
“[That] was early on one of the fan favorites, but also working with Lindy Booth and Treat Williams — and Mike Larkin produced that — it was just a really cool movie to make. There was almost like this looking glass effect with Hallmark movies because I played a movie star coming back to a small town, and then that aired, and then that February I got cast in Wonder Woman and all of a sudden it was like my life was imitating art.”
Small Town Christmas (2018)
“[That] started out as a wild, wild, sort of — There was a stepmom, like an evil stepmom, and Preston Vanderslice was going to be her evil stepson and they were going to take over the town. And I remember when I came on board, I said, ‘If this is the story that we’re telling, the only way it’s going to work is if we do it like he’s Potter and I’m Jimmy Stewart from It’s A Wonderful Life.’ And I said, ‘I’ll do it if I can do Jimmy Stewart.’ And they said, ‘OK.’ And so literally, if you watch that whole movie, everything he says is a little bit like Jimmy Stewart, and I got away with it and everybody on the network was like, ‘Go for it, dude.’ And we had a blast. … And it was about novelists and a romance novel and I started writing romance novels in real life, [so] it was [again] like my life was imitating art.”
A Dickens of a Holiday! (2021)
“[That] really was just such a joy to make and the audience receives it equally joyfully . It was fun because I got to act in a way that a theater actor gets to act, like I got to go deep. And there was a full 360-degree revolution of character. Brooke D’Orsay was just a dream to work with, so encouraging, and we had so much fun.”
We Wish You a Married Christmas (2022)
“[It] had an alpaca in it, and it was the only movie I’ve shot in Winnipeg. So between Winnipeg and an alpaca, it stands alone. We shot that in May and it was so hot and there were mosquitoes and we were in full Christmas outfits. It was interesting but fun. And a lot of people reached out on social media and they said, ‘We’re so glad that Hallmark made a movie about a married couple finding love again because we are there now or we have been there,’ and I think telling stories about people who are married is equally as important as telling stories about people who find love for the first time.”
Haul Out the Holly (2022)
“That was [Hallmark Media’s SVP, Programming & Development] Samantha DiPippo. She is the mastermind behind the Christmas cameos and creating that. Andrew Walker walked on Tyler Hynes’ An Unexpected Christmas the season before. And the audience loved it. They were filming at the same time. And I think Tyler then did it for Andrew. And they were like, ‘Ooh, I think we have something.’ And Wes [Brown] and I are good buddies. The plan got made at the beginning of the summer, and they knew they were going to film that in September and they said, ‘Would you come and do a cameo?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ And they said, ‘Just go for it.’ And turnabout’s fair play. So you never know when Wes will show up in one of my movies. [He] owes me one.
