Rachael Leigh Cook has been starring in Hallmark Channel movies for nearly 10 years now and she’s explaining why she initially resisted working with the network.
Over the years, Rachael has starred in nearly a dozen movies for Hallmark, working alongside leading men like Luke Macfarlane, Brendan Penny, and Niall Matter.
Rachael appeared on the I Love You So Much Podcast ILYSM and talked about how Hallmark played into the fears she had about herself, which connected to a disagreement she had with ex-husband Daniel Gillies.
One disagreement Daniel, my ex-husband, and I always had was, he was like, “You can’t handle challenging content.” And I was like, “That’s not true.”
That was 100% true, Daniel. You win. I’m still upset about this movie I saw that’s about a Japanese little boy who drowns in a bathrub. Like, I can still think about it and cry. I cannot handle challenging content.
Rachael then opened up about how this played into her thoughts on Hallmark.
So, my resistance to working for the Hallmark Channel was that I thought it was like, a little bit too soft. Like, it was sort of playing into my fears that I had about myself. And then I was just like, “Nah, screw it. This is who I am. I’m a huge cornball and I love love.” And so I went and I worked for them, and they’re so supportive of women and of their actors, and they’re honestly just doing so much that they don’t, like, handcuff you to the words and the punctuation [in scripts] and all of this stuff. They really give you a lot of creative freedom. So that was really empowering. So that sort of set me on a journey of, you know, wanting to tell stories. And I’ve always been so earnestly enthusiastic about the romantic comedy genre. I drink that Kool-Aid all day. I make it in my kitchen. It’s in my veins.
In the same interview, Rachael explained what went wrong in her marriage with Daniel and why they ended things.
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