Alison Sweeney’s new movie, Reality Bites: A Hannah Swensen Mystery, will premiere on Thursday, February 6, on Hallmark Mystery. In the sixth installment of the series, Sweeney is not only the star and executive producer, she also wrote the script.
“I love true crime,” Sweeney says. “I love murder mysteries. I grew up watching Perry Mason and Columbo with my mom, so just getting to develop those ideas myself is fun. I enjoy imagining how the audience is going to perceive the mystery and the scenes and the clues and laying all that out. And then, of course, I love these characters. I love the actors and the cast, so it’s just really fun to live in this world and bring it to life.”
To make that happen, Sweeney says she puts herself in her characters’ shoes. “As I tell Barbara [Niven, Dolores], Gabe [Hogan, Norman], and Juliana [Wimbles, Lisa], I really do hear them in my head as I’m writing,” she shares of her process. “I start by developing the scene and an outline of what needs to happen in each scene, and then I start thinking, ‘OK, well, how would I get into that? How does the scene start?’ And I’m not kidding, I feel like the characters are alive in my brain, in my imagination, and they just start talking and arguing or doing crazy things and it just comes to life.”
Though she’s been hands-on with every film as an executive producer, Sweeney says she feels a deeper tie to the project when she’s the one penning the dialogue. “I’ve always felt really connected as the producer, more so than as an actor, because you’re in all the meetings, you’re part of casting, and you’re working with the prop department and looking at locations,” she explains. “But when you are the one who’s sitting there at the beginning with the germ of an idea and then putting it on the page and typing and then you send it on, and see it actually happening in real life, it’s a crazy experience to go through. There are whole meetings about what a pie is going to look like, or what kind of apple tart you want to make, or whatever. It’s just really cool.”
David Asorga/Hallmark
In Reality Bites, a famous TV baker comes to Lake Eden to film an episode of her series, and tragedy strikes when someone ends up dead. Including the behind-the-scenes aspects of how a TV show is made was an art imitates life moment for Sweeney, who began acting as a child. “That was the most fun for me,” she relays. “There were lengthy discussions about trying to be as accurate as we could be about the TV process. It was fun to talk through the logistics of which parts of the industry we’re going to show. Are we really going to peel back the onion? And then also, what is a little too ‘inside baseball’? In the original draft, there were some really deep cut, inside jokes about TV making that they were like, ‘Only you and a handful of people will understand that joke, Ali.’”
However, having the writer on set while production was underway made any issues easier to troubleshoot. “Things happen that you’re not expecting,” says Sweeney. “For example, there may not be a door where I thought there’d be a door, so now it takes longer to get out of a set, so I have to add another line of dialogue to account for that. Or, for example, with the cooking segments, the director said to me, ‘Well, she has to have something to say while this other stuff is going on,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, you’re right.’ So I had to add a couple of lines of dialogue at the last minute, and we got the idea to use cue cards because that’s old school. And so then, the prop department’s running around trying to get poster board and someone with nice handwriting. But that was all very 11th hour, which is just classic. You spend weeks preparing for something, and then inevitably, the thing you need most you think of 12 hours before you start shooting.”
In one scene, Hannah winds up with blueberry pie in her hair, which prompted lengthy discussions about how to film it most efficiently. “There were meetings and an alarm of, is it going to dye my hair?” relays Sweeney. “There were several elements to it that were stressful for people, and so we set it up to happen at the end of the day. We tested it on a wig to see if it stains the hair of the wig, which it did a little bit. We were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, OK, we have to wash it out right away.’ We had a washing station to make sure as soon as the take is over, we washed my hair immediately. But we also had to make sure there was enough blueberry in my hair that there’s a payoff. You don’t want it to just look like whipped cream. That felt like a cheat, so that was pretty fun.”
David Asorga/Hallmark
There’s also an intricate sequence and stunt involving a car and her costar Victor Webster (Chad Norton). “Victor, luckily, is very good at that and has had lots of experience,” Sweeney shares. “I have not had the opportunity to do a lot of stunt work for real, and so it’s really fun to get to write it in. You’ll see that in my writing, as much as possible, I’m going to add those kinds of scenes that I want to be in. I really think it turned out great.”
Though it’s Hallmark and there is certainly a spark between Hannah and Chad, romance is not the driving force of this movie. Nevertheless, Sweeney has added flirtatious undertones to suggest that could happen in the future. “I try to make the dynamic of the family, the dynamic of the romance, and the relationships just as satisfying to watch as the mystery because that’s what I like in the movies I watch over and over and again,” she offers. “I recently watched Pride and Prejudice with my daughter for, like, the 700th time, because there are certain moments, certain scenes, certain looks that you just can’t get enough of. So hopefully I’m giving the audience those feelings that they enjoy catching again when the movie is on again.”
Reality Bites: A Hannah Swensen Mystery, Thursday, February 6, 8/7c, Hallmark Mystery
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
