©2022 Hallmark MediaAndie MacDowell stars in Hallmark Channel’s The Way Home, a fresh multigenerational family drama about single mother Kat Landry (Chyler Leigh), who, after some personal troubles, decides to return home to the small Canadian farm town of Port Haven with her 15-year-old daughter, Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow). Alice has never met her grandmother, Del (MacDowell), due to a long estrangement, and immediately goes about trying to understand what happened to leave her family so fractured. Luckily for her, and viewers, she is aided in her quest by some time travel back to 1999.
The former Groundhog Day and Cedar Cove star was excited to return to the network for a different approach to feel-good storytelling. “It’s different for Hallmark. I think it’s going to be something that surprises people in a really good way,” MacDowell says. “I was blown away by it. There are aspects of romance in it, but it’s more about relationships and family and how we carry the pain that we all carry and how we pass it on to each other.
“My storyline is about healing and empowerment and learning to open my heart,” MacDowell continues. “There’s a great loss in the pilot, and my daughter and I are estranged because of it. We don’t really have a relationship until a lot of things go wrong with her personal life, and she comes home out of desperation and brings my granddaughter. To me, that was huge, because I imagined what it would feel like to be a grandmother who never really got to know her granddaughter. I love that part of my storyline. It’s juicy.”
As a mother of three, playing this role came very naturally to MacDowell, as did donning her stunning, natural shade of gray. “This is something that I feel like I’ve earned,” MacDowell says. “I’m really proud of where I am in my life. Also, I want to help promote the idea that we are beautiful at every age, that we should be comfortable where we are. That we don’t need to be ashamed of where we are. We’re valuable. There’s a huge value to grandparents. My grandmother was a huge influence on my life. My memories of her are so strong and so vivid and powerful. I love being able to play that kind of character because I think we need to see more of those types of characters, where a grandmother is a grandmother, and she’s solid and comfortable in her skin being a role model as a grandmother. And that’s one thing that I really love about Del.”
Asked to rate the emotional side of the series with how many boxes of Kleenex viewers should bring, MacDowell said, “Oh, I think you’re going to need a lot of Kleenex.”
The Way Home premieres on Sunday, Jan. 15, at 9pm ET/PT on Hallmark Channel.
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