Tis the season for Sarah Drew to solve more Mistletoe Murders. The fan-favorite actress is back in the lead role of Emily Lane for Season 2 of the Hallmark series. And the biggest mystery remains, who exactly is Emily Lane?

Ahead of the Season 2 premiere, TVBrittanyF.com spoke to Sarah about getting to dig further into Emily—and Emily’s romantic tension with Sam Wilner—in the new episodes. How much will viewers learn? Plus, Sarah spoke about producing Mistletoe Murders as part of a multi-hyphenate career that also includes writing and directing.

Brittany Frederick: Hallmark fans love you as Emily Lane, but they might not know that you’re also a producer on Mistletoe Murders. You’ve also directed and written, too. Were you always interested in doing so many different things in your career?

Sarah Drew: In high school and college, I was always writing and directing and in leadership roles, leading little Bible studies and things like that. So I had this sort of desire to be in a leadership position forever; it’s always kind of been a part of me. But when my career started, it was just mainly the acting gigs that were the opportunities that I was able to have.

I started producing on a movie called Indivisible, which was offered to me just as a lead character in it. But I said actually, you know what? I think I’d like to executive produce this. If you’ll have me as an executive producer, I would love to star in it as well. And that kind of bit the bug for me for directing. So then I went back to Grey’s [Anatomy] and ended up directing a web series for them, which went to the Emmys, which was so fun. That’s kind of how it all started.

The writing was actually fun, because I had just done a Christmas movie for Lifetime and worked with these amazing producers. I pitched an idea for them for another Christmas movie, and I was like, so we should probably just find a writer to write it. And these amazing women were like actually, no, you should go get Final Draft and sit down and write it. You just gave us a pitch and we saw the whole movie play out while you were giving us the pitch. You know the people, you know what dialogue works. You’ve been in this industry long enough to know to know how to tell a story. I went home, I got Final Draft, and I banged out that first draft in three weeks. So then that’s been a really fun part, too. I really love all of it.

Does that additional perspective help you when you’re acting? Or do you decide to compartmentalize in that sense?

First of all, I’ll read the script and I like to give ideas and notes to the writer, director, whoever if that’s allowable in the situation—just so that we’re not trying to figure it out on the day, because things are usually moving really fast. Once we’re there and we’re blocking it, if the blocking that I’m being given doesn’t make sense logically from the perspective of playing the beats and playing the moments, I always use my voice and I always collaborate in that way.

So for me, it’s a very holistic process. But once I’m in the scene and doing the scene, and we’ve figured out all the mechanics of the blocking and where the scene is going to go, I don’t think about anything except the scene I’m playing as the actor.

I care about props. I care about blocking. I care about logic. I care about where did we just come from? I care about continuity. Those things never leave my brain. Those are with me at all times, but it generally flows from the perspective of well, where did my character come from? Where am I going to? Is this all going to connect? If it’s not going to connect, I should say something.

The setup of Mistletoe Murders requires you to have a great scene partner, and you do in Peter Mooney, who plays Sam Wilner. What’s it been like to work with him and develop that chemistry?

Peter Mooney and I are both very warm and welcoming humans, just in general, so it was very easy for us to just immediately jump into a flow or a rhythm. But I recognized the ability to connect with him on our first Zoom that we had. I ended up testing with like five different guys, and he was the first one who read, and I just was like, this is the guy. We also have a friend in common that we both love very, very much, and so having that connection was really sweet. We immediately connected over our shared friend.

But then I realized he’s got this phenomenal sense of humor. We were joking around immediately on the Zoom, and then we went and got coffee together in Pasadena, before we wound up showing up in Toronto, and hung out and chatted for hours and and got to know each other. I’m so lucky because we get along so well. And he’s such a great actor as well, and he’s such a great leader too. He shows up. He knows his stuff. He’s so kind to everyone on set. We co-lead together. It’s really fun.

Mistletoe Murders fans are waiting to see how Emily and Sam’s relationship evolves in Season 2, as well as learn more about Emily. What stood out to you this season?

A lot of people, at the end of the first season, the main thing they wanted was more of Emily’s backstory. They were really excited to learn more about who she was. So what’s really fun about Season 2is that we have tons of flashbacks; we really get to take her historical journey over the course of many years. We have a young actress playing a young me for the first few episodes, and then I get to come in and play a younger version of myself in future episodes. We learn a lot more about where she came from.

People love the romance, obviously, between Sam and Emily, and it’s there and it’s more layered, because they have this giant barrier—the one thing that’s keeping them from being together is this question of who she is. She’s unwilling to let him in, and he’s unwilling to move forward without being let in. But they wind up being thrust together because there’s a case that happens at Violet’s school in the first two episodes, Watching them get thrust together again, but this time, there’s a little bit of pent-up frustration. There’s some anger and a bit of fighting, but the fighting is always heated and spicy, because you know they are attracted to each other. There’s more depth and more layers to their relationship in this season, which I think the audience is really going to love.

The other thing is that all of our victims we really care about, because they matter very specifically to people that we really know and love at this point. There’s a lot of heart, there’s a lot of comedy, there’s a lot of action. It’s all fun.

Mistletoe Murders airs Fridays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel. Photo Credit: Sarah Krick/Courtesy of Conscious Living PR.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.