The Lifetime original movie When I Said I Do brings together two wonderful actors in Sarah Drew and Eric Johnson. Mistletoe Murders star Sarah plays Ali Corley, a search and rescue K9 handler whose life was forever changed by the death of her husband. Condor and Rookie Blue alum Eric portrays Shane Willis, a fellow rescue operator who makes a connection with Ali that may be able to help them both.
Based on the song of the same name by Clint Black and Lisa Hartman Black, When I Said I Do is a movie that will hit audiences right in the heart. But it’s also charming, funny and fun—in large part thanks to its stars. Sarah and Eric joined TVBrittanyF.com for an interview to talk about building their characters, their on-screen chemistry and why making the movie was so memorable.
Brittany Frederick: What was it about When I Said I Do or about your characters that made you excited about the movie?
Sarah Drew: I read the script and fell in love with it because I thought it embodied so many different things. There was a very juicy, delightful romance that I was very excited about there. All of the family dynamics were really, really fun. There’s a lot of humor in it.
My character gets to go through a lot of stuff. She’s got a lot of layers to her. She’s still grieving, in a lot of ways, the loss of her husband. It was a juicy character and a juicy story to tell that started in a place of of pain and loss, and kind of takes this journey of ups and downs and gets to this place of beautiful hope and love. It’s like all the things that I love. Also, the adventure is really, really fun.
Eric Johnson: For me, it was an opportunity to play a good guy. I’ve had a long career of playing horrible, horrible people. [Laughs.] And so getting an opportunity to play a good guy for once, and in a romantic situation.
And then the second thing was doing my homework and finding a little more about who Sarah Drew was and the kind of person she is. The rave reviews about Sarah Drew are all true, I can say that. She’s just absolutely incredible to work with, incredible scene partner, and just a wonderful human being to be at work with. And so put those two things in a package, it was pretty amazing, and more than lived up to what I thought it was going to be.
Speaking of doing your homework, Sarah, you co-star in Mistletoe Murders with Eric’s Rookie Blue colleague Peter Mooney. So did you reach out to him when you found out you’d be working with Eric?
Drew: I sure did. We’ve discovered we have many friends in common, and we still keep discovering all of the friends that we have in common. But Peter was my first text, like, how is this guy? Is this guy okay? And he’s like, he’s so great. So I was very excited about that. And of course, when I started working with Peter Mooney, my connection to Peter Mooney was through Rookie Blue, because of Greg Smith from Everwood.
Johnson: Very small world.
You two obviously get along very well, but one of the things that sets this movie apart is the way your characters meet. It’s so atypical. What was it like filming that first scene?
Drew: That’s what’s really fun about it. She is not in any way looking for a man. And I think that’s kind of the most wonderful and one of the most attractive things about her. She’s not out to find the cute guy at work. In fact, there’s no world in which she’s going to date anybody at work. So she gets to be exactly who she is without trying to perform for anyone. And I think there’s something really freeing and lovely [about that].
One of the first things he says about her is how confident she is. You can get caught up in trying to be something for someone if you’re on the lookout for love, but when you’re just living in your own skin and then trying to get the job done, and you’re in the way of me getting my job done. I’m going to tell you. It was a very, very fun first encounter, and first couple of scenes to get to the point where they get to oh, what? Oh, okay.
Eric, playing Shawn is actually a wonderful departure for you, because you normally portray very confident characters. You’re the opposite of that in When I Said I Do. What was that like?
Johnson: I loved it. I even said to Sarah today, I wonder if I went too dorky. But I think the thing is, it is awkward for him. He’s never been in this situation before, and as confident as he can be in work and what he does, he’s not confident at all in doing something honest and vulnerable and authentic to him.
It’s very much a fish out of water. And it carries into meeting the family for the first time. He’s never gone through any of this. So I loved it. Playing the shy guy and being a little awkward. It felt a little me.
Drew: We’re such stupid dorks, both of us. Getting to own that stuff is so fun.
But does that awkwardness in your characters help you as actors, because you don’t have to be perfect and you can in fact lean into the quirks or the things that don’t go exactly right?
Drew: Totally.
Johnson: it has this great awkwardness. Has a great energy to it. And I think any time your scene has energy to it, it feels alive and real.
Drew: We commented so often throughout the movie that it felt like we were two little kids coming out and playing in a sandbox together, because we’re both very silly humans. There were so many dumb jokes and so much laughter… He’s not even allowed in the hair and makeup trailer when I’m getting my eye makeup done, because his presence makes me laugh so hard that it ruins my eyes. We already have that sort of silly, awkward, fun, dorky vibe—and both of us do. There’s not a stitch of either one of us that ever tries to be cool.
Johnson: Always fails miserably.
Drew: It’s like, why try? [Laughs.] All that does is make you able to have more fun and be more playful, and find more places of honesty and fun when you’re in total acceptance of each other’s weirdness, The sky’s the limit in terms of how you play on set together. We were finding so many beautiful and honest and rich things, I think because of all of that.
Were there favorite scenes in When I Said I Do that you particularly loved or just enjoyed getting to work on together?
Drew: I love the scene where she comes back. We shot this day two, which is also what kind of makes it fun and magical. It’s the scene where I come to his apartment because he hasn’t texted or called me, even though I told him not to text or call me, and I come in with all this heat—so pissed off that he hasn’t done the exact thing I told him not to do. [Laughs.] He’s like, What are you talking about? You told me not to do it. It turns into this very wonderful thing, launching into it from a space of, I’m going to be not super likable right now. I’m mad that you didn’t read my mind. But then it becomes really beautiful.
That scene in particular was originally written as two separate scenes in two separate locations, and then we had to put everything into one room. So we really had to find our way through that scene to kind of make it one cohesive journey. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the whole movie. And we walked into that scene with with a fair amount of anxiety and trepidation; we were like, how are we going to make this work? This just shifted gears so much, and we’ve got to somehow make a left turn in the middle of the scene. And then we found it. It was so fun.
Johnson: That scene in particular, because it was day two. We were fresh into it, and day one was a lot of kind of montage-y stuff that didn’t have anything that heavy. That [scene] was like a big kickoff to it. And then seeing Sarah Drew in fully in her element, just dynamic and firing on all cylinders—I felt like I was on my heels playing catch-up, which also worked great with the scene. It was just fantastic to be a dance partner in that moment. I think for me, for both of us, it sort of set the stage of what was to come for the rest of the shoot. So we think of that scene very fondly.
Drew: I love that you describe it that way, because there’s also a scene right after he gets out of this cave rescue and I’m really freaked out, where I felt exactly the same way, but I was your dance partner. You were so rich and alive and doing all this beautiful stuff, and I felt like I was just watching and listening and along for the ride.
We both had these different moments where the scene is coming from one person, because that’s how it’s written. But then the other person is like, I’m going to try to catch up. I’m going to do my damnedest. And so thank you for saying that, but I also feel like I had moments like that with you, where I was like everything he’s doing, it’s so good. I just want to be here with him for this and make sure that I’m not leaving him hanging.
What are the two of you going to take away from the filming experience? What did you enjoy just making When I Said I Do?
Drew: I think probably working with Eric Johnson is the thing that warmed my heart the most, but also, we had so much fun. Eric and Sarah together are a very specific brand of silly chaos, but everybody else also. There was so much laughter and joy—even though we were fighting the weather, even though the days were long, the hours were long, even though we were running and gunning toward the end of the day to get stuff done and needing to pivot constantly. There was such joy and warmth and delight and fun. It was just pure fun every second on that set.
Johnson: Sarah sets an amazing tone on set of just being somebody who’s very joyful and kind and is is looking out for the people around her. Not only doing that, but being so darn good at her job. The high tides float all boats and Sarah Drew is very much a high tide. Getting to be there and the cumulative effect on everyone around her, and the whole family, and everybody rises to the occasion, it was a wonderful experience.
When I Said I Do premieres May 23, 2026 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on Lifetime. Photo Credit: Albert Camicioli/Courtesy of Lifetime.
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.
