Fast chat with Lori Laughlin, of “When Calls the Heart”
She currently plays cafe owner Abigail Stanton in Hallmark Channel series “When Calls the Heart,” set in a small Western Canada coal-mining town circa 1910. Season two begins April 25 at 8 p.m.
Loughlin, who lives in Los Angeles with her husband fashion-designer Mossimo Giannulli, their two daughters and Giannulli’s son, Gianni, spoke by phone with frequent Newsday contributor Frank Lovece.
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And you have your own family in Los Angeles. “When Calls the Heart” shoots in Vancouver, so how do you make that work?
I go up for a week, shoot [my part in] two episodes and then I go home for a week or two. It’s not a bad schedule at all — I’m really lucky. I made a deal with the producer early on: I said I couldn’t do the show unless they could block-shoot my stuff and get me out. He said he would and he has remained true to that since we started. That’s really the only way I can make it work for my family.
On the show, you play a widow. Is it tough relating to that?
I think that’s just part of her character, that loss, and you always draw on your life experiences — losses you’ve experienced. I lost my father, and it’s not like my mother losing my father, but it was a loss. So you draw on things like that, the void that it leaves. And I think in 1910 people experienced that same sense of loss but, as you said, it was a lot more prevalent and it was just part of the larger picture, which is, “What are you going to do to survive?”
Coal Valley doesn’t seem like the easiest place to survive.
Yeah, and we started the show focusing on the hardships of that time. And then Hallmark wanted to move away from that this year. We’re still dealing with it, but not with the same level of intensity. Now there are some lighter story lines, some romance . . . because they didn’t want to keep dwelling on the tragedy everyone had suffered . So now everyone is on their feet again and moving forward. I think the tone this year is a little bit lighter and a little bit happier.
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