It’s the journey, not the destination, even in Hallmark Christmas movies.
Sarah Drew, a veteran of “Grey’s Anatomy,” didn’t want to know who the murderer was before she started “Mistletoe Murders,” a six-part drama on Hallmark+.
“I just love to let the story reveal itself to me,” she says. “It’s so satisfying at the end, when the mystery is solved.”
The whodunnit, however, is secondary to who her character – Emily Lane – happens to be. Viewers know she has a holiday-themed gift shop and a penchant for nosing around. But they don’t know much of her backstory or where she’s headed.
“Season One ends on a pretty epic cliffhanger,” Drew says. “So we’re all hoping there will be another season. You solve a crime every two episodes but the through-line throughout all six episodes is the mystery of who Emily is and where she’s coming from. It’s really, really fun.”
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“It’s open all year,” Drew says of “Under the Mistletoe,” the show’s launching pad. “There are probably flash sales in July, so people get all their stuff then. My mother-in-law goes to Christmas stores all year long, so it’s a thing.”
To acquaint herself with that world, Drew poked around the set like, well, a detective, and realized “you find something new every single day that you shoot on that set.”
While Drew didn’t jumpstart her holiday plans by paying close attention to the set (“it was in the dead heat of the summer”), she does admit to digging in when the season appears.
“We’re all about Christmas,” she says of her family. “At the end of the holiday season, I always say to my husband, ‘I did it again. I over-elfed because I do too many things because I want it to be magical. I spend too much money, I throw too many parties, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Unlike others, “I only get one tree – and it’s not a real tree because in L.A. they dry out and die within 20 seconds. We now have a tradition in our home where we put it up on Thanskgiving weekend and put on the movie, ‘Spirited,’ which is a family favorite. My husband (religions professor Peter Lanfer) makes me a Manhattan and we decorate the tree.”
When Drew played Dr. April Kepner on “Grey’s,” she had to learn plenty of medical jargon to look authentic. In “Mistletoe Murders” she has to spout plenty of evidence but much of that is done in voiceover. “With that, I’m just reading it off a piece of paper while we record.” To know what that inner voice is saying while she’s on the set Drew had her script supervisor read the voiceover so she could react. “It’s tricky,” she says.
And just in case she wasn’t sure how far the Christmas spirit could go, her character lets others know there is a limit to how many trees is enough. “Five,” Emily Lane says. Any more is just too much.
“Mistletoe Murders” airs on Hallmark+.
