What keeps you coming back to the Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, which you’ve been making since 2015? They’re fun. Aurora can be tough; she’s smart and intelligent, I love the stunt work and the action parts. And the character development keeps it feeling fresh for me because it keeps evolving. What have you learned from playing Aurora? She’s a very determined person. I am too, but she’s a little more outward. She’s unafraid of busting into a room or chasing after the bad guy. I love that about her, so it’s encouraged me in my own life. She helps me think of determination in a more physical sense. Getting married is a major change in Aurora’s life. How will she change in this movie? She isn’t too different, I’ll tell you, because when it comes to solving mysteries, there’s no stopping Aurora. But the great thing about Nick, her husband, is that they have become a team. He’s always been an advocate and her partner versus some of the previous boyfriends that Aurora has had where they’re always so protective of her. And rightly so, but they’ve held her back in that sense. And Nick really embraces her love for crime solving and mysteries. So they’ve become much more of a team since they’ve been dating, but really now, as a married couple, it should be the Aurora and Nick mystery. Do people respond to Aurora because these are cozy mysteries, not a lot of blood and guts? These very much remind me of AngelaLansbury and Murder, She Wrote, and all the old mysteries back from the ’80s and even the ’70s. That’s why I love them. Kids love watching these by the way. I get so many messages, especially moms and dads that have sons and daughters. It’s one thing for a younger boy to sit and watch a Hallmark movie with his mom that’s like a rom-com, but a lot of kids love the mysteries because it keeps their brain working as they’re trying to figure it out. And so I love getting those messages. If they did have blood and guts, you would never have kids watch, so that’s the beauty of these mysteries. You’ve been married for 25 years, so you’re totally the opposite of Aurora. What advice do you have for her as a newlywed? That’s a good question. Since they are both older getting married, you tend to be more set in your ways versus, I think, when you’re married young, you’re a little more pliable. So I think my advice to her would be—which is good marriage advice anyway—be as communicative with Nick as possible. Have that openness. It gets hard when you are set in your ways, and you’ve been doing things for so long on your own that you tend to not be flexible. So to keep a marriage really working, they have to be open and really honest with each other. But I think they complement each other so well, so they just always need to remind themselves of that. Especially when they’ll run into roadblocks, or when they have a fight or a challenging time. They just have to remember that if they’re honest with each other—they have the same commonality and interests and love for one another—that they’ll get through it. Other than Aurora, who are some of your favorite sleuths? Do you watch mystery movies, read books, watch true-crime shows or listen to crime podcasts? You know what’s funny? I don’t listen to true crime. I’ve watched a handful of Netflix movies, but the truth is they scare me too much. They freak me out, and although a lot of it is reality if it’s true crime, I tend to want to just look at the positive things in the world and fill my mind with those things when it comes to my time and entertainment. So I actually don’t really watch a lot of true crime because I get scared. So the things that I mentioned before like Murder, She Wrote, I used to watch that a lot. I did read the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, I loved those as a kid, but I haven’t read them in a long time. And then, oh gosh, is it Matlock? I think that was the other one that I used to watch a lot. Fuller House, the Netflix sequel, has wrapped. Do you think that’s the last we’ll see of your character, D.J.? I sure hope not. We all love these characters so much. I get messages every single day asking, “Is there going to be another season of Fuller House?” even though it’s been announced that it was the final season. I hope in the future Warner Bros. and Netflix can work out the terms. That’s really what it comes down to. Do you have a favorite memory from Full House? What was the best part of being associated with it? Oh, goodness, it’s countless good things. How do I say this? I don’t want to say the highlight of my career because there’s so much that I’m doing now that is exciting, but it’s probably the most meaningful part of my career. It was like lightning struck twice, getting to do the first show and then the second show. And all of the people that are on the show are really a second family and they are so close and important to me in my life. That in itself, it was such a beautiful gift of friendship. I loved playing D.J. Tanner; she’s an exaggerated version of Candace. She’s fun and quirky and I absolutely love comedy, so being on a sitcom is the world that I love the very most. Whether it’s acting or even directing in that, I love that world. So, there’s just countless memories and good things that came from both of the shows that I am so grateful for and will never forget. But I can’t even pinpoint one because that’s how good it is. You have done several Christmas movies as well for Hallmark. Do you have a new one for 2021? I do. I will be starting to film that in September. We are working on the script right now. It’s another one that [producer-writer] JimHead and I have created and are producing together. It’s actually based very loosely on a book and then we’ve taken it into our own little story. But we’re working on that. The Christmas movies are always great. I’m always trying to find a new take on telling a fun Christmas story, and seeing it from a different perspective and finding the nuances of each of the characters and Christmas as well. I’m excited about it. How much do you appreciate being involved not just as an actress but as a producer and creator? That’s a whole other artistic form of expression. Absolutely. That has been so important to me. I don’t know that I could do anything, especially in the Hallmark world or in the television world, without producing it. Because really, for the last 10 years, I’ve been a producer, an executive producer or co-producer on everything that I’ve worked on. And yes, it is a very different muscle to flex and a different part of your brain. It also allows me to have a voice and be in control of every project that I’m in because I’m very particular about the material that I do, what I present to the world, and what values and what takeaways they’re going to get from it, where their laughter is going to come from, and what type of jokes. So all those things are important to me, so producing is something that I could never give up. Along with your Christmas movies, you have a Christmas line of goods that are carried in the Hallmark stores. I do. The Christmas line came out a few years ago and they were exclusively at dayspring.com, but as the brand is growing and has been very successful, we’re also on QVC. But now the Hallmark Gold Crown stores have picked up an exclusive line of those products, which is exciting. And even Target has picked up some of the products as well. The line that’s exclusive to Hallmark Gold Crown stores will be out in the early fall for Christmas. Are those items developed from things that you have in your home? How much input do you have into what comes out? I have my hands on every single product. DaySpring is a sister company to Hallmark, but they are a faith-brand company. I partnered with them and have a whole line of faith-based products, devotionals, a bible, all kinds of paper goods. And that naturally extended into home goods as well. And then Christmas, because really people celebrate Christmas, it’s important to them for different reasons, but the reason we celebrate Christmas is because of the birth of Jesus Christ. So that being the most important part, Christmas was obviously a natural extension of that, and with the Christmas movies. So all of the Candace products within the DaySpring brand, including Christmas, have a more contemporary aesthetic to them. Because I found that particularly within faith products, a lot of them felt old fashioned to me. I wanted things that I could put in my home that felt beautiful, contemporary, and stylish but that had real importance to me. So it’s beautiful. That’s the difference of what my line carries as opposed to some of that more traditional Christmas products you’ll see. Mine will have a more contemporary flair. What is the biggest misconception about you? People think I’m a bit of a stick-in-the-mud or a goody two-shoes. I don’t really take that as a huge negative, but they’re saying it in a negative way. I’m a fun person. I can be the woman that stays till the end of the party, dancing all night long. Some people think you’re uptight because God’s the focus of your life, but loving God brings me even more joy. COVID made for an interesting 15 months for everybody. Did you learn something about yourself that you didn’t know before the pandemic? I don’t know that I learned something new about myself, but like so many of us I really learned how to slow down, and I learned how to delegate and distribute my time a whole lot better. It really allowed me to reprioritize the balance between work and personal life. I know I’m not the only one; I think that happened to the majority of people. But it came as such a blessing to me and my family because I really am a workhorse. And so it allowed me to figure out some different strategies of how I’m able to do as much as I can but still have a better balance at home with my family. We talked about how important producing is to you, but you’re also an author and you’ve written adult books and you also have a line of children books. Are you going to do more of that? I’m certainly doing more children’s books. I don’t have any release dates yet, but we’re continuing the Candace series of children’s books, which I love. And then I am slated to write one more book for adults, but I have yet to write that yet. I’m sure you can relate well, but the last 15 months kind of changed everything. I need to regroup and figure out what I want to even write about because life is changing right now, which means my perspective is changing. So they’re patiently waiting on me to decide what I would like to write about.
