Why Hallmark Channel Movies Should Showcase Older Actors

I am an older actress and this is the story I want to pitch.

By
Published December 18, 2024
photo collage of film icon displaying side profile of woman
Paul Spella

The morning after my boyfriend of six years proposed marriage, I read about the pending “age discrimination” lawsuit filed by a former Hallmark casting director, alleging that the network wanted to replace an actress in her early 40s deemed “too old” for leading roles in Hallmark Christmas movies. As reported in the news:

· Hallmark Media executive vice president of programming Lisa Hamilton Daly allegedly instructed Penny Perry, a 79-year-old casting director who filed the lawsuit, not to cast “old people” for Hallmark roles, saying that “our leading ladies are aging out.

· Hamilton Daly also allegedly “told Ms. Perry she was too ‘long in the tooth’ to keep her job at Hallmark,” the lawsuit says.

Too old at 40? That struck a nerve. While I prefer not to address pending litigation, as a veteran actress closer in age to the fired casting director, I’m strongly in favor of the Hallmark Channel producing holiday movies that feature stories about older women embracing romance in their lives.

I loved filming a Hallmark movie — co-starring as the mother of the effervescent Melissa Joan Hart in the 2016 film, Broadcasting Christmas, is a highlight of my acting career. Our holiday cheer onscreen was just as jolly and fun offscreen. While filming on location in the sweltering heat of a late summer’s day, we pretended to shiver in thick winter coats while prop men spewed fake snow onto green grass and blooming rose bushes to create a winter wonderland. Believe me, a true “Christmas spirit” pervaded our cast and crew throughout the making of this very typical holiday movie.

According to a New York Times analysis of 424 holiday-themed television programs, the shows tend to follow a very specific storyline: A high-powered female executive from the city finds new love, purpose and appreciation for Christmas in a small town with the help of a handsome local fellow — and that was pretty much the plot of the Hallmark Christmas movie I appeared in.

The charming — and very funny! — Richard Kline played my husband, and together we commiserated, fretted and rejoiced over the ups and downs of our career-girl daughter’s love life. As supporting players, we were swept up in trimming a tree, baking cookies and wrapping presents — but why not a story featuring us? With a few tweaks to the standard formula, Hallmark could weave a story around our more mature pairing in a holiday movie featuring older characters like us meeting cute, sipping hot cocoa and playfully tossing fake snowballs at each other as we fall head-over-heels in love.

We could be an estranged husband and wife who come together as they try to derail their daughter’s wedding to an unsuitable mate — wait! That’s the plot of Ticket to Paradise starring Julia Roberts (57) and George Clooney (63). Or how about the movie It’s Complicated in which two exes find themselves attracted to each other 10 years after divorce, starring Meryl Streep (75) and Alec Baldwin (66)? Add some holly and twinkling lights to the mix, and the joys and blunders of love amid middle-aged (and beyond) grownups become a great source of romantic Hallmark-worthy holiday movies.

While Hallmark's target audience for Christmas movies is women between the ages of 18 and 34, the average age of viewers is in their late 40s to early 50s, according to Bryant University’s Tom Zammarelli, who teaches Film Genre Studies. He adds that viewers watch because they love love, no matter how unrealistic the depiction.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the viewership skews even older, and that’s all the more reason why Hallmark should revitalize its very successful formula — young women, education complete and career launched, ready for love — to include older women open to romance in their lives, with their own stories to tell.

I’m not petitioning Hallmark for a job (although that would be nice!) But rather, I’m urging the channel to consider branching out to embrace an older demographic, just as the network has sought to be inclusive with gender, race and religion in their holiday programming.

I've been a working actress for 60 years and "aging out" of a casting category is nothing new to me. I began my career as the ingenue love interest of 200-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows — now there’s a romance! These days, I’m playing grandmothers. My age is not a secret. I chose not to have a facelift, so I am as nature intended, and don’t try to pass for a babe in my 30s.

In both my personal life and career, I like to think that as I’ve progressed from my child-bearing years to a post-menopausal state, I’ve done so with grace and acceptance. The roles I’m now submitted for reflect that passage — and I’m thrilled when a script arrives that portrays a vital, older woman embracing romance and a positive outlook.

At age 81, my own embrace of romance recently culminated in a proposal of marriage and plans for a June wedding. While not strictly following the holiday movie formula, I manage to tick a few boxes.

I’m not the ambitious young career girl I once was, but I’m still a working actress and writer. I’m also a big city girl, who never dreamed that at this stage of my life — and eight years into widowhood — I’d find love and happiness in a small village with “the help of a handsome local fellow.”

Patrick, 80, wasn’t looking for romance, either. But two years after his wife of 41 years passed away, a mutual friend suggested we meet for lunch. He, an author and former editor, arrived with a baguette and a box of chocolates for me — a gesture sure to quicken any gal’s heart. After a succession of lunch and museum dates, Patrick invited me for Saturday lunch at his home in the Hudson Valley — and that was the weekend the pandemic hit.

As the world shut down around us, I became the guest who didn’t leave. Cocooned in a village, I developed a true appreciation of snowy country walks, home cooking and the companionship of a wonderful mate. As a bonus, I inherited two Airedales.

Love bloomed — not at a pace as brisk as a holiday movie, but with the amusing twists and quirky turns that would make a Hallmark-worthy story. It’s yours, Hallmark — go for it!

[Note to Hallmark casting: I’m willing and able to audition anytime!]

How many of you are fans of the Hallmark movies? Would you like to see more older actors portrayed? Let us know in the comments below.

Kathryn Leigh Scott is an author and actress who has written a trilogy of books on caregiving: Now With You, Now Without, The Happy Hours and A Welcome Respite, and the novels September Girl, Jinxed, Down and Out in Beverly Heels and Dark Passages. Other nonfiction includes the Lobby Card books on film art, Last Dance at the Savoy and The Bunny Years. She began her acting career playing Maggie Evans/Josette DuPres in the original Dark Shadows, and is still a working actress. Follow her on facebook.com/kathrynleighscott and kathrynleighscott.com.