Andrea Brooks Talks A Lifelong Love, Motherhood, & the Actor She Admires Most

It's always so lovely to chat with Andrea Brooks, who is best known for her role as Faith in Hallmark's When Calls the Heart, and she took time out of her schedule to visit with TV Fanatic about her new movie.

While we did chat about the series, which will be coming in a later article, she was on the promotion circuit talking about Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, A Lifelong Love.

In the movie, Andrea plays Annika, an aspiring poet who is thrown together with her ex Ryan (Patch May), to document her grandfather's journey to find a long-lost love, and, of course, she and Ryan discover their own past sparks reigniting in the process.

As a Canadian actress, Andrea is not a part of the SAG-AFTRA union and is not on strike, but out of respect for her support of her US counterparts, I wanted to make note of the interview's timing.

Please enjoy the first half of our conversation below, which has been edited for length and clarity.

Hi Andrea. How are you?

I'm well. How are you?

I'm doing very well. Thank you for asking. A Lifelong Love was such a sweet movie. What appealed to you about playing Annika?

Oh gosh. How did it feel to play Annika? I love that she was an extreme type A, and I know that that's a bit of a classic trope in Hallmark, but I love that her organizational skills are the thing that defines it. It's her defining feature and gets her where she wants to go.

But at the same time, I really like how this movie explores how much it can force her to regress. I don't know. She was, she was a lot of fun. She's spunky. She has a lot of energy. I love that I got to play this character off of Patch May again because she's so funny, and he's so quirky.

He's so good at dealing with her eccentricities. I also love that she's a writer and a little online poet. That was something that I had never done before. And, and yeah, it was just, it was a, a thrill.

You know, I noticed that you played a goal-driven character in Romance to the Rescue and now a perfectionist in A Lifelong Love. You're getting typecast in these movies, Andrea.

I know. You know what? You're right. I don't know what this says about me.

That's what I was wondering. What does it say about you? How do these roles reflect who you are?

This is a feature I can identify with. I don't think I'm as crippled with my type anus as some of the characters I have played are. At least, I like to hope I'm not. Since becoming a mom, your organizational skills must be intact every moment.

Because you never know when you'll need to have a bandaid on hand or a snack or water bottle. You have to be ready for everything. That's something I've been playing up in my characters recently. And I definitely understand.

I understand the pressure of feeling like you have to deliver at every given moment, and you have to be together and work on your goals. I get that. I really get it.

So having a child really influenced you as a person? I know it does everybody, but you're adjusting to it differently than how some of my friends did.

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. It changes everything. It upends absolutely everything in your life. Since becoming a mom, my roles, especially in the Hallmark movies, have meant so much more to me.

There's something to be said about family values and the entertainment space. My three-year-old can watch one of these movies, and she does; she does watch episodes of When Calls the Heart. She watches pieces of the movies that I do, and that we can share that experience is amazing.

It makes everything more important. I appreciate my time on set a lot more. I appreciate my time getting to work with other creative people a lot more because, you know, life is so chaotic when you have a family. It makes everything better because, at the end of the day, there's someone waiting for you who needs you.

And that's the mission. That's why we do what we do. This is why we work -- for our family. So it's just enhanced every aspect of my life. I know that's a very long-winded answer.

No, that's, that's a good answer. For the longest time, Hallmark didn't have parents. I mean, the main characters, they, they didn't have kids. So a main character would have parents, but they didn't have children of their own. But that has changed. Have you played any of those?

No, I've never played a mother. I've done a lot of movies where, like, as you said, the leading man will have a niece or a daughter or a child involved, but yeah, never my own in a movie. And that would be so much fun.

I know. I bet it would be really fun for you -- especially listening to how you are addressing everything in your life -- to bring your experience of motherhood into a movie.

Absolutely. I love the directions Hallmark is going in these days. There's just so much more opportunity for stuff like that. But I hadn't really thought about it, but playing a mom would be super rewarding, especially if it's in a lead role. It's awesome.

So in the entire history of film, do you have a character that you think most reflects the person you are?

Oh my goodness, that is an amazing question. I'm sure I will butcher it because I would probably need to sit for three days and really think about it.

You know what's funny is, with characters, I feel like there are so many that I've over the years aspired to want to be identified with or maybe hoped I could play one day that I've never really thought about it in reverse of characters that could be a reflection of me.

One character actor that I've really identified over the year with over the years and the way that she plays characters. My number one is actors Reese Witherspoon; I love how she tackles her characters. She's also someone who plays a lot of types of high-strung, intense personality characters.

And she's someone who, from a very young age, [I've admired]. I remember the first time I saw Legally Blonde, and I was like, who is this actor? She's incredible. She has vulnerability and depth to her, but she can also hammer out her lines. She's hilarious. And she has that, like we've been talking about that type of thing, like dialed to a T.

She's someone I've always looked up to in every aspect of her career. Especially now she's Seduces, and she's so brilliant, and her book club, I don't know, just as a whole, she's someone I've just 100% admired. She would be my number one.

I couldn't reduce it to a role because she's played so many fantastic ones. Just in general, the way she attacks those characters is something I could only aspire to emulate one day because I think she's fantastic.

And she's got such a vast presence now in the industry. She took her skill and expanded it beyond what anybody probably ever thought that she would do. And I love that she expects.

Oh, me too. And all these projects, like Big Little Lies, are so fantastic. And then you can go back to early in her career, Cruel Intentions. Wild was so fantastic, and that was just out of the left field for her career. Yeah. Again, I could write a paper cause I am such a fan.

Oh, that's good. That's good. Nothing wrong with that. What have you learned about life and love from playing different characters?

You know, what I've learned about myself is I am nowhere near the romantic that I tend to fall into in the Hallmark world. I'm a very practical person. I feel like there's no time for romance. You just have to tackle life. But playing these movies makes me realize that there's room for softness and room for these movies.

I know this will sound so cheesy, but many of these movies have done a good job showing me that I need to open my heart a bit more, be more available, and be open to spontaneity. All of these movies do a good job of reminding me of some basic elements of existence, as silly as that may sound.

No, most people probably watch them for that same reason -- because we don't have a lot of romance in our life and tend to go about life practically. And yet I think our dream is to have that. And look at Annika; she probably wouldn't have gone in that direction even though she was a poet.

True. She wasn't looking at it like that. She's writing about love and life, and she didn't really experience it.

Absolutely the norm. Do you have any friends swept up in romance? I don't.

You know what, very few. And maybe there are times for certain friends and people when you first meet and have a whirlwind romance. You meet someone while traveling, but you're right; you fall back into a routine at the end of the day. That's a very good point.

That's what we all have to learn from these movies. So you need to pick your characters so that we're watching the right ones. That's your job, Andrea. [laughs]

Yeah. Yeah. [laughs]

So funny. What was your favorite thing about filming this particular movie?

Oh, filming this one. This was one of my favorite filming experiences because I got to reunite with Nicholas Humphrey, a dear friend who I've worked with before as a director. My producing friend Lexi Lewis was on this, and she's just got the most fantastic eye when it comes to putting these movies together.

And then also getting reunited with Patch May. So this was basically like a school reunion, we all just showed up together, and we were like, yep, we've done it before. Here we go again. That was so special and a gift because there's always a learning curve every time you start a movie.

You have to tiptoe and sense how the director likes to do things if this is the first time you have worked with them, how the producer likes to do things, and how your co-lead like to work. And sometimes it can be tricky, sometimes it can take a few days to really figure out to, you know, find your group.

And there's not a lot of time in these movies. We shoot them in 15 days or less for the most part. So three days of trying to figure each other out is a huge portion of the movie. Uh, and the real gift with it was, this was day one, we were all laughing, making jokes.

Uh, we still, we were recollecting of, of our previous experiences working together, and we just jumped in. So that made this one very special. And also, you know, we were in Winnipeg in the middle of crazy snowstorms. I had my entire family with me because I had a three-month-old baby.

So that was crazy and wild. But it was also special cause every night I'd come home, my mom was, looking after my infant, and, so, there was a very wholesome, fun quality to this movie that I'm always going to remember.

You'll get your chance to see A Lifelong Love on Friday, July 21, at 9/8c, only on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.

Keep an eye out next week for the second half of our conversation, where we tackle When Calls the Heart, which premieres on July 29!

Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She's a member of the Critic's Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on X and email her here at TV Fanatic.