On March 26, the fifth installment of Alison Sweeney’s MURDER, SHE BAKED series will air on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Though it should have been business as usual for the actress to head to Vancouver to shoot the film, she was thrown an unexpected curveball last December that turned her world upside-down. “We had the whole thing all laid out to start production in two to three weeks when I was minding my own business on Christmas vacation with my friends and family and I had a skiing accident,” Sweeney explains. “As people who have followed me on social media know, it was a pretty serious accident and I tore several ligaments in my knee.”
Her experience as DAYS’s Sami suddenly factored in to her real life. “Having played tons of different ailments over the years, I’ve been in many hospital sets and wheelchairs and crutches and whatnot, so when it really happens to you, there’s this weird sense of, ‘I’ve done this before,’ ” she chuckles. “Only on the show, the prop department would take stuff away when I was done with my scenes. It sort of brought me some introspection that for the most part, I’ve been pretty healthy and I’ve worked with a lot of actors on DAYS over the years who have had various ailments in one form or another, but other than my pregnancies, I’ve never really had something I had to work around. So this was all new to me.”
Sweeney says it took a little while to acknowledge that there were big-deal implications to the turn of events. “When I finally came to terms with the fact that it was a serious injury — because I was in denial about it for a few hours — my first thought was the movie, like, ‘Oh no, what have I done,’ and ‘What do we do?’ ” she relays. “I had to call my producing partners and break the news to them. They laugh about it now, but I wanted to put them at ease that, of course, I wanted to move forward with the movie. They said, ‘What do you mean, of course? We have to talk about it. Are you okay? Is that going to hurt you?’ Everyone was really concerned about my safety.”
Sweeney worked with the film’s writer, Melissa Salmons [a former writer at DAYS], to incorporate the medical setback into the script. “The amazing thing is that looking back on it, I feel like the injury really gave us good ideas that made the movie better and more interesting,” she notes. “My biggest concern was that I didn’t want to write it in just because we had to. I wanted to be a better storyteller than that. So I said to Melissa, ‘We have to find a way to incorporate it that actually serves the story and makes the story more compelling.’ And we did. I think it’s actually great for the story.”
Handling the ins and outs of her injury proved challenging on set, especially since she also serves as an executive producer. “Having to focus on my health was really frustrating at the same time as trying to do this movie, which usually requires most of my concentration,” she observes. “That was hard for me because I’m a very active person and I kind of wear a bunch of different hats on these projects. People tease me that I find myself helping out in the prop department or doing wardrobe, so that was curtailed. It was frustrating for me to take down time and ice my knee, for example, or ask production to let me come in late. My makeup artist, Corina, who started working on DAYS with me when I was 16, was really taking care of me. Some days we would do my makeup really early in the morning and then I would go to physical therapy and then I would go to set, so it was just finding ways to balance it all out. ”
Sweeney was happy to have her supportive co-stars around to bolster her spirits. “The first person who jumps out is Barbara Niven [ex-Liz, ONE LIFE TO LIVE], who plays my mom in the series, Delores. She is truly a gem. A beautiful human being. A talented actress and someone who I am really proud to call my friend and to feel like she’s another mom to me when we’re filming together. When I hurt my knee, she was checking on me and making sure I was okay and calling me in my hotel room and asking if she could get me anything. She’s just so thoughtful that way. And that’s true of the whole cast: Gabe [Hogan, Norman], Cameron [Mathison, Mike; ex-Ryan, ALL MY CHILDREN], Toby [Levins, Bill] and Lisa [Durupt, Andrea]. We do feel like a tight-knit group. It’s like summer camp; you’re not together all the time, but when you do come together, it’s like no time has passed. We jump right back into it with our jokes and our friendship and our camaraderie. It’s really special. They all work to make the movie the best it can be and bring such wonderful, unique qualities to each of their characters. It just makes it really fun to come back and play it again.”
Sweeney hints that there is a big turn in the Norman/Mike/Hannah triangle in this film. “I am excited to announce that you’re going to see some development, some actual progress in this story,” she says. “That was really important to me, that we move it forward. I really wanted to give the fans a very satisfying film. This is the fifth movie and I thought it was really time for this relationship to take the next step. I’m really happy with how it turned out.”
Though she’s currently on the mend following knee surgery, Sweeney is still keeping as active as she can. “I have a bunch of projects. I’m working on a Christmas movie, so that’s my next project,” she says. “We’re pulling together the script right now. But there’s a flag on the play due to my injury, so we’re trying to figure out what the next steps are.”
Having forced rest has allowed Sweeney to think about the future. “It’s really fun with my injury to take this time out,” she reflects. “Sitting here in bed allows my wheels to spin, and I just think about other projects I want to work on and characters I might be interested in pursuing next. I’m so grateful and blessed to work with Hallmark because they’ve been really supportive of that. And I get to watch movies on the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries and see what they’re doing and what interests me and what do I want to do next. I love that they’ve given me that platform.”
A soap fan at heart, Sweeney says she has fallen into some familiar viewing habits during her recovery. “I did watch DAYS OF OUR LIVES today,” she shares. “It’s sort of a funny thing because I realize that enough time has passed since I have been gone that I go back to my 14-year-old self. When I was in Canada shooting the last movie — there’s a huge DAYS fan base in Canada — so many people came up to me and shared their stories of watching as a kid and what it meant to them. This woman was telling me how she loved the Cruise of Deception, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God! That’s when I watched! With Jack and Jennifer!’ I’m sure she was not expecting to have a soap fan moment with me where I was a fan, as well. I love soaps for that. So, it was sort of fun to watch the show again today. It was a feel-good moment.”
And though her plate is pretty full, if she were asked to make a return visit to Salem, Sweeney notes, “I mean, I am annoyed with my own campy answer, which is never say never. I love the show. It’s my home. And if Sami needed to show her face in Salem, they should call me.”
After playing DAYS’s Sami for 21 years, Sweeney has had a blast developing her MSB character, Hannah. “I love playing her,” Sweeney enthuses. “She’s a fun character and there are parts of her that are really me. She’s a good host and she loves to serve people and she knows everyone’s favorite cookie and she is a confident person in what she’s good at. And then with the mystery solving, she’s gained confidence. We have a gentle wink and a nod about how everyone in town knows she’s good at crime-solving. It’s a small town; you have to acknowledge that murders would be a big deal, and Hannah solving them or being aware of them would be, too. Certainly Joanne [Fluke, who authored the series the movies are based on] celebrates that in the books, too. In the movie, Mrs. Houser, who is sort of my favorite character, says, ‘She’s a murder magnet.’ That one makes me laugh every time. We have been really careful in that Hannah isn’t a detective — that’s Mike’s job — but she’s clever and she’s nosy, so we can really play to her strengths to solve these crimes.”
