#Andrew Walker Previews Sweet Autumn, Hallmark’s Final Fall Harvest Movie of 2020!

If you don’t recognize Andrew Walker at first glance, then you don’t watch enough Hallmark movies.

With about 21 films under his belt, he can easily be considered one of North America’s go-to boyfriends for the romantically inclined.

Funnily, that’s a thought that took him by surprise when we caught up to chat about his busy week on Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies and Mysteries.

Walker is bookending two very festive seasons with one of the last Fall Harvest films and one of the first Miracles of Christmas movies on Hallmark Movies and Mysteries. Yes, he’s definitely our go-to guy!

Up first is part one of our discussion, which delves into the Fall Harvest movie, Sweet Autumn, and we’ll be back next weekend with the second half of our discussion promoting Christmas Tree Lane before its premiere.

What’s it like making romantic fantasies come true via Hallmark?

Oh, man. Well, I can tell you, I love the platform that I’m able to do it on. I love the content and the Hallmark content, and the girls that I get to work with are incredible.

There’s a policy that there’s only nice respectful people that work for the network. It feels like it. So I’ve never had a girl that I’ve had an issue with. So there’s that. They make it very easy to fall in love with the leading ladies.

And also, I love the fact that we’re doing it over a holiday. It’s always about fall, or spring fling, or a wedding movie, or Christmas. So they kind of pad it with these really beautiful settings and these dreamy sequences, or events that are happening. So it just makes it that much easier to get caught up in the whole world of it all.

It’s a big week for you. You’re closing out fall harvest and jump-starting Christmas. What do you like about filming for fall and Christmas?

Being an East coast guy and coming from Montreal, fall has to be one of my favorite times of year, with the leaves changing and the smell of the fire, and Thanksgiving as well.

I used to landscape when I was younger, and it was also my favorite time of year, because I’d be wrapping up my year. This is when I was like 14, 15, 16, 17. So there’s like this nostalgia to fall and also being a football player. I’m an avid football-watcher.

And just like that time of year, it just smells like mud and smells like leaves in the crisp cool air. And I mean, everything that comes with the fall season, it’s a special time of year.

And for Christmas, I think the set decorators that Hallmark hires for these movies are so talented, and they put so much attention to detail in the Christmas movies. So when you’re able to celebrate Christmas in July, when you’re shooting these movies, or August, I feel so privileged. I get to celebrate two Christmases every year.

Your first movie is going to be Sweet Autumn, and that reunites you with Nikki DeLoach. What was that like working with her again?

It’s our third movie together. We’re really good friends now. Actually, Nikki’s husband is my entertainment attorney now, as well, and Nikki and my wife are great friends.

So it was amazing to just be reunited with her onscreen again. And just the trust factor of working with her and knowing that she has my back and just us being able to get creative together in rewriting some scenes and just really create the arc of the story and our characters, it didn’t really feel like it was acting at all.

I didn’t feel like I was going to a job. It just felt like I was just creating with a friend and just kind of what you into acting in the first place as a young kid, just to create and feel freedom to just have ideas and not feel like you’re being judged or criticized for them. It’s the best. It was the best feeling ever, to be working with her again.

And who’s your character in Sweet Autumn? Who are you playing?

My character in Sweet Autumn is Dex, and he is a farmer. His father and himself have a small farm that they had bought a few years before.

And that’s how they come to befriend this matriarch of the town, this kind of grandmother of the whole town, figured in Rose. She started purchasing in a really difficult year that they had the year before.

In the original script, there was a fire that had come in, and Dex and his dad were kind of rebuilding their farm.

Rose had specifically done a deal with them, and she said, “Hey, guys, look, I will help you. I’ll finance you guys through this difficult time, but I would also like to purchase your produce and some of your items from your farm for my candy shop and some of these products that I’m making.”

And so, they became really close with her, and Dex did a little side project. He started making maple syrup, which was really great.

Because for me, it’s nostalgic, coming from Montreal, where Montreal and Vermont maple syrup are some of the best in the world, and going to old sugar shacks in the spring was a big part of my childhood upbringing.

So to play a character that was messing around, doing a maple syrup project was a lot of fun, and to pour the syrup for the kids and to do the Popsicle sticks and stuff. It was just a lot of fun to kind of go back to what I used to do as a kid.

So yeah, Dex is a farmer, and he’s really set in his ways. He’s a real difficult nut to crack. He started helping Rose at her candy shop, so he’s kind of been put in this position of a manager at the candy shop.

And he thinks that it’s running well, and it doesn’t really need to change. And why are you going to try grow it to a place that could possibly ruin the integrity of what Rose had originally had for the shop?

Rose was a super-integral person, and she wanted to do things right. And so, when Nikki’s character (Meg) comes in and has all these ideas of grandeur, she takes a video Rose made as if Rose wants to expand into more states and expand the business in a much larger scale, and Dex is a little worried about that.

He doesn’t really feel like that’s the way the business should go. And so, we butt heads and try and come to a common ground in what the future of the business holds.

And romance blossoms.

And romance blossoms. You know it.

Had you ever played a farmer before?

I am a farmer. I feel like that’s my alter ego. could work in the fields. During COVID actually, for the first two months, I was in the front yard of my house, and I ripped up all the grass. I turned it into a drought-resistant yard. I spent every single day, all day, outside with my son, with my five-year-old, and it was my happy place.

I love getting my hands dirty. I love mowing the grass, being in the yard and just gardening and transforming landscapes. I love that. And so, I feel like that’s a big part of who I am.

And that’s a wrap for our Sweet Autumn preview. Be sure to tune into Hallmark tonight at 9/8c to watch the movie.

Be here next Saturday at the same time for the second half of our interview as Walker previews Christmas Tree Lane, in which he stars with Alicia Witt and Days of Our Lives’ Drake Hogestyn.

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, cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film. Follow her on Twitter and email her here at TV Fanatic.