From time to time
Andie MacDowell navigates changes in “The Way Home”
Andie MacDowell knows that as the second season begins with “The Way Home,” her Hallmark time-traveling series, “There’s a lot of different changes.”
In this multigenerational saga, MacDowell, 65, is the matriarch Delilah “Del” Landry. Her daughter Kat has teenage daughter Alice and believes that 20 years earlier her brother Jacob magically disappeared in a pond to go back to the year 1812.
“When we finished Season 1 you see my daughter tells me that she knows where Jacob is. And I cut her off completely with that thought because it just feels so torturous because she keeps dragging this,” MacDowell said in a Zoom interview. “This need to know where he is.
“For me,” she confided, “I feel like Del thinks he’s no longer alive. That’s really what I think she believes.
“But we find my daughter once again in this desperate need — because she knows so much more than me. I don’t know anything about this going through the pond and going back in time.
“So that’s where we start. I found it fascinating and I’m on the show and can’t wait to see the fifth episode.”
MacDowell’s career began as a model. She continues to be a L’Oreal spokeswoman. When she segued into acting it was an era with blatant resistance to the notion of “model turned actress.” But with hits like “sex, lies and videotape,” “Groundhog Day,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and, opposite her daughter Margaret Qualley in “Maid,” MacDowell flourished.
Now with Del in “The Way Home,” she was instrumental in shaping the character — and her love life.
“I did work with the writercreators who were really open about my feelings for what my character does. I’m so appreciative. That doesn’t always happen.
“It’s really important because I have to be this person. And I am this age and I do know what the complexity is like to be this age and to have to be in a romance.
“It’s completely different than when you’re younger! Last year, the romance had some real humor with how I got disengaged from that man and how it didn’t pan out.
“This year there’s another man and I do something that is so out of the box for someone my age with him — but I won’t tell you exactly what it is. It’s a little risky for Hallmark but it’s not going to upset anybody.
“I love it because it allowed me as a 65-year-old woman to portray someone vital, strong and powerful. I was proud of these writers for giving me that opportunity.”
“The Way Home” airs on Hallmark Jan. 21