With manufacturing for Season 13 of When Calls the Coronary heart underway, Jack Wagner, who performs Invoice Avery, admits he by no means anticipated the collection to final this lengthy when he first signed on over a decade in the past.
“Nobody does,” he notes. “But it surely additionally isn’t stunning once we get picked up yearly. The rankings saved rising. When Calls the Coronary heart is rated subsequent to Sunday Evening Soccer, so it simply speaks to family-friendly tv. It’s been simply such a blessing.”
Wagner, a longtime Hallmark mainstay with a wealth of expertise taking part in love tales, from his cleaning soap days as Nick Marone on The Daring and the Stunning and Frisco Jones on Basic Hospital to his primetime position as on Melrose Place as Peter Burns, appreciates that Invoice is now exploring that emotional territory on digital camera as properly. “They introduced [Little House on the Prairie alum] Melissa Gilbert on the present final yr [as Georgie McGill], and I kissed her on the finish of our one episode, and that sort of created a bit of romance for Invoice,” he explains. “And Melissa’s coming again this yr, so that they’re going to maintain this going, which I believe is terrific. She’s nice. I haven’t been taking part in that in any respect on When Calls the Coronary heart, so for me, it’s like plugging into Jack Wagner from the ’80s or ’90s. I spotted that’s why I’m having a lot enjoyable. It’s like, ‘Wow, I’m dusting off my previous charming romance man. Let’s mud this man off.’”
Hallmark Media / Jeff Weddell
Wagner factors to the present’s capacity to supply a much-needed escape from on a regular basis life as one in every of its most interesting and enduring qualities. “I simply suppose it’s implausible as a result of with the temperature in our nation for the final virtually 10 years, politically, and so forth., and the entire conflicts around the globe, it’s so nice that there’s this little pioneer city that individuals can embrace and discover hope and a message of heartwarming pleasure and romance and neighborhood,” he observes. “To not sound corny, however how will we assist and love each other, versus continuously need to tear one another aside? I believe this present gives that. When folks watch the present, they’re touched. That’s how I might sum it up. It touches them, and that’s why they turn into ‘Hearties.’”
He additionally feels it genuinely captures the spirit of a bygone period. “This present has stayed true to the interval,” he factors out. “We’ve launched the railroad, we’ve launched the phone, and insulin, so we’ve actually centered on letting the interval inform the story, too. What the characters expertise when the telephone rang, and now the radio now, it’s so nice.”
As for what followers can anticipate from Season 13, Wagner previews, “We’ve bought to get Nathan [Grant, Kevin McGarry] and Elizabeth [Thornton, Erin Krakow] again, as a result of they go away on the finish of Season 12. They arrive again within the first episode, and it’s about their return and what life appears like for Little Jack [Thornton, Hyland Goodrich], now being [insulin] dependent, and the way that’s going to evolve into city. How are we going to improve the medical scenario, and so forth.?”
And search for a big disaster to have an effect on each citizen of Hope Valley, Wagner provides. “There’s going to be an occasion that occurs, and I’ll simply tease you a bit of bit, that’s going to be life-changing for everybody, and it’s paying homage to what’s occurred in L.A. just lately,” he shares. “In order that’s going to be the catastrophe and impediment that we face this yr as a neighborhood in Hope Valley, and it begins reasonably rapidly. I don’t suppose we’ve had a kind of for some time the place your entire neighborhood was threatened, however that appears just like the story we’re going to inform and the impediment we’re going to face this yr.”
When Calls the Coronary heart, Season 13 Premiere, 2026, Hallmark Channel