Autumn Reeser is no stranger to Hallmark Channel movie fans, having appeared in Love and the Thanksgiving Day Parade, Midnight Masquerade, and now I Do, I Do, I Do.

I caught up with Reeser from her makeup trailer in L.A. during a promotional tour of the movie.  She told me this was a project she’d been hoping to do for a couple of years, saying, “This is my second movie with this team – Writer Nancey Silvers, Director Ron Oliver, and actor Antonio Cupo.  We did a movie two years ago called Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and I Do, I Do, I Do was something we’ve been talking about off and on since then.  It was really great when it became a reality, because we always wanted to work together again.”    

A Repeat Performance

“In I Do, I Do, I Do, my character Jaclyn Palmer is an architect, and she’s a Type A personality who wants to do everything right, a perfectionist, and she’s engaged to a man who has everything she wants – on paper.  Even though her sister keeps telling her she’s not really in love with this man, Jaclyn says she’s made her choice and insists on going ahead with the wedding, which, with all the planning, turns into a little bit more of her mother-in-law’s wedding than her own.  And, she wishes she had it to do over.  She wakes up the next morning, and it’s her wedding day all over again.  She gets trapped in this Valentine’s Day-esque cycle of reliving her wedding day until she gets it right.”

What’s to Admire?

I asked Reeser what she admired about Palmer, and she said, “I admire the journey that she goes on in this movie.  I admire that she finds herself trapped in this completely fantasy situation and she just makes the best of it.  She uses it to learn more about herself.  She goes from somebody who is extremely cautious to somebody who throws caution to the wind and follows her instincts.  That’s something I actually learned from her in doing this movie.”

So, how much of Reeser was actually in this character?  She confided, “I always see a lot of myself in the characters that I play, every single one, even though they are so far from who I am.  Playing these characters always allows me to tap into the parts of myself that I haven’t gotten to know very well.  With Jaclyn, I think I relate to the Type A personality and the desire to get things ‘right.’  It’s hard to dislike your characters because you become them.  I fall in love with every character that I play.  Of course, there are things that I would choose not to bring back into my own life.  Definitely, I’d like to leave the perfectionist side of Jaclyn behind and not bring it back into reality with me, because I don’t think it’s healthful, which is something I think Jaclyn learns in this movie as well.”

Filming Hawaii Five-0

Reeser is no stranger to the audiences of the small screen, having appeared in Necessary Roughness with Callie Thorne and John Stamos and in a recurring role (Gabrielle Asano) in Hawaii Five-0 with Scott Caan and Alex O’Loughlin.  “That was really, really fun,”  Reeser revealed.  “I loved the character, and obviously you get to go to Hawaii to shoot.  It was pretty fantastic.  One of my favorite parts about that is that the last time I was on the show, I was actually seven months pregnant with my second son, and I traveled over to Hawaii by myself with my (at the time) two year-old.  After that, I felt like I could do anything.  That will always be one of my treasured experiences.  Also, weirdly enough, one of my best friends in the world just happened to be in the same episode as me, so I got to hang out in Hawaii with one of my best girlfriends and my baby boy.  It was pretty hard to beat.”  When I asked if she thought her character might return to the series, she said, “I think what it came down to was between the characters.  I think they were at different places in their lives, and they wanted different things.  I think the characters were in love with each other, though.  It was just bad timing.”

On Tour with the Theatre

Reeser has also been busy with her career in the theatre.  “I started in theatre when I was six, and I still do a stage show called ‘The Thrilling Adventure Hour.’  We are a top podcast on iTunes, and you can download the show for free.  You can also come and see it.   We’ve been doing it for the last eight years, and this year, we’re going to take the show on the road.  We’re going to Australia, New Zealand, Chicago, Seattle, and we’re playing San Francisco this weekend.  I’ll be traveling with the show as much as I can, but I won’t be in San Francisco.  I’m definitely going to Australia.  I was a musical theatre major at UCLA, and one of my dreams is to do stage when I can take a long enough break from my acting career.”  Check out the show’s tour dates on its official website at http://thrillingadventurehour.com.

Take a Break

Between Reeser’s busy acting gigs, she hardly has time for anything else – which is one reason she started her own magazine called “Move Lifestyle.”  An online magazine, it explores the world of the modern working woman.  Reeser and two of her friends (Ashley Faucet and Jenn Wong) collaborated to create a magazine for girls on the go that they themselves would like to read.  Reeser confirmed, “I wanted to create a website that was tailored to women like me who weren’t spending a lot of time doing crafty kinds of things, which is what seems to be on a lot of lifestyle websites.  I’ve always loved the online community and the blogging world.  We do a lot of guides for girls on the go.  It’s sort of a one-stop shopping for information that allows you to find basically everything in one place without having to comb through all the information online.  We put it all together for you.  It’s for the working woman, and I started it after I became a mom.”  Reeser’s online magazine can be found at http://www.movelifestyle.com.

Coming back ABC

Next for Reeser is the Steven Spielberg project The Whispers, airing this spring on ABC. Reeser told me, “It’s an alien drama, and I play a young mom who has something pretty tragic happen to her.”  Thirteen episodes of the series have already been filmed.

I Do, I Do, I Do airs on the Hallmark Channel on Friday, February 6 at 8 P.M.