Fans of Hallmark Channel are in for a treat with the debut of “Much About Love.”
Not only does the rom-com reunite the fan-favorite duo of Ashley Williams and Niall Matter (last seen together in Hallmark’s “Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Sweater”), the plot is inspired by William Shakespeare’s classic comedy “Much Ado About Nothing.”
Williams isn’t just the film’s star. She’s also co-writer on the screenplay, which she wrote with her husband Neal Dodson, while the Bard of Avon is also credited as co-writer.
‘Much About Love’
“A TV director returns to her theater roots for a Shakespeare festival and runs into an old flame, rekindling a merry war of wits in this modern retelling of ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’” notes the synopsis for Hallmark Channel’s latest original.
In an interview with People, Williams revealed that when writing dialogue for Matter’s character, she could hear him speaking the words.
“The introduction of Niall Matter is critical for the success of any movie,” Williams shared.
“I had been imagining Niall saying all of the lines for literally years, and once the words started coming out of his mouth at rapid-fire pace, it was like, ‘Here we go. Now we’re in the pocket,’” she added.
“When we did ‘Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Sweater,’ Nina Weinman, the writer, had to write extra scenes for the movie because we were running so short because Niall and I were speaking so fast,” Williams recalled of their previous onscreen team-up. “It’s hard for me to find a costar who talks as fast as I do, but Niall Matter does.”
Birds of a Feather
As Williams explains, their styles complement each other perfectly, which is on full display in “Much About Love.”
“Niall’s got this playfulness about him that ignites a playfulness in me,” Williams said.
“He’s got this energy, this bite to him where it’s almost a tiny bit scary how engaged he is. And I think I have that too. It’s just this side of potentially crazy,” she continued.
“And he meets me. He throws the ball back just as hard as I threw it,” she added. “And so getting to put that into a delicious little rom-com, it was actually really fun.”
Bea and Benny
HallmarkDiscussing her inspiration to loosely adapt the Shakespeare classic focusing on protagonists Beatrice and Benedict as a Hallmark Channel rom-com, Williams revealed it was Jessica Callahan, Hallmark Channel’s VP of programming, who called her up, “and said, ‘I’ve always thought of you as a Beatrice.’ And I was like, ‘I’ve never been so flattered in my entire life. I don’t know how I could do that and possibly live up to the standard.’ But she just said, ‘I’m just going to put that in your head. Think about it.’ So I was chatting with my husband about it, and we thought, ‘What if we set a Hallmark movie at a Shakespeare festival and what if they’re putting on ‘Taming of the Shrew?’ Obviously, ‘Taming of the Shrew’ is incredibly problematic by today’s standards, but we’d always talked about this concept of if ‘Taming of the Shrew’ could possibly be the story of female empowerment. This is the kind of stuff we talk about on date nights.”
Given how happy she is with the way the film turned out, Williams said that she’s open to penning another Hallmark feature based on a Shakespeare play.
“I think the canon is full of perfect structural Hallmark movies,” she said.
“One of the things that was so much fun was setting it at a Shakespeare festival, so the Shakespeare nerds among us are going to love this movie, but the non-nerds are going to not really need to know,” Williams added. “Getting to be overt as I subvert was kind of a gift.”
“Much About Love” debuts Saturday, August 29 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel.
