As Brennan Elliott makes his return to Hallmark Channel in his first rom-com in nearly two years, after his wife Camilla Row’s brave cancer battle ended with her passing in March 2025, he feels it’s no coincidence that the opportunity to star in “A Castle of Our Own” came when it did.
“I’m a believer,” he told EntertainmentNow ahead of the movie’s premiere on June 27, 2026. “I believe God brought me the right movie at the right time.”
Brennan Elliott Says ‘A Castle of Our Own’ Script ‘Really Affected Me’
Elliott, 51, first joined Hallmark Channel in the series “Cedar Cove” in 2013, and landed his first movie on the network with 2015’s “A Christmas Melody” co-starring Lacey Chabert and Mariah Carey. Incredibly, “A Castle of Our Own” is Elliott’s 32nd Hallmark movie — but it may be his most poignant and personal of them all.
Playing a divorcee named Adam who can’t bring himself to sell the home he had planned to live in forever with his wife before she left, Elliott told EntertainmentNow that the story’s themes of letting go and living in the present felt tailor-made for him after a year of grieving Row’s death with their kids, son Liam, 13, and daughter Luna, 11.
“It really affected me,” he said of the script, written by Nina Weinman, who’s been writing hit Hallmark movies for as long as Elliott’s been starring in them. “I know what it’s like to be stuck in a home and going, ‘Okay, what now?'”
“Obviously, Adam’s wife left him for another man, and that was tragic, and he was grief-stricken in another way (than me),” Elliott continued. “But I get being in a place that used to be a home and is now just a building, and having to move on. And learning to be in the moment or try to find your voice is tough. Really tough.”
“It just was so personal, I was so connected to it,” Elliott said of first reading the story of Adam and Marley, played by Erica Cerra. “I understood them. I understood people in my life that were like Marley. I understood that without passion and without doing what you love from a place of peace and relaxation and love, you’re just spinning your wheels. I knew what that felt like. You know, God works in mysterious ways, and I think this was a script that came to me at the right time.”
Brennan Elliott Shares the Toughest Part of Playing Adam in ‘A Castle of Our Own’
HallmarkEarly on in “A Castle of Our Own,” Adam appears to have everything figured out, with his easy-going nature and wisdom to impart, but viewers eventually learn he still has his own roadblocks to joy. Having been through an extended cancer journey with Row and navigating the grief of losing her, Elliott wanted to make sure that Adam didn’t come off as too preachy — because he knows how off-putting that can be.
“The thing that was hard for me with Adam was he has a lot of advice and wisdom, and he’s giving all this to Marley along the way,” he told EntertainmentNow. “And in the Hallmark universe, you want to make sure that (doesn’t) come off as condescending or belittling. So that was the only real hiccup for me, figuring out how do I give advice to someone about something that’s so personal?”
“I mean, you’ve got to come from love and grace and gentleness, and come from that place, and still get the message across,” Elliott noted, “as opposed to it becoming criticism or critical, or whatever, right? I think that we did that, and that was a testament to all of us working together.”
Of his character Adam, Elliott said, “He’s been broken and hurt. He’s a broken piece of a man in the beginning, and is trying to find his way. (As Adam) I’m trying to find mental and spiritual health, happiness, and love again in my life, and love it again, and find self-respect for myself. I hope the audience feels that.”
“I’ve obviously been in a lot of these Hallmark movies and the ones that I’m most proud of are when it seems like it’s real life,” Elliott said. “And there’s something really beautiful about a human being, whether they’re young or old, blonde hair or gray hair, I don’t care what — but when they’re really coming from truth, and people can relate, human-to-human. That’s something that I take pride in, and I hope this movie has that kind of connection.”
“Anybody can hit their mark and have a smile, be charming and be good looking or be really pretty, but that’s just not interesting to me,” Elliott said of choosing what projects he works on moving forward. “What’s interesting to me is the frailties of the human experience — the joys, the loves, and the pain.”
“A Castle of Our Own” premieres on Hallmark Channel at 8 p.m. Eastern time on June 27, and will be available to stream the next day via Hallmark+.
