The Big Picture

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with
The Way Home
star, Chyler Leigh.
During her conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Leigh revisits her journey in Hollywood thus far, including
Not Another Teen Movie
,
Supergirl
, and more.
Leigh also discusses that game-changing scene in
The Way Home
Season 2, Episode 5, and teases a late-season scene that brought her to tears.

Collider Ladies Night was created to highlight how an artist’s experiences paved the way to their latest achievement. There are often loads of highs along the way, but there can also be some more challenging moments, ones that heavily contribute to how one views the industry and how they’ll strive to change it for the better. A shining example of one such force in Hollywood? The Way Home star and executive producer, Chyler Leigh.

The Way Home is a Hallmark series in its second season. Not a frequent Hallmark viewer? Hear me out. Hallmark has a large fanbase and serves it well, but The Way Home has the potential to broaden that viewership. It’s a sci-fi family drama with a fascinating mythology and hugely powerful beating heart. Leigh plays Kat Landry, a woman who’s estranged from her mother, Del (Andie MacDowell), but winds up moving back into her childhood home with her, along with her teenage daughter, Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow). While there, Alice discovers that there’s a pond on the propriety with the power to allow certain people to time travel. The thing is, you can’t control where it sends you. The pond decides. And in Alice and Kat’s case, it decides to bring them back to the time when that rift between Kat and Del first formed.

In celebration of The Way Home’s Season 2 run on Hallmark Channel, Leigh joined me for an episode of Collider Ladies Night, and she came to play. I truly love all Ladies Night conversations, but this one is especially packed with hugely insightful and forthright stories about the reality of powering through the pressures of Hollywood.

Chyler Leigh’s Early Days as an Actor Were “Hell,” Here’s What Changed That
Image via Hallmark Channel

At the start of our conversation, Leigh admitted, “I actually wanted absolutely nothing to do with it when I started.” She continued:

“I started in modeling when I was, like, 12-years-old, and I was so
terrified
of attention, but so good at tap dancing for people. That approval thing, it has always been very deep in my life. And so, it was something that I had no interest in doing, but I was really great at, unfortunately.”

The trouble is, no matter how great one is at their craft in Hollywood, navigating the industry still comes with a good deal of rejection, and far too often that rejection can heavily impact one’s sense of self-worth. Leigh continued:

“You go through the industry and you stand in this line where you’re handing your headshot [in] and you’re doing all this stuff, and they’re saying right in front of you … ‘No. No, she’s too fat. No, she’s not pretty enough. No, maybe come back when you lose your baby fat.’ You hear all this stuff so you just start to get this unbelievable sense of doubt and self-hatred and shame, and you look at yourself just going, ‘I will never be good enough.’ So I’d do these commercials, I’d go through all this stuff, and not to say anything bad about her because I don’t think she really knew any better, but my mother was the reason why I did it. She really pushed me into it and really wanted me in the business. And so, again, that’s the people pleaser. That was the
big
people pleaser. For me, that’s what it was. So yeah, I went through years of it, of TV shows, guest spots, pilots, all the stuff, and I kept booking things, which
anybody
would give their left arm to be in that position. So, I can look back at it in retrospect with that gratitude that I’ve been so fortunate in my career to keep working, but at the time it was hell.”

Where did Leigh find hope in the early days of her career? In the audition where she met her husband, Nathan West. She explained:

“It wasn’t until I met Nathan for that pilot where I kind of went, ‘Oh, maybe some good can come out of these scenarios.’ If you do find something that you’re passionate about and you can work and collaborate with people who are just as wacky as you are, and these incredible creative beings, if there’s a way that I can use this wellspring of trauma that I have in my life and I can do something with it and give somebody else something to relate to, then that’s what it’s all for.”

‘Supergirl’ Showed Chyler Leigh Her Acting Can Make a Difference
Image via The CW

Leigh got undeniable proof that her work can make a difference via The CW’s Supergirl.

Leigh played Alex Danvers, Kara’s (Melissa Benoist) adoptive sister, for the show’s full six-season run. Season 2 included an especially profound moment for the character, one during which Alex finally comes out to Kara. She recalled:

“In
Supergirl
,

when my character came out in Season 2, I had friends tell me, ‘This is the scene that I showed my parents when I didn’t have the strength to find the words myself. I literally showed them this scene and it saved my life.’ So when you can look at that and realize that we have a platform, that we actually have an opportunity — I don’t want to say it’s a responsibility, because you don’t want to put pressure on people like that. Some people are okay to share, some aren’t, and that’s their journey, their prerogative, no problem. But if you can take what you find to be the opportunity to make a difference, then I’d use it all day long. Truly.”

The Incredible Similarities Between ‘The Way Home’ & Chyler Leigh’s Real Life

There’s no doubt some of the themes and ideas explored in The Way Home are making a similar impact on viewers, but Leigh also emphasized what a significant impact the project and the storyline is having on her personally.

While revisiting the choice to commit to the show, Leigh emphasized how she was struck by how the concept would push the limits of what one typically expects from Hallmark. “I had done a Hallmark Christmas movie, Window Wonderland, Paul Campbell. I had done that, so I knew the heartbeat of Hallmark.” She continued, “When I read [The Way Home], I was like, ‘Whoa, this is, like, deep, conceptualized storytelling.’ It’s suspenseful, it’s elevated, it’s got all these components to it that just seem like it’s kind of leveling up in that sense, and I was immediately intrigued.”

Upping Leigh’s intrigue in the project? She could directly relate to the character of Kat Landry.

“I related so heavily and deeply to Kat Landry. Not just the fact that, yes, I have a 17-year-old daughter, so I have teenagers, I know what it’s like to have a teenage daughter, but I haven’t spoken to my mother in over 20 years. Kat hasn’t spoken to her mother in about 24 years. I met my husband when I was a teenager. Kat met her husband when she was a teenager. I started to be able to pull from all of my actual personal experiences, and it became this cathartic journey in ways that I didn’t even realize were going to happen.”

Those are certainly strong parallels there, but there’s something coming up in the tail end of Season 2 that made an especially big impression on Leigh, one that struck her deeply personally. She explained:

“There’s a scene that Andie [MacDowell] and I have — it’s in either Episode 9 or 10. I’m not gonna say anything about it, but it’s a conversation that I wish I could have had with my mother. They’re the words that I wish I could — I’m gonna cry, but I
wish
I could have heard her say. We did my coverage of the scene in three takes because it’s almost like I couldn’t do it anymore because it literally was everything. Each time, I was absolutely devastated. And so that being the case, it was like, ‘Wow, these are those moments where I can kind of go, okay, shake it off.’ I can actually close this little teeny tiny
Alice in Wonderland
door. I can go, ‘Okay, alright. Maybe that’s what I needed to hear.’ Personally, maybe that’s something that I needed to be able to connect to and let it go.”

Chyler Leigh Revisits Filming ‘The Way Home’s Much-Anticipated Family Reunion
Image via Hallmark

We may have to wait a little longer to experience that particular scene ourselves, but The Way Home Season 2 is currently doing a stellar job holding us over with other game-changing moments. In particular, a scene that we’ve been waiting for since day one. It’s the scene in Season 2, Episode 5 when Kat finally sees Jacob for the first time since he went missing in 1999.

Given the build-up to this moment, it was a breeze for Leigh to reflect the emotional wallop Kat experiences when seeing adult Jacob played by Spencer Macpherson for the first time. In fact, perhaps it was too easy because the floodgates opened before filming even started. She recalled:

“Let me tell you how easy that was. I was in the makeup/hair trailer and I knew all about the casting and I knew about who they were gonna be bringing in. I’m sitting in the makeup trailer and I’ve got my little eye things on, my de-puffers, I’m getting my hair done, and all of a sudden I look down and this man walks into the trailer, and I’m kind of like, ‘Wait a minute.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god! Oh! We found Jacob.’ And it hit me
so
hard. Seeing him across the trailer, I literally, I kid you not, I started sobbing. It was uncontrollable. I actually felt so ridiculous. This was his very first day. My eye things kept sliding off my face, and I’m sitting there and I had my face covered because it hit so personally … I’m sobbing like a maniac at this poor guy, and he hasn’t been here, you know what I mean?”

Clearly authentic emotions was already there in spades before hitting the set, but filming added another powerful wrinkle to Leigh’s performance. After all these years of being devastated by Jacob’s disappearance, Kat finally gets the opportunity to look him in the eyes again. However, what many hoped would be a joyful reunion quickly knocks the wind out of Kat when she processes that Jacob doesn’t recognize her.

“When he did look and there wasn’t that recognition, it actually made me feel sick to my stomach. So it was one of those things where, again, there was no acting in that moment. It was just feeling that heartbreak. It’s like a sickening thud when a dead body hits the floor, that was Kat hitting the sand in that moment.”

While we wait to see what the future holds for Kat, Jacob and the rest of The Way Home crew, be sure to watch Leigh’s full Collider Ladies Night interview in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to it in podcast form below:

The Way Home airs on Hallmark Channel on Sundays. You can also stream the show on Peacock.

Watch on Peacock