The Big Picture

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party with
The Way Home
star, Sadie Laflamme-Snow.
The hit Hallmark series follows a family reassessing their past and present via the use of a pond that gives them the ability to time travel.
Laflamme-Snow discusses booking such a big project so soon after graduating, working alongside Andie MacDowell and Chyler Leigh, what could rock Alice’s world in the tail end of Season 2, and more.

Sadie Laflamme-Snow shot out the gate and into Hollywood in a big way. Just a couple of years after graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada, Laflamme-Snow scored a lead role in a Hallmark series opposite two industry heavyweights, Andie MacDowell and Chyler Leigh.

Since premiering in January 2023, The Way Home has amassed an adoring fanbase that spans generations, and is credited with opening many minds to Hallmark content. Laflamme-Snow plays Alice, a teenager whose parents are on the cusp of divorce. Even though her mother, Kat (Leigh), is estranged from her mother, Del (MacDowell), they move back into her childhood home together, a house in a small farm town called Port Haven. While exploring the property, Alice makes a game-changing discovery. By jumping into a pond in the woods, Alice can time travel. But, Alice isn’t in control of where (when) she goes. That’s up to the pond, and it opts to send her back to 1999, the year that drastically changed Kat and Del’s lives and their connection to one another.

While celebrating The Way Home’s Season 2 run on Hallmark Channel, Laflamme-Snow took the time to join me for a Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party conversation to recap how she scored such a wonderful opportunity so soon after graduation, to dig into Alice’s evolution on the show thus far, and to tease some challenges the character could face in the second half of Season 2.

The Way Home Three generations of strong and independent women living together in the small farm town of Port Haven embark on an enlightening journey none of them could have imagined as they learn how to find their way back to each other.Main Genre Drama Seasons 2

Greatest Acting Lesson Learned: “Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously”

Given there’s endless paths to becoming a professional actor, I often ask Ladies Night guests for a lesson learned in school that they still apply to their work to this day, and then also for something that all the schooling in the world never could have prepared them for when they hit their first set. Laflamme-Snow’s answer to the first part of that question was especially wholesome and pure, a thought that functions as a beautiful reminder of why one started pursuing this dream to begin with.

“Something I learned that I still use all the time is probably
how similar acting is to doing an imaginary play when you’re a little kid
. That’s, I feel like, how so many people get into acting is you’re a really imaginative little kid and it just kind of never stops. And I think when you’re in school, they try and draw that connection so you don’t lose hope and get too tired and out of it to be able to continue on. But it’s something that I’m reminded of all the time. Our sets on our show are
so
beautiful, and I feel like it’s just like you’re in a giant doll house and you’re just living out that dream.”

Moving on to the latter half of the question, Laflamme-Snow pinpointed something that many must learn, no matter their career path. In fact, I try to remind myself of this one often; “don’t take yourself so seriously.”

“Something that I could not have been taught — don’t take yourself so seriously. School is so serious! [Laughs] I think I also brought a certain serious energy to school that I think,
when you’re working and then you realize, ‘It’s a job and it’s a gift,’ you kind of have to just let it go a little bit more
. Sometimes it’s like you maybe don’t feel ready or you’re having an off day or something, but you just have to kind of get after it because that’s the job that you’re here to do. And I think in school you kind of get into, ‘Oh, it wasn’t my best,’ you know what I mean? But once it becomes a job you’re like, ‘Okay, here I am!’ And so it’s been nice to kind of learn that a little bit. It’s hard to actually do, but here I am saying it, so I’ll try and put it into practice even more.”

You and me both, Sadie.

How Sadie Laflamme-Snow Booked a Lead Role in a Series so Quickly
Image via Hallmark

More often than not when an artist graduates from school and makes their way out into the industry, it can take a good while — if not, a really long while — to strike gold with a role like Alice in The Way Home. How’d Laflamme-Snow find such success so soon? One thing I’d pinpoint is natural talent deserving of such an opportunity, but Laflamme-Snow credited the team at her back, a team that was able to recognize that the role of Alice was the perfect fit for her.

“
I have an amazing team who could see that part come in and, from a mile away, were like, ‘I saw this thing and I think you’re really gonna like it. When I read it, I just saw you.’
And it was funny because I feel like you hear that and then sometimes the audition comes through and you’re like, ‘Oh, really? That’s how you saw me?’ [Laughs] But then it was just that thing of, I read the scene and I was like, ‘I just have a feeling that this is something that I’m gonna connect to.’”

And that’s exactly what happened. Even before having access to full scripts, Laflamme-Snow had a clear understanding of the intention behind Alice’s dialogue in her audition sides. She recalled:

“There was one part where
I turn to Jacob and I say, ‘You look after yourself, okay?’
My friend who I was reading with was like, ‘I think you’re just doing a little too much with that line,’ and I was like, ‘No, no, no.
I think something really bad is gonna happen to this little boy.
’ She was like, ‘I think you’re just telling him to look after himself. I don’t think it’s that deep.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I have this feeling.’ And then finding out when I was getting a recall and that sort of thing that I had the intuition, there was kind of a weird feeling of, ‘I just feel like I knew that.’ I don’t know, it’s kind of a beautiful story.”

Chyler Leigh Helped Sadie LaFlamme-Snow Find Her Voice as a Leader on Set
Image via Hallmark Channel

That beautiful story would continue on screen and behind the scenes as well where LaFlamme-Snow is surrounded by hugely experienced, kind, and supportive influences.

Being a lead on such a big production can be a nerve-racking undertaking for an actor first kicking off her journey in film and television, but LaFlamme-Snow has two powerhouses by her side setting the best possible example.

“
I feel like the thing that is so similar about the way that Chyler and Andie approach being leaders on a set like this is how much they love the project and love their characters and will fight for the story and the integrity of the story
, and the creative process is so clear to everybody on the set that it kind of sets a tone of, ‘Okay, this is how much we’re caring about this project.’ And so I think it makes everyone want to bring their A-game, whether you’re there for one day, whether you’re working as a daily on the crew. You look to the leaders and it’s these guys who are showing how much they love the show and how much they love the story. It’s infectious in the best way. I think that it’s a beautiful way to lead a set and I really appreciate it.”

Leigh and MacDowell’s leadership isn’t just something LaFlamme-Snow is appreciating in the moment. They’re setting examples that’ll influence how she carries herself on sets going forward.

“I think with the pond stuff, it’s kind of a big undertaking. It’s cold, there’s a bit of danger, like real danger, and then in the scene it’s usually pretty high emotion. A lot of that Chyler and I shoot together, and she’s really a pro with the stunt stuff. She’s done a lot of it herself, and so I feel like I look to her a lot for guidance in those moments of like, ‘Are we actually ready to shoot this? I actually need another minute,’ because we move fast. But at the end of the day, it’s about doing it safely because there’s no reason to get a bad take of something that you did and then something bad happened.
I think I’ve also found my voice in watching her take a leadership role, especially in those moments.
Especially, you know, there’s the teenage cast — we’re all adults but we play teenagers. Andie and Chyler, they really lead our little family of women, and I love our teen cast and I feel like when we’re together, I try and extend that level of care if I can in any way. I can’t spoil anything but
there’s moments down the line where these kinds of stunt and safety things come up and I feel like I was trying to channel my inner Chyler in those moments.
”

How Time Travel Changes Alice in ‘The Way Home’
Image via Hallmark Channel

That wasn’t the only Season 2 tease LaFlamme-Snow shared during our conversation.

While discussing Alice’s growth as a person via her time travel adventures, LaFlamme-Snow emphasized that Alice has softened. She is growing into the person she wants to become, but LaFlamme-Snow wonders, “What happens when that person gets kind of ugly?”

“
When you first meet Alice, she’s really that quintessential bratty teenager
with her parents going through a divorce, and she wears a lot of eyeliner and stomps around in her Dr. Martens, and is really mean to her family,
but I think she really has changed when the time travel concept is introduced. She really softens
, so kind of trying to have that not be like an instant switch but that you see this person who
wants
to be that version of herself and, how can she open up like that in the present to her mom and to her grandmother? I think with Season 2, we see that person as kind of like her starting point, and so now I think there’s even more room to play. Like, what happens when that person gets kind of ugly? And what happens when she really, really actually lets you in and lets you see her be happy and excited? I think there’s a lot to go with her this season.”

How will Alice be tested as the Season 2 storyline progresses? Her differing thoughts on what finding Jacob could mean for the family could be one of them. LaFlamme-Snow continued:

“Season 1, I think I would say that she was really persistent. She really had a mission and she was gonna go after it. I always want to have that.
I think that at the end of the day she wants her family to heal in a way that’s different than Kat maybe
, because she really wants to find the answer about, where is Jacob? And I think even Alice is starting to be like, ‘We need to heal. That is not necessarily going to heal us.’”

‘The Way Home’ Season 2 Will Unearth Secrets That Make Alice Question the Adults in Her Life
Image via Hallmark Channel

The potential rifts between Alice and the adults in her life don’t stop there.

At this point in the show’s run, we have learned a good deal about what happened in the late 90s and early 2000s, but it’s also abundantly clear that Alice still has a lot to learn about the choices her mother, Elliot (Evan Williams), and perhaps even Del made between Jacob’s disappearance and the present. Laflamme-Snow teased:

“I think at the end of Season 1, she’s told that she can’t go back to see her mom and Elliot in the past, and then very quickly at the beginning of Season 2, she goes back to the past and she sees everyone that she had been told she’d never see again. So
the idea that there have been some secrets, that things may have been swept under the rug, that people still think, ‘Maybe there’s a chance that won’t happen again,’ that they can kind of keep whatever that reason is from her, I think is something that could shake the foundation
. I think there’s some unearthing that can happen that could make her question the adults in her life. There are choices they may have made as young people.”

Eager to hear more from Laflamme-Snow on her journey with The WayHome thus far? Be sure to watch our full conversation in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to it in podcast form below:

New episodes of The Way Home air on Hallmark Channel on Sundays at 9/8c. The show is also available to stream on Peacock.

Watch on Peacock