Aurora Teagarden star Skyler Samuels has become a mother. The 30-year-old actress made the announcement on Instagram, sharing photos of her baby as part of a campaign for jewelry designer Charles and Colvard.
“To all my fellow mamas out there, Mother’s Day is 3 weeks away. Let’s celebrate the hardest and most rewarding job there is by giving a little sparkle to the mamas in our life…they deserve it,” she wrote.
Aurora Teagarden star
Skyler Samuels got her start playing a young version of Gigi Hollingsworth on the Disney Channel series Wizards of Waverly Place. She also appeared on the Nickelodeon series Drake and Josh.
She went on to appear in The Gates, American Horror Story: Freak Show, The Rookie, and Scream Queens.
In 2023, Hallmark surprised fans by announcing it would produce new movies in its Aurora Teagarden Mysteries franchise with Samuels in the title role.
Up until then, the films starred Candace Cameron Bure as small-town librarian Aurora “Ro” Teagarden, who uses her knowledge of true crime to solve murders. Hallmark had made 18 movies in the series when Bure announced she was leaving the company to pursue a partnership with the new network Great American Family. Fans assumed that meant the end of the series but Hallmark solved the problem by creating a prequel. In Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New, Skyler Samuels starred as a young Ro Teagarden who had just moved back to her hometown after finishing her college degree.
“Our viewers have been waiting for more adventures with Aurora and her friends — what better way to do that than to take them back to when the young, amateur sleuth was just coming into her own?” said Emily Merlin, development manager of programming at Hallmark Media in a statement to ET Online. “The Aurora Teagarden franchise is a fan favorite and we’re excited to share this new chapter with viewers.”
Fan favorite
“I watched a bunch of the original ones and just really studied Aurora and her world and tried to hone in on her traits and characteristics that really made her her,” Samuels said in an interview with TV Insider. “Then from there, I just reverse-engineered who I imagined she might have been when she was in her early to mid-20s, and that’s really where the fun of inventing the younger Aurora came from.”
She said it was fun to play the character before she had become a skilled detective.
“The one thing that I love watching as an audience member is imperfect people,” Samuels said. “It’s just not interesting if people are too put together or too polished. It’s fun to see people be human and a little rough around the edges. When we meet Aurora as an adult, she’s pretty polished and she’s good at solving her mysteries and crimes. She’s in her stride.”
“I thought it would be really fun to just embrace the version of her where she’s not good at this stuff yet. She’s still definitely figuring it out, and you’re watching her stumble into her superpower of being this gumshoe mystery solver and how that love and obsession develops for her.”
Skyler Samuels
Skyler Samuels is married to Lucas Till. The two have made it clear they do not intend to share the baby’s name and gender.
Samuels is working on two more movies in the Aurora Teagarden franchise with her baby in tow.
“It’s been such a special time and it really, like, marks this new chapter of my life,” Samuels told the website Heavy. “It’s almost hard to remember like, before I was a mom. What did I do before this little person was in my life? It’s so intense and it’s rewarding and challenging … And there’s a lot of tears and a lot of diapers and a lot of joy and it’s just, it’s so intense across the board.”
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