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Tag: Aurora Teagarden

  • Aurora Teagarden star welcomes first child

    Aurora Teagarden star welcomes first child

    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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  • Aurora Teagarden Mysteries

    Aurora Teagarden Mysteries

    Aurora Teagarden Mysteries on Hallmark

  • Two new Aurora Teagarden movies in the works

    Two new Aurora Teagarden movies in the works

    Two new Aurora Teagarden movies are headed to television. Crews will be filming the new mysteries in various locations around Vancouver, British Columbia, in the coming weeks. The projects were confirmed by producer Mike Barbuto in a recent interview.

    “…I can tell you that the next two are going to be even better than the first one,” Barbuto said on the Hallmark Mysteries and More podcast.

    The movies follow a reboot of the Hallmark Mysteries franchise in 2023 that featured Skyler Samuels in the title role. The original series ended abruptly when actress Candace Cameron Bure, who played Aurora “Ro” Teagarden in the films, left Hallmark to work with the new network Great American Family.

    New Aurora Teagarden movies

    According to Creative BC, crews will be filming in the coming weeks in various locations around Vancouver. The projects listed are “Young Aurora Teagarden Mysteries 2” and “Young Aurora Teagarden Mysteries 3.” The director listed on both projects is Jessica Harmon, who directed Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New in 2023.

    Hallmark surprised fans when it announced it was reviving the series. Based on the novels by Charlaine Harris, the mysteries follow Aurora Teagarden, a crime-obsessed librarian who lives in the small town of Lawrenceton, Washington. Marilu Henner starred as her mother, Aida, and Niall Matter joined the cast eventually as Aurora’s love interest.

    The network made 18 movies in the series:

    A Bone to Pick (2015)

    Real Murders (2015)

    Three Bedrooms, One Corpse (2016)

    The Julius House (2016)

    Dead Over Heels (2017)

    A Bundle of Trouble (2017)

    Last Scene Alive (2018)

    Reap What You Sew (2018)

    The Disappearing Game (2018)

    A Game of Cat and Mouse (2019)

    An Inheritance to Die For (2019)

    A Very Foul Play (2019)

    Heist and Seek (2020)

    Reunited and It Feels So Deadly (2020)

    How to Con a Con (2021)

    Til Death Do Us Part (2021)

    Honeymoon, Honeymurder (2021)

    Haunted by Murder (2022)

    Candace Cameron Bure

    But in April 2022, series lead Candace Cameron Bure shocked fans when she announced she would be leaving Hallmark to work with Great American Family, a network started by the former CEO of Hallmark Media.

    “I’m very excited to develop heartwarming family and faith-filled programming and make the kind of stories my family and I love to watch,” Bure said in a statement through the network, which started airing material in September 2021.“I am constantly looking for ways that I can inspire people to live life with purpose. GAC fits my brand perfectly; we share a vision of creating compelling wholesome content for an audience who wants to watch programming for and with the whole family. Great, quality entertainment with a positive message is what my partnership with GAC is all about!”

    In the works

    But in 2023, Hallmark premiered a prequel to the series.

    “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. “The Aurora Teagarden franchise is a fan favorite and we’re excited to share this new chapter with viewers.”

    In Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New, Skyler Samuels portrayed a young Ro Teagarden who returned to her hometown following college graduation.

    While working as a teacher’s assistant in a crime fiction class and waitressing at the local diner, she discussed true crime with local police detective Arthur (played by Evan Roderick) and helped her friend Sally plan her wedding.

    When Sally’s fiancé didn’t show up at the wedding rehearsal, Aurora and Arthur went to track him down. They discovered a body, which they at first assumed was Sally’s tardy groom. But when it turned out to be someone else, Sally’s fiancé became the main suspect.

    Hallmark has not yet given a release date for these films. We will update this story as more information becomes available.

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