Hallmark Leading Ladies Alison Sweeney And Ashley Williams Team Up To Explore Barcelona In Two-Part Movie

“Nobody was really sure exactly how it was going to work. You know, it’s really rare to have two women as the true leads of a Hallmark movie. That doesn’t happen a lot.”

Alison Sweeney is talking about when she and Ashley Williams pitched their idea for a pair of Spain-set films to the network.

Sweeney and Williams have each starred as the leading lady in several Hallmark movies, but they hadn’t worked together in one. And, even more rare is the concept of having two leading ladies sharing the main storyline.

This is just what happens in not one but two films featuring the actresses.

In To Barcelona, With Love, Sweeney plays Erica, an American expat living in Barcelona who translates novels into Spanish. Anna (Williams) is the American author of the book Barcelona, Mi Amor that became a big hit after Erica’s translation.

When Anna comes to Barcelona for a book signing event, her arrival not only catches the attention of local bookstore owner Nico but also threatens to bring to light Erica’s secret – that she took liberties with her translation to improve the story. As the two women navigate their relationship, they end up ultimately helping each find true happiness.

In the follow up, To Barcelona, Forever, set five months later, Erica and Anna are happily navigating new chapters in their lives. Now friends, they find themselves traveling outside the city of Barcelona to a charming village where a misunderstanding leads to unexpected romance for one of them.

Also a first for Hallmark, both films were shot entirely on location in Barcelona, Spain, and surrounding areas. Along with Sweeney and Williams, who also serve as producers on the project, Alejandro Tous and Miguel Brocca co-star in the films.

Sweeney clarifies the concept of the movies a bit, saying, “From the very beginning we always saw this as a story about the friendship between these two women and their bond. But of course, the romance that they each experience on their own is an important part too.”

She says that for both she and Williams, “So often when we do these movies, we’re playing opposite a handsome, wonderful, charismatic man, which is fun, and its own journey,” but she expresses that both are happy about, ‘getting to be sitting across from another leading lady.’

“It’s just a different experience,” she explains. “It feels very honest getting into the rawness and the realness of what happens between two women who are doing all kinds of things on their way to becoming friends. So it’s a really different energy and a different dynamic than what people might call a ‘standard’ Hallmark movie.”

In an interesting twist, Sweeney, commenting on working with Williams said that her favorite part of the collaboration was, ‘not always agreeing about everything.’

“When you have someone just as invested as you in something, but they see something a different way, I’m so happy to have that conversation with an equally strong point of view that is not the same as mine, because I really thought mine was the only way, and now I’m hearing her point of view, and that’s so much better. The movie is better because of everything we didn’t agree about; those things that we really worked on to find the best solution.”

Williams agrees, adding, “Yeah, getting to go to Ali and say. ‘I’m not sure about this,’ and having her say, ‘yeah, let’s fix it,’ was so great. It was just wonderfully validating to have a partner like that.”

However, Sweeney says that things weren’t ‘perfect’ all the time. “The hardest part about working with Ashley is that I wanted to laugh all the time. She’s just so funny, sometimes it was hard for me to be professional.”

While they did let the laughter flow, Williams says that the two women were able to bring the drama as needed. “There were a lot of moments in this when we really had to show conflict between our characters, and neither of us held back. And it was kind of fun because there are obstacles in this friendship, and it gets emotional and heated, and we really went for it in those scenes.”

Speaking about the second film, Sweeney says that the intent was ‘not to make a sequel or like the same movie again.’

“I think that’s a really important as storytellers ourselves, but also just as fans of TV. I’ve watched lots of movies, and I watched the sequels, and I don’t want to see the same movie again. I want to see a different movie. I want to see what happens next with these characters. So I think that was a really fun challenge; to find the story as producers and then as actors to keep these characters fresh for the audience, but in new circumstances.”

Pointing out another reason to watch the films, the pair muse over the beauty of Spain on display, which Sweeney says, “really is a character in the movies. So many beautiful places. Every scene is like a stunning postcard.”

Also unique to these productions is that the Sweeney and Williams have produced a companion podcast, entitled Mi Amor, with Ali Sweeney + Ashley Williams.

It started simply enough, says Sweeney, with, “At the end of each day, we would drive back to the where we were staying and during that trip we would just talk a lot about what had happened that day. It was so fun. So then I thought, ‘Okay, well, let’s just do this with microphones and record it.’”

“To be clear, it’s a homemade podcast,” says Williams with a laugh. “It’s just me and Ali with our little headphones on our computers, seeing if we can make a podcast. I really like that about it, that It’s sort of made with scotch tape and paper clips.”

Even given the low-tech production of it, Williams says that the podcast does give a great deal of insight into, ‘the making of the movies, and what we were thinking as we were doing everything.’

All of this seems to be a theme permeating not only their work together but highlighted in their films as well — that it’s all about recognizing the moments that matter.

“It’s the little stuff, nuances and details that happen in-between those, like, tentpole things that happen. That’s what life is,’ says Sweeney. “It’s all those little moments that happen unexpectedly, or maybe missed opportunities, and things like that. That’s really what’s fun about telling stories — when you do something and people can they see themselves in a particular moment. That’s a win for us when we feel like we’ve created a situation that you would find yourself in and you understand it. And I think that’s what we’ve done in these stories.

‘To Barcelona, With Love’ premieres Saturday, June 7th at 8pm. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel, and ‘To Barcelona, Forever’ debuts Saturday, June 14th at 8pm ET/PT on Hallmark Channel.

The podcast, Mi Amor, with Ali Sweeney + Ashley Williams, can be found here.