‘Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New’s’ Skyler Samuels Loved “Reverse Engineering” Hallmark’s Sleuth

If there’s one thing that the citizens of Lawrenceton have learned over the years, it’s that nothing stops Aurora Teagarden. Over the course seven years and of 18 movies, Hallmark’s premier sleuth solved murders involving everything from copycat killers to small plane enthusiasts to wannabe Hollywood big shots and not-so-haunted houses. Roe triumphed over it all — until Hallmark was hit with a mystery that seemed too hard to solve: how do you keep the Aurora Teagarden Mysteries series without Aurora Teagarden?

Just two months after the last Aurora Teagarden mystery Haunted By Murder aired, Candace Cameron Bure announced that she’d moved on from Hallmark. This major change called for Hallmark to try something new with the franchise, and that’s where Skyler Samuels comes in.

Known to genre fans for her roles on Fox’s Scream Queens as well as the mutant Frost sisters on The Gifted, Samuels was brought on to play a younger version of Aurora — one whose love of true crime had resulted in scholarly pursuits but no on-the-ground sleuthing. The 2008 Aurora, back in Lawrencetown and working on her master’s while juggling jobs as a TA and waitress, is a far cry from the Roe of old. But, as Samuels told Decider, some things about this fan favorite character never change.

Ahead of Aurora’s big return in Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New, Decider got the chance to chat with new Hallmark superstar Skyler Samuels about filling Roe’s shoes, solving mysteries with flip phones, and putting a new spin on an old favorite.

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Decider: How have the past few months been, now that everyone knows you’re the new Aurora Teagarden?

Skyler Samuels: It’s been a really fun adventure. It was kind of a surprise that came up at the beginning of this year and I was really excited and flattered to be asked to take on the new, early age Aurora, and it’s been a blast. We’ve had such a great group of people and it’s made 2023 So much fun.

Did you have a previous Hallmark fandom prior to becoming Aurora? Are you tuning into the Christmas movies every year?

I like the Christmas movies, of course, yes. The holidays feel incomplete without your obligatory Hallmark holiday movies. So that I knew, but I never worked for Hallmark before and I was vaguely familiar with the Aurora series. I was really interested in the approach with kind of rebooting it because it’s not technically a prequel, but what it really is is this reimagining of this really fun, quirky character. I thought it was such an interesting thing to be able to go back in time and tell the story after you’ve had this established archive of all these other movies where Aurora is an adut and she gets into all these adventures and trouble and all that stuff. To go back in time and discover how she became that person felt like a really fun opportunity to play and explore a whole new side of a character that people really love.

How much of Something New is a period piece? Are you using iPhones or the old flip phones?

There’s not an iPhone in sight! It was making all of us laugh, actually, because it’s set in 2008, at which point I was in late middle school. The phone that Aurora uses in the movie I thought was so cool when I was in eighth grade, and now I look at it and I’m like, “Oh, my God, the silliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” Like, flip phones and those little slide phones where you just got a keypad to text. Very exciting. It really brought us all back and we had a good laugh about all the old tech on the movie, and lots of low rise jeans and just belts and things that were really popular in 2008.

It’s interesting that you’re traveling back in time and also giving the franchise a fresh start. How has the tone changed?

The two things that are probably most markedly different from the original movies to this prequel/re-imagination are the tone and the aesthetic. The aesthetic is incredibly cinematic. It doesn’t look like the other movies. It’s got a real mood in a fun way. It’s got a very specific color palette. Our director, Jess Harmon, is incredibly creative and has such a vision for really reimagining the early world of Aurora. And so she and our brilliant DP Will McKnight came up with these rules of the world where suspects are shot in a certain way and then, when there’s certain mysteries going on, there’s certain lenses that are used. It really creates this moody, fun, cinematic feeling and so the aesthetic right off the bat feels really different and cool.

And the tone is definitely more quirky in a way where Aurora is not good at any of the stuff yet. She’s bad at it. We’re watching her fall into what will become her profession, but [right now] she’s getting her master’s degree, she’s a TA at a college. She hasn’t quite figured out how to make solving crimes a full-time hobby-slash-job and, mind you, there are no iPhones so it’s not like she can do a quick Google on anybody. So it’s a different world where you’re watching someone come into their superpower, so to speak. Because of that, it’s a little messier in a fun way. She’s not quite the prim and proper Aurora we know, as an adult, but a little more goofy and endearing and awkward and trying to figure it out. That lends itself definitely to a lot more comedy, which was really fun to incorporate.

You’re taking over for Candace Cameron Bure, who played the role in 18 movies. Was there any pressure coming into a role that is that has been so explored and defined by a previous actor?

It’s interesting — it’s the first time I’ve taken on a job where there’s been a template that existed before. And what was helpful was having this entire canon of Aurora movies to refer to. And so certainly for Evan Roderick and I, who plays Arthur in the movie, we had great references of who these people are as adults. We can cherry pick some of the characteristics that feel true to who they are. But what was actually fun for us was to look at who they are as adults, and then reverse engineer who they might have been as young adults. That’s really where the fun came in.

We have certain characteristics that are true to the original, like Aurora still only ever calls Marilu [Henner’s character] “mother.” Their mother/daughter relationship dynamic is similar and strong and quirky the way it is in the original movies. [Aurora’s] not the most traditionally sentimental or romantic gal in the original movies, and we can see that that’s also true in this prequel. You can see how she’s coming into that philosophy, so to speak, so we have little bits and pieces that feel true to the characters as adults. But we have so much room to play and opening up who they might have been before. I think they’ll feel familiar and new to the audience.

You mentioned Evan Roderick, who plays Arthur, and there’s also a new Sally played by Kayla Heller. What was it like for the three of you to discover these characters’ new/old ways of interacting?

We got incredibly lucky with Evan Roderick and Kayla Heller, who play Arthur and Sally. We all came into it so excited and all had different ideas of who these people were. But they were so collaborative and it was so much fun for the three of us to tinker on, like, how Sally and Aurora ended up with this ride or die relationship we see as adults. In this first prequel movie, Sally is getting married and there’s a big wedding with plenty of chaos that ensues around it, as is true for most people planning a wedding, going through this experience. And in the end, we come to learn why Sally as an adult maybe has a harder time trusting men in her relationships, why dating is so hard, and really why she leans on Aurora so much. You really see this pivotal, foundation-building moment in their relationship established in this movie, which is fun. So I think the audience will see that and go, “Okay, I can see how these girls really became cemented together after this experience.”

With Arthur, they’re not together as adults but it’s been alluded to that there was sort of a thing in their early years, but not entirely clear what that was. So now that we get to be in those early years, the world is wide open. And so for Evan and I, we really wanted to explore this will they/won’t they dynamic in their relationship before everything got figured out as adults. What was that messy moment in their mid-20s when they were both interested in each other but neither really knew how to approach it? What did that look like? So it really left so much room to play.

Also getting to work with Marilu Henner, who famously has an uncanny memory. Is she an encyclopedia of Aurora Teagarden facts since she’s been with the franchise from the beginning? And are those stories about her memory true?

It’s insane and I marvel at it. It’s no wonder she quite literally has been studied by modern science because it’s insane how much she’s able to remember with such accuracy. I was a little nervous before we started filming because I thought like, “I can never forget my lines. This woman’s gonna remember everything. I have to be extra on top of it.” But she’s lovely to work with and her encyclopedic memory was actually quite helpful as far as literally remembering every movie they made, every storyline, all the different characters who came in and out — that was really helpful to have her as a resource. If we had questions about what came before it was like, “Don’t ask Google, ask Marilu.”

Also mystery shows require so much exposition and information and dialogue. Was that daunting at all? Did you have any trouble all those lines out?

I would be lying if I said I didn’t, for sure. The mystery vernacular is a language all unto itself, so it was definitely a new muscle for me. And I just kept thinking, “Okay, the more movies we make, the easier this will get.” It really was like speaking a new language almost, but it was fun. And also getting into that vernacular was also what helped me find Aurora’s voice and by the time we were done filming, I felt like I had such a good handle on who she is and what she is, and how she talks to her sense of humor. That now I’m, I know exactly who she is, and we move forward on future movies. she feels really real to me now.

Do you hope to do more Aurora Teagarden mysteries?

That’s the goal! Listen: there’s a lot of time between 2008 and 2015. There’s plenty of time to tell some stories in there and I hope to get the chance to do so. It’s such a great group of people. We had such a joy making the movie.

Now that you’re in the Hallmark family, will we see you in a holiday movie? Was that an ulterior motive for joining Aurora Teagarden?

I wouldn’t say it’s a motive but doing a holiday movie would definitely be a little bucket list item I would be super excited to do.

We know we’re getting younger versions of Aurora, Arthur, and Sally. Are there any other classic characters or locations that we might see pop up in this new era of the franchise?

Absolutely. I think the audience will be happy. We’ve got a couple little cameos at Sally’s pre-wedding party. We see some characters from the original movies. You definitely get the feeling that we’re pulling from who came before. I think our goal with the future young Aurora movies is to start letting in people we met later on in the original movies to tie it all together. But what I know so far is they’ll all kind of be strategically laid out, so as we come to meet people, hopefully, it’s like 20/20 hindsight vision. Watching these movies, the audience will be like, “Oh, I totally get now why she has this weird relationship with this woman as an adult, because this is how they met when they were younger.” Or, “This is how this person came to be in the story.” So it’s fun getting to plant everybody’s origin stories throughout the years.

What’s nice about it is Aurora Teagarden: Something New will be familiar to the audience that has loved the movies and watched them for years now, but I also think it’s new and fresh and inviting to a whole new audience who might be unfamiliar with the world. So I’m hoping it brings all kinds of eyeballs to the screen.

Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New premieres on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries on Friday, June 9 at 8 p.m. ET

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity