Buffalo looks good making its Hallmark debut in the charming 'A Newport Christmas'
The holiday film, which premieres at 8 p.m. Nov. 2 on the Hallmark Channel, is set in Newport, R.I., but filmed here for six weeks in March and April before finishing in Newport.
Buffalo may not be in the title of the newest Hallmark movie “A Newport Christmas,” but it could be.
The holiday film, which premieres at 8 p.m. Nov. 2 on the Hallmark Channel, is set in Newport, R.I., but filmed here for six weeks in March and April before finishing in Newport. It opens at the grand Lakeview Castle in Youngstown and moves quickly to a horse and buggy ride through Russell Park in Akron. It’s off to the Ontario House/Stone Jug in Youngstown, then to Main Street shopping districts in two of our quaint villages.
Even when we sometimes see our two main characters in a small sailboat on water, we're often on a sound stage at Buffalo FilmWorks where – it should go without saying – there isn't a large body of water. However, Lake Ontario near Old Fort Niagara was used for scenes with actress Ginna Claire Mason in icy water in the restored replica of the 1885 fishing boat.
Ginna Claire Mason is pictured in a scene filmed in Akron’s Russell Park for Hallmark’s “A Newport Christmas.”
David Scott Holloway, Hallmark Media
The majority of the scenes in the film were shot here, making "A Newport Christmas" a successful Hallmark debut for the Buffalo area. And yes, this is the first Hallmark film made in Buffalo despite the nearly annual social media proclamations that "Hallmark is here making a Christmas movie!" (Those other films were made by independent filmmaker Fred Olen Ray.) Hallmark then filmed “A Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story” here in early summer, which premieres on Nov. 22. Bills' player Damar Hamlin makes a cameo in Hallmark's "The More the Merrier," premiering Nov. 28.
Other local connections in the film include actors like Peter Johnson who appears on the dock toward the end, as well as child actress Nell Bichler who plays Aida's child, Paige Cummings who plays Aida, plus Charlene Amoia, Jon Cesar, Lauren Issa and Tracey B. Wilson.
But first up is “A Newport Christmas,” a sweet and romantic time-travel story.
Ella (Ginna Claire Mason) is a spirited Newport socialite in 1905 who knits mittens for the needy and delivers bread and toys to families. She dreams of starting a charity foundation, but dad wants her to marry a man she’s never met.
While on her small sailboat, the aptly named The Beneficence, Ella sees a comet and wishes for a different life. Voila! She turns and there's a man in the boat. (It could have been creepy, but it's played for laughs, one of the film's strengths.) He’s Nick (played by Wes Brown), a Newport historian and sailor living in 2025, a century later than when Ella took her boat ride.
Ella accuses him of being a stowaway and he wants to know why she’s in his boat. It doesn’t get better on land, where Nick decides Ella is dressed for cosplay to lead historic tours at the Grafton Estate Museum where he works.
Ginna Claire Mason and Joseph Dellger play a daughter and father in 1905 in "A Newport Christmas."
David Scott Holloway, Hallmark Media
Surprise – the museum is Ella's home that has been preserved to look nearly the same as it did in 1905. (These scenes were filmed at the gorgeous Lakewood Castle in Youngstown that looks like a grand 1880s mansion.) Ella is so excited to see her "home" that she accidentally leads a lantern tour. There are reminders of her everywhere including her diary and portrait.
There are many questions to be answered that make the film interesting. How was Ella transported 100 years into the future? How did the two end up on the same boat? Why is the museum called the Grafton Estate when that’s not her name? And why does her diary end on Dec. 18, 1905? All will be answered in a clever way that works with the time-travel element (just go with it).
Once Nick and his co-workers buy into the fact that Ella has somehow time traveled, a nerdy friend brings up a good point about that pesky cosmic wrinkle. Just like in "Back to the Future" when Doc warns Marty not to disrupt the space-time continuum or he'll change the future, the more time Ella spends in 2025, the more she is being erased from 1905.
Wes Brown, right, plays a historian who falls in love with a woman from 1905. Talia Robinson, left, and Evan Alexander Smith help him figure out how to send her back home.
David Scott Holloway, Hallmark Media
Hence the funny "no spoilers!" phrase repeated by Nick and his friends as a reminder that Ella can't learn more about the life she hasn't lived yet or history will change. Of course, there will be slip-ups like when Ella sees a plaque in her honor. And as they feared, there are consequences: Her name disappears from that plaque, she vanishes from her portrait and decorations fade off a Christmas tree before our eyes. They've got to find a way to get her back to 1905. The problem – as you would expect in a Hallmark movie – is that Nick and Ella are growing closer.
Brown is a Hallmark regular with a soulfulness that does him well playing Nick, an introspective and sensitive man who is ready with an eloquent quote as needed. Mason gives Ella a childlike glee as she discovers women in pants, talking encyclopedias (computers) and snow-covered fry bread (fried dough). She's inspired by the idea of a "lady boss," something women in 1905 could not be.
Wes Brown and Ginna Claire Mason star in the Buffalo-made “A Newport Christmas,” premiering Nov. 2 on the Hallmark Channel.
Hallmark Channel
Together they work the comic banter of writer Joie Botkin's script that is important to having viewers buy into the time travel portion of the film which at its heart is simply about two people finding each other – even across a century.