Exclusive Interview

‘A Royal Setting’s Jen Lilley and Dan Jeannotte on Their Reunion & Her Hallmark Homecoming

It’s crystal clear that everyone will love A Royal Setting. Jen Lilley and Dan Jeannotte are teaming up once again for a gem of a Hallmark movie that premieres on March 28.

When Ruby (Lilley), a world-renowned gemologist, is hired by a royal family to restore the crown jewels and design Prince Luca’s (Jeannotte) crown, she travels to the kingdom of Gullion and meets the dashing royal. During Ruby’s time with Guillon, she bonds with Prince Luca, and feelings between them begin to spark. Swooon spoke with Jen Lilley and Dan Jeannotte about reuniting in front of the camera, Lilley’s return to Hallmark, and more.

“Knowing that I was going to be working with Jen kind of took away a huge part of whatever nerves I might have had before starting,” Jeannotte said. “Anytime you start on a new project, you’re like, what’s it going to be like? Who are the people I’m working with? What’s the energy going to be? The first movie was already enjoyable. The last one we worked on was a really great movie, but it was a bit more romantic and a bit more dramatic. This one has a lot of comedy in it. And I remember talking about this years ago with Jen that she’s really funny. She should do more funny stuff. This movie, she gets the chance to be funny.”

The duo first worked together on the 2019 Hallmark movie Paris, Wine & Romance. Lilley told Swooon she was “very glad to be working with Dan again. He’s a hard-working actor. He’s very dynamic onscreen.”

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In their first movie together, Lilley and Jeannotte’s characters were competing against each other, but A Royal Setting provided a different dynamic for the actors to play with. “In this one, there’s traditional expectations and constraints,” Lilley explained. “Ruby really loves people. She doesn’t want to dishonor the queen. She doesn’t want to dishonor Luca’s future. She doesn’t want to jeopardize that, so there’s a battle between wanting to follow her heart and take a chance on love, and then also facing the reality of, well, maybe I’m not what’s best for him, because I’ll be causing drama. I think that’s a real thing that people do experience in relationships. Do I go with my feelings or what’s best for the person? You have different expectations for what’s best for the person, and sometimes the best thing is just love.”

Jeannotte added, “These movies are always the most interesting and most affecting, even when they are fantastical or fairy tale-ish, when people can relate to them, when it’s something that we can all connect to. We all know what it’s like to be trying to figure out our path in life and to come across things that make us think, oh, do I go this way, or do I go that way? Just because they’re a gemologist and a prince doesn’t mean that they’re not going through the same human emotions that we all go through.”

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Ruby is an expert gemologist, and it wasn’t a huge stretch for Lilley to step into the world of science. “I love science so much that I accidentally have an accidental degree in Environmental Science from the University of Virginia,” Lilley revealed. She took a gemology lab in college and said it was her “biggest struggle because I just wasn’t that into gems. But I am really into tectonics and earthquakes and meteorology and weather patterns, so I actually have a degree in this, and I was very, very glad to be able to use both my degrees. ”

A Royal Setting marks Lilley’s first Hallmark movie since 2022’s Where Your Heart Belongs, and the actress opened up about returning to the network. “It’s so exciting. Honestly, it felt like a homecoming in every single way and everything that you would expect from the warmth and welcoming back. It’s just been an incredible experience, top to bottom,” she told Swooon.

A Royal Setting, Movie Premiere, March 28, 8/7c, Hallmark Channel