Hallmark Hunks Tyler Hynes and Wes Brown Talk ‘Christmas at Sea’ and What Distinguishes The Network When It Comes to Christmas Content

The Hallmark Christmas Cruise’s inaugural trip received the documentary treatment in Christmas at Sea.

The merrytime voyage, which is returning this fall, was featured in this four-part docuseries that finished airing on the network earlier this week.

While a slew of network stars were onboard last year’s cruise, the series shines a light on Hallmark fans, who with the help of their favorite stars, Among the stars onboard were Tyler Hynes and Wes Brown, who in separate conversations with DECIDER, detailed how special this aspect of the series was.

“For myself, there’s nothing I love more,” Hynes, star of Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, said of his interactions with fans. “I’ve gotten the privilege to spend so much time with so much of our audience, and I have conversations like that all the time. And I’m very grateful for it. And I’m privileged to be able to be around people like that. So to have now a camera there documenting it and then sharing it with an audience, as well as them and their families who are all watching the show together. I can see them online having premiere parties. It’s the most beautiful thing ever.”

Meanwhile Brown shared how its focus on the fans is “what [he] liked about this project the most,” noting that ” how much Hallmark media has embraced Christmas and their fandom” is what sets the network apart when it comes to their holiday content.

“None of us would be here or get to do this many films or have this network be what it is without the fans,” he explained. “So to see this many people having so much fun, getting to tell their stories. We always get to tell our stories, and we’re the ones who are always in the spotlight. It’s so much fun to get to them to have their moment and show the audiences that we really do care, and Hallmark cares, and that’s why there’s, what, 74,000 people on this wait list and there’s a reason behind that.”

For Hynes, he cited the network’s “contained group” of the network’s “familiar faces” both in front of and behind the camera that distinguishes the network.

“Because we all have gotten to know each other, I think there’s a very unique thing that can happen that no one else can really offer, which is the speed and fluidity in which we can have an ongoing conversation with our audience, and you guys, as artists and writers and reporters in your own right,” he said of his Hallmark collaborators. “We all kind of can participate in this conversation thats constantly evolving, year to year, month to month, because we make them and we put them out.”

A prime example of these sentiments was conveyed through the love story of Rob and Donna, who have been together for nine years. While onboard the ship, Rob decides he’s going to pop the question to Donna — and tie the knot — with the help of Hallmark’s very own Paul Campbell at the altar as the officiant.

“Paul has a skill set that I know this man is capable of all things and everything, but I did not have that on my bingo card, him being an officiant at a wedding. And I think we may have found his calling,” Hynes, who walked Donna down the aisle, quipped of his Three Wise Men and a Baby and Three Wiser Men and a Boy co-star.

Viewers were also introduced to best friends Alicia and Gail, who play a part in just one of the other heartfelt fan storylines that play out in Christmas at Sea. On-screen, Hynes spent time with the two ladies helping push Gail out of her comfort zone.

“Because I have conversations like that all the time, it’s dawned on me now with the reaction to it that there’s cameras around for the first time filming something that I participate in very often,” he reflected. “Gail and Alicia and I spent a day together that was unlike any other. It was hilarious, ridiculous, inspiring, beautiful, the things that they shared about themselves and what they’re trying to let go of and move on from and what this vacation meant for them.”

Brown also shared a special moment with Gail, assisting her in writing a song to the tune of “Jingle Bells” about her decades-long friendship with Alicia.

“That’s what I love. It’s not just about celebrating marriages or anniversaries. I’m like, they’re celebrating a friendship… I started thinking about that, like wow, how super underrated, a celebration of how long have we been friends, for almost half a century. I mean, that’s amazing,” he recalled.

Brown, who released the album My Kind of Christmas in 2023, said that Gail came to him with “some lyrical ideas” and really “did all the work,” as he “just helped guide her along” before handing it off to her and Hynes.

“So it was just lovely to be a part of,” he added.

Both Brown and Hynes had fans in Kerry and Paige, a mother and daughter who got the chance to meet the two Hallmark hunks onboard the ship. In the docuseries, Paige gifts Hynes a bracelet with her phone number on it. Hynes, who lauded the “incredible” family who remained truly “themselves” on camera, said he thinks he still has the bracelet somewhere.

“What you’re watching is real life. I didn’t know what was happening,” he explained. “I didn’t realize the significance of that interaction with all this backstory that would now come out in this documentary series. It was one of very many groups of people we’d met that day taking a photo. So seeing the backstory is really really beautiful and that’s something that I’m not usually privy to.”

Outside of the fans like those mentioned above, Christmas at Sea featured another scene-stealer: Hynes’ own mother, who he said “conquered her fear” of flying in order to come aboard.

“She lived her own life, barely had anything to do with me,” he teased. “She was out there with all of my friends, running amuck, throwing back cocktails with Kimberley Sustad’s mom, popping up on all sides of the ship that I never heard about or knew anything about, having all kinds of shenanigans that I didn’t even know about until the documentary series came out.”

Though Hynes kept mum about what fans can anticipate during the network’s 16th annual Countdown to Christmas slate — which includes the Hynes and Erin Krakow-led Christmas Above the Clouds — Brown teased what’s in store for A Newport Christmas, Hallmark’s upcoming time-travel romance starring himself and Ginna Claire Mason.

“Our art department and our sets, they look so good, going back from the Gilded Ages to 2025,” he shared. “It’s funny. It’s humorous. [Mason’s] so good in it. We just had a great time. It’s such a beautiful movie. Our director and producers did a great job putting it together. It’s got some really unique characteristics to it. Obviously, Christmas is in there, but the way it goes from the late 1800s to the time travel element, which is super fun to make that one.”

While those who tuned into Christmas at Sea were treated to a taste of Brown’s musical stylings, he mentioned that he and Mason are also releasing the holiday song “Timeless Christmas” together.

“She asked me a couple years ago, ‘Hey, do you ever want to do a song together?’” he remembered. “And I was like, to do a song with a huge Broadway star is crazy to think about, but it’s just one of those pleasantries that we exchanged, like, ‘Would you like to do a song?’ ‘Sure.’”

Brown was on the treadmill at a hotel gym when he heard from the Wicked alum.

“She was like, ‘Hey, I think I found us a song,’ and she sent it to me. And I stopped the treadmill because I couldn’t believe how good it was,” he said of the song, which he teased at the time is “almost finished now.”

All four episodes of Christmas at Sea are streaming now on Hallmark+.