Photos Martin Rusch | Words Tamara Rappa

A breakout on the hit Hallmark series The Way Home, Sadie Laflamme-Snow stars opposite Andie MacDowell in the multigenerational family drama set against the backdrop of an idyllic countryside. With a magical pond as a vehicle for some serious time travel, The Way Home delivers plot lines of mystery and family secrets in that heavenly Hallmark way: served up soothingly inside a tantalizing and tranquil town This season, Sadie's Alice along with MacDowell's Del and key characters Kat and Elliot each receive answers about their past and present, while the future brings new questions with an almost cathartic character twist by series end. We talked to the Toronto-based theater buff about the successful series' season ahead, the loaded relationships of the Landry women, her perspective on the pitfalls of being able to disappear through the decades, and more.

What is the biggest thing we come to learn about this town of Port Haven and its history? During the series, we talk a lot about the rules of the time travel mechanism of the pond. One of those rules is, what happens, will always happen. The characters are often trying to figure out if there's something they can do to intervene or stop bad things from happening to their family or to the people they love. What we did learn this season is that we've been racking our brains to figure out, 'What would be the reason that a child would need to be taken away from his family by this pond for twenty five years?' During this season we realize that he was a part of making the town what it is today, and having a place for Kat to come home to. It doesn't make anything less painful for the characters; it doesn't soothe the fact that they've been missing him, and longing for him, and looking for him. But it does make sense in terms of the rules of the pond that you see so far.

Now that Alice has settled into life there, besides solving mysteries and tracking history, what is life like for her there? She feels a bit untethered. Her time during the '90s with her mom as her best friend really gave her purpose. During the season, we find her in search of something to put her heart into. We realize that she has to strengthen her relationship with Del. She has to be there for her mom. Kat is on her own; she doesn't have Brady with her. Who's going be there for Kat? Alice really realizes that that's her purpose. On top of that, she's actually trying to put down some roots. We start to see her maybe making a friend or something more in Noah. Maybe this new Casey person in town seems like they'll be hanging around. We start to see her being a bit more like a normal teenager, but never being fully able to explain who she is. She has this big part of her life that's kind of a secret.

How do you describe the relationship between Alice and Elliot and how it's evolved?  Evan [Williams, who plays Elliot] and I were cracking up about this the other day [Laughs]. I said, 'What should I do? Call you my neighbor?!' That doesn't really even begin to cover it for the two of them, so I've been making fun of them. It's way more than that because they're best friends in the past and they're really close friends in the present. Alice is lacking having someone she feels completely herself with, someone who isn't her mom or Del. It's an interesting relationship. He's definitely a mentor to her now, but in the past he was truly her best friend, and not the kind of best friend where it's always easy. He feels more like family, where things can get a little ugly sometimes. When you're close to someone you can kind of be more honest but that doesn't make the relationship more pleasant or easy. I love seeing that unfold this season. Elliot is really challenging Alice to think about the way that she's impacting him as a young person, and what it means for him to live with all of that. It was really fun working with [Teen Elliott's] David Webster, because while he got to grow up, I stayed the same age. [Laughs]. His character's maturity and emotional maturity is a bit further along. Alice was still in this place of impulsivity, she's really emotional and kind of chaotic. Elliot was ready to say, 'Alice, I'm a person. I have opinions and I have needs and I have feelings. Can't you just consider that?' That was really fun for us, from an acting point of view.
 
What has Alice come to discover most about the roles of friends and family in her life? When we first met her in season one she felt kind of unimportant to lot of people, whether it was true or not. She felt isolated in school. She felt like her parents were making the wrong decision, and not considering how it would affect her. Now, I think a lot of kids going through what Alice was going through at that time would feel that way, whether it was true or not. It's kind of an adult situation. Alice is realizing that she matters to people in her life, and she has to show them the same thing; she has to be there for the adults in her life, even if it seems like a weird concept. She's learning how to live with being an old soul. She became an old soul because of the experience of traveling to the past, an unusual thing to have happened. It's an experience she has to learn to live with. She needs to make it her strength, rather than making it something confusing that weighs her down.

How is Alice feeling about her father, as we come to the end of season two, and after she discovers how her mother and father settled down, and she learns more about the time when she was born?  She saw her dad really hold it down for her mom in a way that she never knew of. We see that Brady was all in, all the time. He messed up his proposal [to Kat] , he'd gotten that moment wrong, he'd done a little bit too much when he could have kept it simple, but in terms of their young adult life together as a couple and then as parents, he was right there. It was hard for Alice to see her mom be the one that was sort of inconsistent. As a teenager, she blamed her dad because he had someone new in his life and she ended up moving in with her mom. She thinks it's a bit of a fairy tale love story, and it was hard for her to see it, because it changed the way she thought about her parents' relationship in general. it's more complicated than it being one person's fault or another person's fault. I think, especially when you're 16, that's hard to imagine.
And she was there to really see it.

At the very end of season two we are of course introduced to next season's mystery, the mystery of her grandfather, Colton. How do you think Alice is going to be affected by what she learns about the grandfather she never met? I am not privy to what is supposed to be happening in season three. [Laughs]. I think a lot of people think that we know, and it's funny, we actually shot that bonfire stuff early in season two, and so we didn't even know how we got there either!With the reveal of that having been Colton, there's a lot for Alice to unpack in terms of time travel. She was the first person in our show to time travel, and we see everything through her eyes, but she's not the only person who has time-traveled. We've now just unlocked the idea that Elliot can time travel. There are more rules of time travel for us to uncover. The audience is going to realize that there's more people who know about the pond than we first thought.

In playing Alice, if time travel were real, what would be its greatest pitfalls, as tempting it would be to have it as a way to find answers in life?  People have started asking me if I want an adult version of Alice to appear from the future and meet herself as a teenager. As much as I love that idea, and I would love the challenge of having to deal with that, I also think the pitfall is exactly what Elliot goes through: having someone tell you what's going to happen in life and knowing that there's a version of everything. Is it destiny? Is time not linear in the way that we think of it? The hardest thing would be if you saw someone that you thought might be you or might be someone who knows about the time travel, and trying to hold yourself back from asking them, 'Am I okay? Do I marry this person? Do I get this job? Is everyone I love okay?' It would be hard to not to engage in that conversation.