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NEW YORK, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- Andie MacDowell says viewers will learn more about her character, Del's, rift with adult daughter Kat (Chyler Leigh) in Season 2 of time-travel drama The Way Home. The show returns to Hallmark on Sunday with its first fresh episode in a year.
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The series follows American teen Alice Dhawan (Sadie Laflamme-Snow) and her divorced, unemployed mother, Kat, as they move into the Canadian farmhouse of Alice's grandmother, Del Landry.
At first, Alice doesn't love her new rural life away from her father, Brady (Al Mukadam), who is in Toronto.
The living arrangements are awkward because of Kat and Del's relationship, which has been tense since the disappearance of Kat's younger brother, Jacob, and subsequent death of her father Colton in a car crash decades earlier.
Alice's dysfunctional family starts to make more sense when she discovers a portal to the 1990s via a magical pond, and then meets young-adult versions of Kat (Alex Hook), Brady (Siddharth Sharma) and Kat's best friend, Elliot Augustine (David Webster).
But when Kat realizes what her daughter has been doing, she starts to follow her back into the past, desperately trying to prevent the loss of her loved ones.
"Del and Alice's relationship continues to grow, and they become very comfortable with each other. They don't have the history that Del has with Kat. There is a huge storyline as to what really happened between Del and Kat, which Alice is dying to know," MacDowell told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
"It is revealed in Season 2 what was the moment that Kat decided she didn't really want anything to do with her mother anymore," the Four Weddings and a Funeral and Groundhog Day icon added. "You see the buildup to that and then you actually find out what it was."
The three generations of women have been making some progress in their relationships since the beginning of Season 1, but it's not all smooth sailing, according to Laflamme-Snow.
"Time passes and they depend on each other as they get closer, but the search for answers and the traveling back in time continues to put pressure on them as a family," she said.
Kat threatens to rock the boat when she tells Del she has an idea of where Jacob is and what might have happened to him after Del finally has the missing boy declared dead.
"We were inching along and the women were feeling closer and that is just an explosive statement to make," Laflamme-Snow said.
"To say that, after all this healing that they had done and all this effort they had put into mending things, we were right back into the throes of looking for Jacob and everything that means for their family."
The Way Home is one of those rare sci-fi and time-travel stories that has an emotional hook audiences seem to love, she said.
"Because of the beautiful writing and the heart that Hallmark is known for, it keeps viewers really attached to these relationships and attached to these women, who are real and who are all really different. At the same time, you can see it's like mother like daughter," Laflamme-Snow added.
"You can see relationships in your own life reflected on the show," she said. "We're asking a lot of audiences to follow this time-travel concept, but it is really the heart and the relationships that people are in love with."
MacDowell said she thinks people are tuning in for the show's "mystery and intrigue."
"It keeps you curious. I'm in the show and I felt like that," MacDowell said, noting she recently binge-watched Season 2 herself because she wanted to know everything that happened.
"We weren't there to watch what Chyler was shooting, and that was fun to be able to see something that I didn't witness."
This season, Alice will come to understand some of the dangers of living in the past.
"Her relationships in the present are kind of underdeveloped. She really is herself in the past and she opens up to the teenagers in the 1990s in a way that she can't seem to do in the present," Laflamme-Snow said.
"Season 2 asks Alice to root herself in the present and be there for her family now and not try to meddle too much with what's happened to them. I don't know if she can really actually follow through with what is asked of her."
MacDowell said Del is committed to moving on from her trauma.
"The past was too painful. She's trying to do everything she can to make her time valuable and move on and have a rich life. We'll see how it's going to pan out. It's going to be interesting," she added.
Although Kat is bringing up a lot of awful memories that Del would like to forget, she also arrives back home with a daughter Del instantly cherishes.
"I've got her! Finally, there she is and it's just a continuation of that, the joy that Del feels to have her granddaughter," McDowell said of Del's Season 2 relationship with Alice.
Laflamme-Snow said Alice starts to wonder what happened between her grandmother and mother, and why she missed out on such a special relationship most of her life.
"Why doesn't Alice know Del before Season 1 begins?" she asked.
"What was keeping Kat from sharing her kid with her mom and making her a grandmother? Alice starts asking those questions," Laflamme-Snow added.
"If those questions have been starting for Alice, I'm sure there are some audience members who are ready to know the truth and the real story behind that."
