Actors are always known to certain people for certain things. It depends on what you have seen them in, what you love them for or in. For this writer, I didn’t know Katherine Barrell, from Wynonna Earp. And yes, my roommate, who is ten feet away from me, had talked all of the time about Wynonna Earp and yes, I should watch it.
For me, I know Katherine Barrell from A Tale of Two Christmases, one of my favorite Christmas movies. And hey, I consider myself an expert when it comes to those movies.
And I know her from Shifting Gears, the movie that premiered on The Hallmark Channel, that tells the story of, “female mechanic Jess reluctantly agrees to participate in a car restoration show, she is shocked to learn that her ex-boyfriend, Luke, is her main competitor. Will sparks reignite?”
Well, hey, what it was for me, was a movie about finding oneself and then finding love by well, coincidence and along the way.
For Barrell, being known in separate worlds – and yes, SyFy and Hallmark are separate worlds – I wondered what it was like to be known as an icon. I know that icon is a big term, but when it comes to Katherine, and all of the memes and the way that people talk about her – icon isn’t too big of a word. At least in my opinion.
“To be iconic. That’s very funny. Working in the world of SyFy and working in the Hallmark world, they’re such different worlds, but with such dedicated fan bases of their own, so it’s actually been really quite fun, especially with Shifting Gears coming up, to get to know Tyler Hynes’ fans. It’s actually nice to get to see people passionate about storytelling, because at the end of the day, I love stories, and I love telling stories, and that’s why I got into this line of work. It’s just so gratifying as an artist to see people enjoying your work, no matter what genre it’s in, and see people passionate about it and getting excited. It’s pretty awesome.” she said.
She continued, “It’s the most gratifying thing you could ever hope for as an artist is to be able to connect with the people who watch your work because we can often create in such a vacuum. We’re on set with the crew, and they’re shooting, but it’s so rare that as an artist that you get that gratification of connecting with the people who are enjoying the work, and it’s just such a wonderful feeling, because oftentimes you’re like, okay, we’re done, and then who watches it? You don’t really hear about it from then on.”
She then added, “I’ve been very lucky over the years to have such an amazing fan base, and getting to hear firsthand from people what they love about the stories that I get to tell.”
When looking up things about Katherine Barrell one of the first things that you’ll notice is that she doesn’t take the people that love her and the fandoms that love her for granted. She’s an actor who reposts, retweets, and shares all of the content that she sees (at least it feels that way). We applaud this.
Because being in touch with your fandom and the people that love the things that you create – well to us, that is super important to see from anyone in the public eye.
When I talk to Kat about Shifting Gears, I talk to her about the fact that to me, the movie, I know it’s spring into love, but I didn’t see it as a romance movie per se. I saw it more as a movie about finding yourself first and falling in love is second. But how would she?
She answered, “I love that. I love that you picked up on that. I really think that what I really liked about Jess and Luke is that they were exes. We didn’t have to– they’ve lived all the falling-in-love ooey-gooey moments. Now this is like real life. I think that element of them being exes and already having so much of their relationship established and that like in the past is we were way past those get-to-know-you moments. We were into life. I think that really allowed Jess to have this journey.”
It was somewhat impossible to not pick up on that – in my opinion. I think that when you watch this movie, you can’t miss that Jess and Luke are finding themselves first. It’s not easy, but it is something that both of them need.
But she also continued on, talking about the other things that Shifting Gears is about. “It’s also taking on a family business and coming to a new phase of your life where you’ve got a lot of responsibility on your shoulders and, what does that look like? I think it allowed for that part of the character to really shine because she’s, yes, like she’s not really thinking too much about Luke. She is, and it is a romance and there’s a reconnection of the two of them. It’s a reconnection in a way of like, I’m not head over heels blindly falling in love with you. I’m very much choosing you because I see how much you make my life better and you bring up the best parts of me. Isn’t that what we all want for our relationships? Falling in love is nice, but staying in love is better.”
That’s definitely a mantra that I think we’ll be using in our lives. Hell, it’s one that I have already used in breaking it off with someone that I may have been speaking to. What can I say, it’s a good line too.
When watching the movie the one thing that I noticed about the character of Jess, all of her outfits reminded me of Rosie the Riveter. If you aren’t familiar with Rosie, she, “is a cultural icon in the United States who represents the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who joined the military.”
Kat said, “I’m so glad you picked up on that. Rosie the Riveter was definitely an inspirational image that we pulled from her hair and makeup. We talked about it with Crystal a lot. We really wanted to fall back to this image, especially at a time, when obviously Rosie the Riveter, when that image was introduced, this was like a huge thing for women to be stepping into these roles because of the necessity of war. It was a beautiful call back to Crystal as a director of the Make Her Mark program.”
She continued saying, “Jess as a lead being a mechanic, a woman in a traditionally very male-dominated industry. We need this representation. To see a woman who doesn’t want to be in front of the camera. It’s not her thing. She has the necessity of keeping her family’s building afloat. Then I think she slowly starts to see the necessity of, being perhaps, a symbol of representation herself.”
We love the Make Her Mark program for just that reason, women need to be in front of as well as behind the camera. Crystal is definitely a representation of just that.
