Rhiannon Fish is an instant bestie.
You can’t help but notice a few things about her instantly. She’s got the healthiest hair that you’ve ever seen. She smiles with her whole heart, and you can see the genuineness in her eyes. The other thing I noticed instantly was that when she and I started laughing during our introduction, both our body language changed. We both relaxed and leaned back a bit.
Mind you, this was two sentences into talking.
Most interviews scare me. I always feel like I am not good enough, but I recognize my privilege to be able to do them. When I was asked if I wanted to speak to Rhiannon, my answer was instantly yes. Why? It all has to do with a Hallmark movie called A Picture of Her. I’ve been fighting multiple autoimmune diseases for years, and in 2023, watching the movie, I thought that her character, Beth, was someone we could all learn from. She resonated. It was that movie that made me know I would watch Fish’s movies.
Eventually, in the interview, I did tell her that, and I told her why, “The reason being is that you showed such strength– She was so fragile in a way, but you showed such strength to get past everything that was going wrong in her life. The way you brought that character to life resonated with me so much. I needed that conversation of like, you can get through anything. Things may be put in your past. People will come and go. You will find love in the most strange of places, but you can get past everything. I knew at that moment, you brought characters to life in a way that resonated with me.”
But we weren’t there to talk about that – even though I could have. I had just gotten done watching her movie, He Loves Me Not, for the second time. Now, I normally dislike anything that sounds like or has any premise like The Bachelor. But for Australian scenery, accents, and actors, sacrifices will be made.
The premise, “An aspiring actress chosen as a wild card for a reality TV dating show uses a secret elixir to win the heart of the star, but when her deception is revealed, she discovers a messy but real chance for love.”
One of the first things that I commented on is that I didn’t know she was Australian. She explains, “I’m a hybrid. Born in Canada, grew up in Australia, and then moved back to Canada.”
I say, “Got it. I was like, ‘Where’s your Australian accent? I need to have her do a movie in an Australian accent.”
“That’s what I want to do. They’re doing Hallmark movies. They just did one in Melbourne, Australia. I really want to do another Hallmark movie in Australia, but I want to play an Australian. It’s what I would like,” she says.
I don’t know who I have to campaign for in order for that to happen, but I am willing to campaign. I love Fish’s Hallmark movies, but part of the thing I loved about He Loves You Not was that it was different than anything I have seen her in. Watching it all, I could think that I loved the whole bachelor element of it, but in an element that didn’t make me hate The Bachelor. I asked the usual question I start with, which is very generic, but it makes me understand motivation and where to take the questioning.
“What made you want to be a part of this movie?” I ask.
“Anytime I can come home. Well, I call Australia home. I do think that anytime that we can bring film and television to Australia, it sometimes feels like there’s these really big budget films,” she says. “Then, of course, we’ve got our steady soap operas, like Home and Away and Neighbours, but it’s these little pockets of Hallmark movies, these movies for television, that I would love to see more of being made in Australia. When the opportunity to do one came up, it was an instant yes for me.”
She has this sense of pride that comes from her when she’s talking about Australia. She shines when speaking of her home country. I admire the sense of pride that rushes to her face when she talks about Australia.
In He Loves Me Not, her character, Holiday, has a dislike for reality television. Though not everyone likes reality television or will admit that they love it, we start talking about it.
She says, “I love reality TV. My favorite show isVanderpump Rules. I think for me, I excuse, I give myself permission, because sometimes I think it’s a fascinating character study. I know a lot of it’s scripted, but there are moments that aren’t when you can see people in very vulnerable places, where, goodness, if it were scripted and they were acting, they would be Academy Award-level performances. I like to see people be very vulnerable, and I think you can see a lot of that sometimes in reality TV. I like it, but I completely understand why people don’t.”
By this point, I feel we are like besties because of so much that has been discussed so far. We love the same thing. I practically jump as I get excited that someone doesn’t look at me strangely when I say, “Oh my God, Vanderpump Rules is my favorite. The new cast, I’m like, okay, you got some proving of yourself to do. I’m still with the OG cast.”
She says, “I can’t bring myself to watch the new– which is so dumb, but I can’t start the new cast yet because the old cast, for me, they were what made the show.”
“I think you should start it just because, honestly, there’s some suspicious ones on there, and… ohhh,” I said, “There’s one guy who I liked as an actor because I’m obsessed with these vertical dramas and he’s actually on the show. I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t like you anymore.’ I wished I did, but then I was like, ‘Okay, wait.’ It’s a thing. If you like Vanderpump Rules, if you like the OG cast, it takes you a few episodes to get in, but you’ll really like it.”
We keep falling off track, but it is not a bad thing. I don’t tell her the name of the cast member I am talking about, but as a Vanderpump aficionado I know she’ll figure it out.
“You’ve gotten to shoot movies all around the world, and TV shows,” I say, “Which, by the way, I did not know you were in The 100, which I was obsessed with.”
She replies, “Isn’t it a great show? It’s really, really special. I felt very grateful to be a part, even just a small part of a show like that.”
“Just looking up your resume for this, because I know you from Hallmark movies, and just looking up your resume for this, I was like, “Wait a second. Hold on. I watched that. She was in that?” It was amazing. Where has been your favorite place to shoot thus far, and where do you want to shoot a movie?”
She says, “I will say K’gari was incredible, which is where we shotHe Loves Me Not. It’s a very small island within Australia, and is still very attached to its roots of the Aboriginal culture. That’s why they took the name back. Australians called it Fraser Island for the longest time, and it’s now called K’gari, the original name again. In the movie, we do a beautiful welcome to the country. There’s just something very sacred about that place. I really mean that. Even if we weren’t talking about He Loves Me Not, I would say that of this film. In addition to that, I loved Costa Rica, and I loved Machu Picchu. It’s hard to go wrong with Machu Picchu.”
I tell her, “Getting up to Machu Picchu is not fun, but seeing it is fun.”
She replies, “No, it was a nightmare. Absolute nightmare. Everyone’s lugging the camera equipment and the gear. Everybody’s in a bad mood because you just got to get the shot. Once you do get the shot, you can all take a moment and go, ‘Wow, we’re in Machu Picchu, and it’s incredible.'”
I hadn’t really ever thought about that, but I will say that I did go back and rewatch A Machu Picchu Proposal, and the team that got all of that up there really does deserve a raise.
I wonder all of the time if actors on sets play tourist, especially because they shoot in the most amazing places, so I ask, “When you were on location in K’Gari, did you get to play tourist around the island? What was your favorite thing to do and see there?”
“I will be honest with you, when I’m working, all I focus on is the job at hand. I’m not very social, but the rest of the cast absolutely did it,” she says, and I relate so hard. Whatever I am working on, I am focused on that until it’s done, and then I move on to the next thing. She continues, “I think it’s so great that people can enjoy themselves while working. I just haven’t quite found that yet. Not that I don’t enjoy the job, it’s just the social aspect of it I find difficult to combine.”
I swear it is like someone has crawled into my brain and expressed my thoughts. She took a second and said, “There is this place on K’Gari, it’s like this sacred body of water, that is exclusively for women. Only women can go in the water. To have a place that was just for women, I just felt really special. The lovely woman that did the Welcome to Country just told us that they believe there are spirits there. I swear you can feel it when you are in that place.”
We talk about spirits and the way that you can feel things in certain places. We both believe in them and agree that we can’t describe how it feels; it’s there.
If you watch He Loves You Not, you will see that the cast seems to have fun together, and so I asked about the relationship on set. She says, “Bonnie [Sveen], who plays Tracey, is the nicest person in the world, which I think you often hear. If you’re so good at playing a bad guy, it’s often because your heart is in a really lovely, kind place. I loved working with Bonnie. She was so much fun. As for Sean [Miguel Perez], who plays Mikey, that was a really cool character. It made me think of Hallmark, in that I would love to see a little bit more of that in Hallmark.”
She continued, “You may have noticed, or may not have noticed, that’s the whole point, that they didn’t put a gender on his character. I think it’s kind of cool to have these fluid– I just love that it was a guy wearing makeup. I don’t know, that was something to me that I just felt very appealing about this film. To me, it didn’t feel forced either. I really believed that this character, Mikey, was a real person. Sean did a wonderful job of bringing him to life.”
I mention the chemistry that she has with the leading man, Lincoln Lewis. I tell her, “I’m like, oh, okay. When he was around the other girls, I was like, “I don’t believe it. No.” Then he’d be with you, and I was like, ‘These two have the almost unbelievable chemistry, or else they are meant for each other and don’t realize it yet.'”
Turns out the two have known each other for over a decade and she tells me, “Sometimes in film you have to search to find that chemistry, but I felt like it was just built in with Lincoln and I in a way that it felt really beautiful and very natural.”
Well, I agree with that one. Watching this movie for the chemistry between Lincoln and Rhiannon on screen is worth it alone. Some movies are meant to be made, and some people are meant to star in them together.
These two definitely were.
He Loves Me Not is available to rent now.
