By Scott Campbell
Canadian Kiefer O’Reilly remembers – sort of – his first role appearing on screen.
“When Calls the Heart,” he said, the character’s name was Ephraim Noonan. “It was a Hallmark TV show. I had two lines. It was something about a funnel cake. That’s all I remember.”
Although O’Reilly’s experience with the show was brief, When Calls the Heart is still running. It was recently renewed for a twelfth season.
O’Reilly took the Hallmark wave into Christmas movies and featured in two – Time for You to Come Home for Christmas (2019) and Holiday Road (2023).
“There’s a huge following to those types of things,” he said. “There’s apparently a ‘Comic Con’ sort of thing just for Hallmark. A bunch of people go to that.”
(There’s an upcoming Christmas Con 2024 in Edison, Jersey, set for December and features appearances by Hallmark stars.)
“Holiday Road, we shot that last summer,” said O’Reilly. “It was really fun to work on. It didn’t feel like a Hallmark movie. Holiday Road, I felt, took it more as a comedy first. There are still many aspects of love and relationships like every good Hallmark movie.”
The synopsis of Holiday Road reads: “Stranded at an airport, a group of holiday travellers agrees to rent a van for a road trip to Denver. When their unexpected journey leads them into uncharted territory, they must navigate a series of misadventures that brings them closer together.”
BUDDY LOVE
Hallmark may make an impression, but it’s not O’Reilly’s big 2024 news. He is now a short film award winner. His project, Buddy Love, recently won at the London Global Film Awards with ‘Best Short Film,’ ‘Best Director,’ and Honorable Mention for ‘Best Screenplay.’
And who was the director? Kiefer O’Reilly.
“That was super fun to film,” he said. “Tom Cavanagh was insane to direct, and I’ve been a fan of his for a long time. It was a little bit surreal directing him.”
“I’m super proud of Buddy Love. I saw a lot of the other short films and I was a little bit surprised on how much it is winning.”
“The quick gist of the story,” said O’Reilly. “This guy Henry (played by Geoff Gustafson) whose wife passed away a long time ago. He hasn’t gotten over her. With the help of a robot (voiced by Cavanagh), who comes from this dating service, he helps rekindle love, but kind of in a different way, hopefully, you wouldn’t expect.”
O’Reilly hopes Buddy Love will be out on YouTube soon, along with other platforms. The short film has been in festivals for nearly a year now, but not many of his friends and family have watched it. The project, he said, had to have a festival run for a year before it could be released.
O’Reilly says a short film can be 40 minutes or two minutes. But the sweet spot is in the 12 to 20-minute range. Buddy Love runs for about 13 minutes.
“You don’t have the audience’s attention for an hour and a half,” he said,”because they are sitting down to watch a short film. If they want to watch a movie, they would watch an hour and a half movie.”
“Piper, the Pixar short film, is like 2 minutes, and it’s so good. There are ways you tell a story that are very short or very long. It is honestly up to the story.”
VANCOUVER
Buddy Love shot in Vancouver, where O’Reilly is from.
O’Reilly is a Vancouver Canucks fan, even with his claim of being part of Mighty Ducks history. He played on the Disney Plus series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. But he has since lined up other projects, too.
“I wrapped Playdate with Kevin James. He’s great to work with and super funny. You can tell he’s super passionate about the stuff he works on and wants to get it right. He would be doing different stuff over and over…I learned a lot from someone from that scale. There’s Happy Face and (an episode of) Alert.”
The day of the interview was O’Reilly’s birthday. He had turned 17 and was soon to get his license.
“I’m not a big cake guy,” he said. “I don’t like cake at all, if I’m being honest. I know it’s a hot take.”
