Lori Loughlin could potentially be making her way back to Hope Valley.
During a recent appearance on the Heart to Hearties podcast, When Calls the Heart’s co-creator Brian Bird said there have been “good conversations” about the alum’s possible return.
“Well, this is a tricky question and what I can say is that there are good conversations happening,” he said. “We can’t guarantee anything, but there are good conversations happening around this topic.”
Bird also noted that Loughlin, 59, is currently “doing really good.”
“She’s assured us that she has found some peace and she’s made it through her ordeal, her and her husband’s ordeal, and she’s in a much better place than she was,” he said,
“Our attitude always has been you know as the producing team around the writing team around When Calls the Heart that what better place for second chances than Hope Valley,” he added. “And so in theory, it should work, right? But again, can’t can’t fully promise it but we’re working on it.”
Despite Bird’s comments, Hallmark tells in a statement: “Hallmark Media is not in talks with Lori Loughlin about reprising her role as Abigail on When Calls the Heart.”
Loughlin had played Abigail Stanton in the show’s first six seasons. However, halfway through season 6, her character was written out due to her and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, being involved in the 2019 college admissions scandal. The show’s writers, therefore, made it so that Loughlin’s character Abigail traveled back east to care for her sick mother.
Off screen, Loughlin and Giannulli — who paid $500,000 to ensure their daughters Olivia Jade, 24, and Isabella Rose, 25, were accepted into the University of Southern California — eventually pleaded guilty to the charges in May 2020. She completed a two-month sentence at FCI Dublin, and her 60-year-old fashion designer husband served nearly five months at FCI Lompoc before being permitted to complete the remainder of his sentence from home.
Nearly one year after her release from prison, Loughlin made her return to TV by reprising her role as Abigail Stanton in When Hope Calls: A Country Christmas — a spinoff to When Calls the Heart — in December 2021 on Great American Family.
Since then, she starred opposite James Tupper in the network’s January TV film Fall Into Winter and will appear with Tupper and Jesse Hutch in A Christmas Blessing, premiering Nov. 12 on Great American Family.
