Hilarie Burton lives in upstate New York on a farm with her husband, The Walking Dead’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and their two children, sons Augustus, 12, and George, four. Last year she was a guest star on TWD and she hosted a reality series called True Crime Story: It Couldn’t Happen Here. Before lockdown she starred in and produced a super cute Lifetime Christmas movie called The Christmas Wish. Hilarie was open about the fact that she chose to work with Lifetime because Hallmark had zero commitment to diversity and inclusion and blew off her requests for both. She tweeted “The bigotry comes from the top and permeates the whole deal over there.” In Hallmark’s response they simply stated that Hilarie wasn’t an employee of their company! They never addressed any of her concerns. It’s obvious from the way they were dragged kicking and screaming into including nonwhite and LGBTQ characters that they prefer to feature white straight people in their shows and movies.
Hallmark isn’t white and hetero enough for some people though. We just heard that Candace Cameron Bure left the Hallmark channel due to their meager attempts at keeping with the times. Candace is moving to the Great American Family network, which I’m only hearing about now. Well Hilarie has some thoughts about Candace leaving Hallmark. Here are her tweets.
Now they’re just openly admitting their bigotry.
I called this shit out years ago when Abbott was at Hallmark. Glad they dumped him.
Being LGBTQ isn’t a “trend”.
That guy and his network are disgusting. You too Candy. There is nothing untraditional about same-sex couples. https://t.co/38XIg5XeMP— Hilarie Burton Morgan (@HilarieBurton) November 14, 2022
Bigot.
I don’t remember Jesus liking hypocrites like Candy.
But sure. Make your money, honey. You ride that prejudice wave all the way to the bank. https://t.co/X70aO4WIcB— Hilarie Burton Morgan (@HilarieBurton) November 15, 2022
I didn’t know that Hallmark was under new management. Maybe that explains the change in programming. Hilarie is right, Jesus doesn’t like hypocrites or bigots. People like Candace don’t read the Bible to understand the message, they pick what they can use to weaponize their steaming bigotry. That’s how they justify voting for multiple abortion-funding Hershel Walker when Raphael Warnock is an actual pastor. It’s not about carrying Jesus’s message, it’s about keeping what’s theirs and denying other people the right to exist.
photos credit: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon and Getty
Beautifully put. Candy. Phfft.
I’m a huge fan of Hilarie Burton and now I love her even more. Bigotry needs to be called out and the more folks we have doing that, the better.
Yes, LOVE that a fellow actress called Candace out on Twitter! I wish more established public figures would do the same. I understand not speaking out when you are just starting out in your career (fear of retaliation and you need the money), but when you are established, there’s really no excuse.
Also, I swear this happened–I was 16 years old (20 years ago) and was browsing in a store at an outdoor shopping mall in Malibu. My friend was bad-mouthing celebrities, and I told her that no one understands the all-encompassing realm of social media until they are in it and to try and empathize with the difficulties of being so exposed. And then, the woman next to me in the store deliberately turns around and IT’S HILARIE BURTON. LOL. She pointedly smiled at me, said hello, thanked me, and then left! I was so surprised, and she was so sweet.
OMG!! What a great story! Thanks for sharing!!!
2002 social media? Like, blogs?
I guess I should have said AROUND 20 years ago (maybe 15?). It’s been awhile. And yes, it would have been Perez Hilton and the likes of that. Hilton started by 2004, so between 2005 and 2010. At that time, people were really getting into it!
Agreed.
Never heard of her until today, but I’m a new fan.
Crown Media (the parent company of Hallmark) hired Wonya Lucas as CEO in 2020. She was the one who brought LGBTQIA2S and BIPOC stories to Hallmark.
Yup. The 2021 holiday lineup was the first that she had any input on or control over (she started at the network in July 2020, and since most of the Countdown to Christmas movies are filmed in summer, I doubt she had any impact on the 2020 lineup). 2021’s holiday lineup had the first ever Hanukkah movie where both romantic leads are Jewish (rather than the usual “A Christian meets a cute Jew, hijinks ensue, and then they hang dreidels on a Christmas tree together” nonsense), as well as a movie about a single Black mom learning how to let her autistic son have his own life (played by an actor who is actually autistic). This year’s lineup has another Hanukkah movie (with Lisa Loeb!!!), the first movie featuring an Asian-American family (Christmas at the Golden Dragon which aired this past weekend), the first movie even mentioning Kwanzaa, and… the first ever Hallmark movie featuring two gay men falling in love.
And also there’s the Mahogany lineup of movies on their Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel, with the first one debuting just a couple of months ago — non-holiday movies, featuring Black casts.
I know it doesn’t seem like much change, but considering that it was only in 2019 that Crown Media refused to air a commercial that showed two brides kissing (and the decision to air that commercial after all is what made the previous CEO Bill Abbott throw a tantrum and quit), and now the network is steadily growing its on-screen diversity… it’s a big deal. And it seems to extend to the ads they run, too — I signed up for a FrndlyTV subscription in October to start watching the holiday lineup and they were running ads for PrEP medications.
Thanks for the rundown on the new Hallmark Channel, Wendy. They’ve grown quite a bit since Abbott left, taking Candy and the rest of the bigoted bunch with him.
Thank you for the information! I don’t really watch TV but sounds like I should make the effort to stream a couple of these specific movies. I have to admit to a fondness for sappy love stories.
I love Hilarie so much!
Ps, George is a girl 🙂
I love her and really enjoy how she, Sophia Bush, and Bethany are besties in real life.
Yes, 100% to her remarks here. They people who are always braying on and on about Jesus, seem to miss all his most important messages.
Yes, George is a girl. If the reporter gets a simple, and easily verified, fact such as this wrong, how much credence can you put to the rest of the story. I’ll bet that the entire story is a huge distortion of facts for the sake of sensation. I generally do not read this kind of trash, and I never offer comments, but I am a fan of both women and my curiosity got the best of me. Remember the old adage, “Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.” Think for yourselves, people. Don’t let the media do your thinking for you.
In Dante’s ‘The Inferno’ the 9th and worst circle of Hell is for hypocrites.
I think I will start calling this evangelical crowd a cult. They certainly have cult like behavior. I am so sick of their ilk.
It is definitely a cult.
What’s sad is this won’t hurt Candance at all. Does she do anything but Hallmark movies anymore? I can’t think of anything. She was huge for that network and now she’s queen bee at GAC. She doesn’t need other projects to make her money.
2 things: 1-I had no my idea my make-believe husband JD (that’s my pet name for him if you need to know) was CHEATING on me with an actual real-life wife. 2-I never heard of Hilarie before but I love her dropping “Candy” along with those truth bombs.
As a OTH watcher (Season 1-6), my Peyton Sawyer crush continues ☺
Good for Hilarie for calling this out
Definitely agree about the crush. I always loved Hilarie.
Oh my god, I love her. I laughed hard. Being a human being who wants to just live their life is not a trend. Love in all shapes is not a trend. These people. To paraphrase Margaret Cho, that’s not what Jesus meant!
Also, can we do away with “traditional” to describe cis people in hetero marriages? Tradition sounds so quaint and it isn’t what people want to say. They want to say “normal” but they know they can’t. They don’t want “abnormal” things in their line of sight. Child marriage is also a tradition. It doesn’t equal good. Like “natural” doesn’t equal good. Cancer is natural. Maybe I’m being super nitpicky but I don’t love it when we don’t correct this homophobic/racist/shitty language.
Well put to you and Hillarie. Thanks for pointing out the biases. Tradition around the idea of marriage as defined by Candy, and others like her, is so toxic and repressive. It’s meant to be controlling and steeped in fear and bigotry. But, I also think she knows what side her bread is buttered and she’s pandering.
Right. Polygamy is traditional. As are arranged marriages. Candace Cameron Bure is always using coded words for “White, Christian, submissive, hypocritical bigots, like me.”
Totally agree Emmi! Thank you.
I love Hilarie, and I give her a lot of credit for not pulling any punches here and calling a bigot a bigot. She seems like a good person (and I’ve always thought she was so pretty!).
I wasn’t a huge OTH fan but saw a few seasons back in the day, but I LOVE the Drama Queens podcast. Their friendship warms my heart, and I love their goal of reclaiming that time in their lives and their show, after dealing with a monster as a show runner.
None of these evangelicals live like Jesus did. Jesus was a man of color who preached, sacrifice, love, kindness and told hypocrites about themselves to their faces.
Candy and her ilk know nothing of what he preached.
They only preach from the Old Testament. Ironically, the part of the Bible Christ (from whence they get their name) isn’t in. It never fails to amaze me. It’s like, ‘hello, did you actually read the part with Jesus in it?’
Fellow Hilarie stans — she’s terrific in White Collar.
I was reading a little about the new network yesterday and they have also convinced some other Hallmark stars, like Danica McKeller and Chad Michael Murray, to do movies for them. No idea if it is for a chance to work or for “family values”. Oh, and they gave Lori Laughlin work.
There was a good article in Vulture about GAF last year — https://www.vulture.com/2021/11/gac-family-christmas-movies-cable-tv.html
What I think is interesting is the difference between the Reddit communities for GAF and Hallmark. The Hallmark subreddit has 6.2k members and tons of engagement on posts, the GAF subreddit has 155 members and the most engagement is 5 comments on a post whining about how icky and bigoted against Christians the Hallmark sub is now.
Candace only became famous for being on a show with 3 dads. Team Hilarie.
Set in San Francisco!
Word, word, and more word.
I love Hilarie and her husband, especially on Twitter! (the Morgans also own a candy store in Rhinebeck with Paul Rudd).
They had a short series during the worst of the pandemic called Friday Nights in with the Morgans, if you have AMC+ I highly recommend it. Especially the episode following George Floyd’s murder (the Morgans showing us white people how it should be done and Yvette Nicole Brown is a national treasure).
Her show It Couldn’t Happen Here just finished its second season, just as good as the first.
JDM and Chris Evans had a nice story on Twitter about how they fed the feral Puerto Rican jungle dogs while they were there filming The Losers. JD adopted one called Bandit.he was the runt. Chris wanted to name him Yahtzee because he was the luckiest dog and JD almost went with it because the thought of yelling ‘Yahtzee!’ still cracks him up. He’s a big proponent of adopting the breed.
https://twitter.com/jdmorgan/status/1241024910861971460
“Maybe that explains the change in programming. Hilarie is right, Jesus doesn’t like hypocrites or bigots. People like Candace don’t read the Bible to understand the message, they pick what they can use to weaponize their steaming bigotry. ”
@Celebitchy Thanks so much for saying this. You are 100% right.
Yes, Hilarie!!!
Candy’s daughter released a word-salad of a defense of her mother. Something something out of context (lol at that) with a lot of Jesus stuff. Ugh, these people.
I know, this family is vile as hell.
I’ve adored Hilarie Burton since I saw her in a 2013 Lifetime holiday movie, “Christmas on the Bayou.”
It has all the usual tropes about a workaholic single mom returning and finding love in her sleepy hometown, but it also stars the great Ed Asner and Markie Post.
I loved every word of every tweets to the loathsome Candy.
Tonight they are going to show here for the first time an American Christmas movie with two men as the main characters ( so I assume it’s Hallmark? ) and I’m gonna watch it even though I don’t like Christmas movies, but I wanna give my support so the TV stations here buy more diverse movies.
Oh, and Candace Cameron Bure can go f*ck a blender.
Wish I’d known it was on tonight…I’d have watched it, too! Also, that’s a very, very graphic suggestion. I agree.
Hilarie’s rise to fame is pretty impressive. She was just a screaming fan outside of TRL and was noticed by a producer. She was asked to introduce someone or say something on camera…next thing you know MTV hired her. She worked for them for a few years and then moved on to acting. Awesome story and she’s amazing for standing up for what is right !
I think she’s a great example of how it’s totally possible to be a famous, wealthy actor and still maintain values and be humble and real. Also their family and farm are just too freaking cute.
Oh wow…that’s her??? I remember that! Hadn’t thought about that moment in *years*!
OMG this: “That’s how they justify voting for multiple abortion-funding Hershel Walker when Raphael Warnock is an actual pastor”
It just encapsulates the hypocrisy of the people who claim to follow Jesus but then live their lives as if they had never read a word about him!
They live in the old testament because it feeds their fears and their rage.
Hilarie continues to impress me. I love that she called Candy out. Candace, Abbott and GAC have been trying to pretend they weren’t anti-LGBTQ, but most of us knew it. It was just that obvious that the reason for leaving wasn’t Christian values, but bigotry and racism. Like I said I didn’t like Candace or her show. Most of the actors who left won’t be missed.
I feel like it’s a little bit unfair to be calling out Hallmark’s previously shi–ty record of diversity here. GAF are the ones doubling down on it. I’m willing to give Hallmark another shot now that they’ve seen the error of their ways and are course-correcting. Better late than never. The story here should be the people insisting on bigotry, not the people who are doing better. And it’s nice to see their number dwindling.
George is Hilarie and a Jeffrey’s daughter, not son! Gus is their son.
Scrolled down to say just that!