Benjamin Ayers on Hope Valley romance with Bethany Joy Lentz

Hallmark is expanding when the heart calls universe and Hope Valley: 1874, At its center will be a romantic love story Benjamin Ayers and Bethany Joy Lenz’s role – just don’t expect a hot and heavy one.

“The beauty of it as a TV show is that it has to be a slow burn,” Ailes, who plays rancher Tom Moore, tells us exclusively. US Weekly Wednesday, March 18. “What if they kissed at the end of episode one. Now, what?”

“You have to find obstacles and conflicts for them,” he quipped.

Ayers, 49, noted that for Tom and widowed single mother Rebecca Clark (Luntz), they face “a lot of history and complexity.”

However, past struggles will push them toward each other “in order to thrive in this community.” canadian borderAccording to Ayers.

“It’s almost like the kinship and friendship happened first, which is a really interesting thing,” the actor told usexplaining that viewers will “see the spark” from the beginning, and that Tom and Rebecca knew the spark was there, but they “resisted it.”

Hope Valley: 1874The show, which premieres on Saturday, March 21, follows Rebecca as she takes her 11-year-old daughter, Sarah, from Chicago to Canada’s western border (Mira Morgan).

“When her carriage breaks down and she realizes that the boarding house she purchased is not as advertised, Rebecca has no choice but to accept the help of local rancher and bachelor Tom Moore,” the journal reads. Although Rebecca most wants to stay single, she can’t help but slowly fall in love with Tom and develop a friendship with the tenacious pioneer woman Heidi Quinn (Jill Hennessy)”.

Ayers told us Tom, like Rebecca, will slowly come to terms with the idea of ​​love while trying to keep the ranch going and stop prospectors from mining gold near his land.

“He has a cold heart and Rebecca is about to melt,” he joked. “This is not what he wanted, and we’re going to learn more about his past. He left behind some things that he didn’t want to deal with, and in a way, that’s now here.”

Ayres points out that even though Tom fell in love with Rebecca at first sight, her decision to stay in the city and build a boarding house would cause problems for the couple.

“He was nice to the prospectors, just not in this town. So he tried to get them off his property,” Ayers told usPointing out that the gold miners brought crime, contamination of water with explosives, and more problems, Rebecca’s boarding house “provided them with a comfortable place to live.”

He admitted, “The last thing[Tom]wanted was for this boarding house to open. So the fact that Rebecca came to open it also created this conflict of, like, ‘Don’t do that. Instead of doing that, I’ll give you a job.'”

Much to Tom’s chagrin, Ayers said, Rebecca was “firmly committed to opening the boarding house.” “So that’s where a lot of their conflicts started.”

Although Tom and Rebecca often clashed during the first season, Ayers said he and Lentz, 44, quickly developed a rapport on set.

“I’m so grateful that she works the same way I do,” Ayers explained. “We discuss each scene in detail before we start and work on figuring out the nuances of the emotional beats.”

The actor added that being able to “show the truth of every moment” was key to making his and Lentz’s chemistry pop on screen.

Ayers Lenz is a “great partner” to work with and says she is “a very down-to-earth actor.”

“Once we got into the moment, we really had to look each other in the eyes and it just came naturally,” he revealed.

Hope Valley: 1874 Premieres exclusively on Hallmark+ on Saturday, March 21, with new episodes streaming every Thursday starting on March 26.