Kristin Booth – The Wrong Wedding Planner

By starrymag | July 17, 2020

By: Lisa Steinberg

 

 

Q) Is it wrong that my favorite scene from the film was the cake tasting? 

 

A) [laughs] Yes, it’s okay for you to say.  It’s one of my favorites to film as well.

 

Q) First, you get all of these delicious samples to taste, but then it seems kind of meta with the scene in the beginning when Mandy and Ashley meet and you talk about the flowers being deadly when if you eat them, and then we get this cake tasting scene and cake is so sinful. It felt quite appropriate for your character in both of those instances.

 

A) Yeah. Agreed.

 

Q) What was the initial breakdown of the character Mandy Raines like that you received and how did you focus on portraying her within these layers we see for her?

 

A) Well, I don’t actually think I saw a breakdown. Crystal [Lowe], who stars in the movie and plays Ashley…She and I are quite good friends and we work on a show together called “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” for Hallmark and she was asked to do the film and if she knew anyone who wanted to play Mandy and she recommended me.  It was kind of a straight offer sort of deal and I didn’t actually get to see a breakdown.

When I read the script, that’s when I really got an idea and a handle on who this woman was.  It’s funny because, it’s obviously a quite campy movie, and I did it for fun because one, I got to work in Los Angeles, and two, getting to work with one of my best friends playing with her, and three, I got to play this great character that I wouldn’t say in my career that I have been able or offered to play this, the bad guy, very often. Once in a while it’s happened.  But I have never played anyone quite so as unbalanced as Mandy.  That really intrigued me.  I felt like even though the movie is a bit tongue in cheek and campy, I really wanted to portray her as someone who was not just sort of a caricature.  I really focused a lot on why she was the way that she was and why she did what she did and all of the hurt that lay underneath her actions and her motives.  I ended up having a lot of fun.

 

Q) Was it more of her mental state that drove her during these erratic moments or was it the medication we see her taking?  She takes these pills but it’s kind of ambiguous if they were to help her mental stability or actually did the opposite.

 

A) You know, that’s a good question. I always saw Mandy as someone as very broken and not necessarily who suffers from a massive mental illness, but someone who is predisposed to perhaps psychosis and depression and all of that kind of stuff.  It was the way she was treated and the hurt and the events in her life sort of leading up to that and how she dealt with those.

 

Q) No villain sees themselves as a villain, they see it as doing it for a greater and just good. Mandy justifies her devious behavior as being wronged. What’s her devilish perspective her mind manipulation or she genuinely believes Brad was hers all along? What was her driving force?

 

A) I think that she truly thought when they were together that they would remain together.  I think there were some hints in the script where he even admitted that he didn’t handle things properly.  I think someone who didn’t have sort of a predisposition to mental illness would have handled things differently than she did, for sure.  For someone who maybe had a support system around her she would have handled things differently.  I pictured her as very lonely, that Brad (Steve Richard Harrison) was all she had.  There is another line where she insinuates that her father left her and was never there for her.  There is a lot of psychology underneath her actions.  I don’t think she ever saw herself as doing anything wrong.

 

Q) We got to see Mandy lay on her smarm and her charm. Which was most enjoyable for you, when she was bad like stalking or stabbing, or when she was using her manipulative moves?

 

A) I would have to say I don’t know if I preferred one over the other.  I just really enjoyed playing her and being able to add all of those layers.  The character was written in such a way that I was able to play both of those things, the charming sort of perfect wedding planner and being helpful.  I mean it’s pretty obvious from the beginning that things aren’t right with her, but not to Ashley.  That’s the onion.  She’s like an onion and Ashley keeps getting to peel these layers away and go, “Wait a second, what? Oh…”  Each layer reveals something else to Ashley and by the end she realizes how this woman is very, very disturbed and that her life is in danger.  She goes from hiring her and welcoming her into her home to being tied up by her.

 

Q) You worked opposite of Crystal Lowe who was such a great foil for your Mandy, which is such an opposite of what we are used to seeing through “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.” Talk about playing off of each other and the dynamic you developed through this dark and heavy film.

 

A) I think as actors both Crystal and I have such respect for one another and a trust with each other as actors.  Right from the get-go sitting down and talking about rehearsing like we did, we basically were like I trust you implicitly and you do whatever you need to do.  I am there to catch it and vice versa, being able to trust the person you are working with as much as we did and do.  We were allowed to improvise a little bit and we were allowed to push the boundaries of these characters because we had this trust in one another.  It’s harder to do that when you show up on set and you’re playing someone like Mandy, and you don’t know the person at all who is playing Ashley, and they don’t know that you’re not really like that. [laughs] Crystal and I have this ease together and this trust with one another and it allowed us to have a lot of fun and also go to the places that we went to and stop and laugh and not take it too seriously.  I think that helps when you get these releases of laughter and you can kind of go that was hilarious and then kind of go back into it.  I think that helps sustain it for the amount of time shooting.

I will admit, I am a little worried about our Postables fans seeing me portray Mandy because they are so accustomed to Shane and in love with Shane and this is vastly different.  I hope that they will come along for the ride and realize that these are characters and see how much fun we had doing it.  Crystal and I are going to live tweet on Friday night with our fans.  I am sure I am going to get many, many comments about like “Oh, you’re scaring me.  I like Shane better!” [laughs]

 

Q) Wait until they see you again as Shane after this.

 

A) Yeah, it might be hard to go back.  What have I done!  [laughs]

 

Q) It’s not often at the end of a Lifetime Movie Network movie that the villain or bad person gets the last laugh. But when we see Mandy at Ashley and Brad’s wedding, it certainly seems she has had the upper hand all along and her isn’t any way over her vendetta. There is this great ambiguity that we are left with.

 

A) It’s interesting, because my husband is a writer and Crystal is also delving into writing.  We have an idea that we pitched to the same company who did this film.  We would like to see a sequel.  We have a few ideas brewing for Mandy and for her journey continuing into the next Wrong

 

Q) Mandy is pretty resourceful.  She was able to plant the camera and get the key replicated to the house without any hitches.  She’s got some skills.  I would love to know how she became so savvy.

 

A)  I see her as someone as “How do you do this?  YouTube.  The school of YouTube.”

 

Q) Is there anything else about the film that you would like to touch on or any other projects we will get to see you in coming up?

 

A) I have a couple things coming up.  I do guest star on Jason Priestley show “Private Eyes” and I don’t know if that airs in the US, but it definitely airs in Canada.  Jason and I go way back. We did a movie together many, many years ago and remained friends.  So, it was so much fun to be on his series “Private Eyes.”  I shot an independent feature film in Calgary in late Fall, early Winter, called Marlene and I play the title character.  It’s based on a true story of a woman who spends the majority of her life trying to clear her husband’s name for a crime he didn’t commit when he is arrested and charged and imprisoned at fourteen years old.

 

Q) You’re really constantly pushing your acting boundaries and I admire that so much.

 

A) For me, as an actor, the next project that I take on I will always want it to test me or challenge me more than the last one.  So, I do actively search out things that are going to challenge me because I find I learn so much from those experiences than I do from ones that I have already kind of done.