Meghan Markle’s Hallmark Co-Star Describes What It’s Really Like to Work With Her

Meghan Markle worked her way up the food chain in Hollywood before becoming a member of the British royal family, including one performance in a made-for-TV Hallmark Channel movie that has recently resurfaced thanks to streaming deals. She played the female lead in the rom-com Dater’s Handbook in 2016 opposite Kristoffer Polaha. In an interview before the SAG-AFTRA strike began in June, Polaha shared his impressions of Markle from back then and how they have changed today.

Meghan [Markle] and I hit it off like gangbusters, and we had the best time making that movie,” Polaha told TV Insider. Looking back, he seemed to think that neither he nor Markle really understood Hallmark’s target audience at the time, and marveled that both of them have come so far in their careers since then. Still, Polaha never could have guessed where Markle’s personal life would take her, and he was as surprised as anyone to see her on TV marrying a real-life prince. He acknowledged that her global stardom has put more eyes on Dater’s Handbook than it would have likely gotten otherwise.

“That movie became special because, obviously, here was a movie that we didn’t think many people would see beyond – we didn’t understand what Hallmark was at the time, neither one of us,” he said. “And then of course, Meghan met Harry later that year and the entire Commonwealth watched that movie over and over and over again. That was kind of the high point of that, getting to know her.”

As for himself, the movie also foreshadowed Polaha’s rise to prominence. He said: “If you notice, we go to play miniature golf, and there are dinosaurs in the miniature golf course. It was almost like a time travel thing because I ended up doing Jurassic World about two years later.” These days, Polaha is best known for playing Wyatt in Jurassic World Dominion and for a brief appearance in Wonder Woman 1984. He has also appeared on The Good Doctor, Little Fires Everywhere and Ballers, among other things.

Dater’s Handbook is a rom-com about a successful businesswoman named Cass (Markle) who is frustrated with her stalled love life and decides to follow the advice of a self-help book. She soon finds herself caught between two burgeoning romances – one with safe and dependable George (Scarfe) and the other with passionate Robert (Polaha). She needs to decide for herself when to stop listening to the advice that got her this far in the first place.

Dater’s Handbook has aired a few times on Hallmark this month but it seems to be trending particularly because it has been added to the catalog on Peacock. You can stream the movie there now.