Roxanne Messina Captor, a prolific writer and producer, has her latest movie hitting screens this weekend: Dream Moms, a new Hallmark movie featuring Tamera Mowry-Housley and Chelsea Hobbs, will air on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET/PT. It centers on two suburban moms whose Broadway dreams were deferred, as they enter a TV talent show competition together and learn that it’s never too late to become what or who you want to be. Alongside Mowry-Housley and Hobbs, the movie stars Roger Cross, Siera Staples, Tim Beckmann, Matthew James Dowden, Glen Gordon, Andrew J. Hampton, Brenda Lee Howard, Charles Jarman, and Brianne Mapson.
The movie feels right at home with the light, fluffy fare that you associate with Hallmark or Lifetime — but there’s a heft to its themes, too. The movie really drives home the idea that it’s never too late to pursue your dreams, an idea that’s bigger than just one dance competition.
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“I’ve known people who put their dreams of writing a book on hold to raise a family, and worked in a nine to five traditional job, and once they retire, go write their book and [self-publish],” Captor told ComicBook.com. “I think we as human beings always have something that’s in our soul, and I just hope that we all try to get that out at some point in our life. You hear these stories about people who go back to college at 90, and they love it. My hat is off to anyone who goes for whatever their dream is, no matter what time of their life.”
And while it may feel like a natural fit at Hallmark, this wasn’t the work-for-hire development often associated with cable networks. Instead, Captor wrote the story first, and then started figuring out who might provide a good home for it. Hallmark ended up being a good fit — so good that it feels like something they might have developed in-house — but that wasn’t necessarily the plan.
“I wrote the story and Hallmark bought that story. So we stayed pretty close to what the original story was,” Captor said. “It felt like a story that could be about anyone, I mean, in this case it’s two women, but anyone trying to fulfill dreams later in life, or dreams that you thought were way past you — it’s such an important thing to everyone. it doesn’t matter who you are, but that passion we carry around, and we maybe think it’s never going to happen, and then it finally does. Hallmark, I think, was the right place for this. They understood the story, they got the story, and they were the right place to be doing it because we were able to stick pretty close to my original story.”
Alternatively Captor said, there are times when you have an idea and just immediately know where to go.
“I’m partnering with another writer…we pitched a project to Lifetime, and they have a very specific demographic,” Captor added. “They have a very specific style that they want, and we had this idea and we pitched it, and it was the right fit. I think you write the story, and then you say, ‘Oh, I think this would fit at this place.’”
It’s not uncommon for writer-producers who work in film to be distracted by doing primarily one thing or the other, or by producing only their own scripts. That isn’t the case for Captor, and it sounds like that could be a huge headache in terms of timing. For her, though, she told us that the writing process she has helps a lot. Which is, basically, a binge model.
“I’m extremely organized and I definitely have my…in a good way, my compartments,” Captor said. “I have this much time for this and this much time for that. Then my writing — I don’t know how you write, but I know that there’s the theory that everybody sits down every day and writes three pages, at least. I think Nora Ephron wrote that way, My way is, I have an idea, and it’s in my soul, and then it molds in my head, and it molds in my head, and then it’s finally screaming to come out. So I sit down, and just get it all out. I mean, I’ll sit for a whole weekend and just not leave, and just kept writing and writing until I get it all out.”
“Obviously you got to go back and clean it up and do that kind of stuff, but the major part of it, the stories and what needs to come out just comes out,” she added. “That’s kind of my process. So it’s quite doable to say, ‘All right, I’m in this period of time and now I’m writing,’ and lock that door and say, ‘Don’t bother me.’ When I worked with Coppola, I know he writes that way too. When he’s ready to do something, he goes and locks himself in a room, and doesn’t have any phones, doesn’t have anything, and just writes.”
You can see Dream Moms Saturday night at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the Hallmark Channel.
