‘Heaven Down Here’: Krystal Joy Brown Explains ‘Grit’ of Very Different Hallmark Movie

Krystal Joy Brown leads what’s easily one of the best and most heartwarming Hallmark movies this holiday season, Heaven Down Here.

The film, which premieres on December 14 on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, is inspired by Mickey Guyton‘s song of the same name. it tells the story of four people who find themselves stranded in a local diner on Christmas Eve when a snowstorm hits: Imani (Brown), a widowed mother of two having trouble making ends meet and stuck working the holiday shift; her boss Dan (Richard Harmon), who doesn’t embody the Christmas spirit; Felix (Juan Riedinger), a local pastor whose faith is challenged by his alienation by his son; and Clara (Tina Lifford), a hospice nurse with an obstinate patient (Phylicia Rashad) and whose daughter is moving away.

Brown previews what makes this movie different from any other you’ll watch this year. (It’s not about the romance.)

This movie is so good and so heartwarming.

Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah, I know. It’s very different for the holidays and for the network, which was awesome, for them to take such a beautiful chance on something that’s a little bit different. When I read the script, I cried three times. It was so moving and touching and heartbreaking and everything that these people are going through and their desire for connection, and not just connection, but also to heal. They’re all trying to heal from something. It just really touched me as soon as I read that, and I thought that this was a very special holiday movie.

Introduce Imani. How is she feeling about where she is in her life professionally and personally when we meet her?

It’s been a year after the death of her husband who died of what I think is a cancer of some sort, something that cost a lot of money to invest in to try to get better because her home is being foreclosed on and she’s going to have to move her two beautiful kids out of their family home, and she doesn’t know where she’s going to move yet. She’s also put all of her dreams and ambitions of maybe being a singer on the back-burner for a long time, because of course, number one, being a mom and wanting to take care of her kids, but then also her husband becoming sick. And in my mind, thinking of the backstory that her husband was sick for maybe a year or two in a very big way, that kind of drained them of all of their stability and finances.

She is really dead set on wanting to make this a very special holiday for her kids because they lost their dad only a year earlier and around the holiday time, so she feels a massive amount of responsibility to make sure that she’s providing for them some joy, some connection. She’s extremely overwhelmed, and, I think, very lonely. She was also orphaned and adopted, and she’s just experienced a lot of grief and a lot of loss. All she believes that she has is her two kids, and making their lives special and making their holiday special and making them feel supported and taken care of is her number one goal.

Kailey Schwerman/Hallmark Media

But she has a boss who wants her to stay. She has responsibilities, and she can’t really say no to money and tips at this moment. She feels like she’s trapped between a rock and a hard place. All she wants to do is get home to her kids, but she also knows that she needs to make the money to provide for them. It’s one of those things that many people around the world make these types of sacrifices — time with their kids or time try to find ways to provide for them. It’s always a difficult balance, and I think we’re catching her right in that hard place.

One of the others she’s stranded with is the last person she wants to be stuck with, her boss. How does she handle that?

I think Imani tries to be graceful. She loves her patrons, she loves her community and her neighbors, but she also has had it with her boss, and she does not really mince words. What I loved about Imani is that she can be a little fiery. She can be a little snappy and really stand up for herself. But then also at her most core, she is a very warm, inviting person. But he manages to pull out the worst in her. Just like many people have those people where you’re like, “I’m just not my best self around this person,” but you have to kind of work with them.

And I think them being trapped in this situation is exactly what is needed to heal. Because sometimes people just pass each other and they don’t really get to know each other. Even though you see each other every single day, you don’t really know what is going on with a person. You don’t really know what they’re going through. And if you took a moment to sit and ask them or talk to them in a real way, you might actually discover what they’re going through and why they’re reacting the way that they do or experiencing things the way that they’re experiencing them. And I just found that to be really true of life and human behavior.

Who opens up the most in the diner?

We all talk about where we feel like we have failed or we haven’t succeeded in our personal lives, our careers, our family lives, and in really deep ways. I think Juan’s character, the minister, is a really big one because he’s sharing how he had prioritized work and other things and became estranged from his son and has a deep regret for that before turning to ministry. That’s probably very hard to admit and a very beautiful message for men as well, that if you are estranged, if you have had distance and space and time, you can still mend those fences and heal. It sometimes just takes getting out of your own head and ego, even, and your own hurt and putting yourself out there. I find that storyline really, really touching.

We’re all kind of admitting things where we wish we were able to handle them better. We wish that we had been the best versions of ourselves or that circumstances were different so that we behaved differently, but the circumstances are such that we are here facing all of those things in a very real way.

David Astorga/Hallmark Media

I also think Tina’s character goes through so much as well, because being an empty nester, feeling loneliness, especially around the holidays, feeling like you’re losing people, that is also another big theme that a lot of us deal with at the holidays at any time. So her expressing her loneliness is major.

I think Imani wears her frustrations a little bit more on her sleeve. She’s willing to say, “I don’t have the money. I don’t have this time. I have to get to my kids.” She’s pretty open about where she is already. But I think the depths of her frustration and sadness kind of come out a bit more through the evening and through her ability to feel more safe around these people. It’s very cathartic for everyone. I think every character really has a strong point of view and a big reveal as to what they’re trapped in the diner to heal, to bring some heaven down into that diner and heal from that.

I really like Imani and Felix’s dynamic. It’s not like anything you usually see in a Hallmark movie. What did you enjoy most about that?

First, I’m really grateful that Hallmark trusted me with this script and this kind of different direction that they were trying with this particular script. Yeah, it has a bit of grit. It’s not your typical romance, loving holiday film in that way. I hope that this is a very cathartic experience for a lot of people, that they go on this journey that we went on to dig a little deeper as to what they’re going through and how to still bring the joy and the light, even amongst times that we’ve maybe lost people or feel that loneliness or feel sadness and still figure out ways to bring joy to your life.

It’s a big honor to me whenever I get to spearhead anything that feels like change or like it’s different. I love a challenge. so it’s exciting to do that. And the fun thing is, is that our director, Anne [Wheeler], did a lot of the filming in one takes. We did a lot of long shots where it was almost like a play. And I come from the world of theater, so it was cool to do eight pages at a time, and it really got us in this very real flow. I’ve done quite a bit of film and TV, but a lot of times I haven’t done those types of shots where we get to do multiple pages for a long time and do it like a play. That was really fun for me as a theater person and an interesting obstacle and challenge, and I’m excited to see how that translated. But yeah, it’s cool to be a part of something that I feel like is going to hit a little bit different during the holiday season.

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And you sing beautifully in this movie.

Yeah, that was a surprise. I mean, it was in the script, but I don’t think I realized how much. It was exciting for me because, of course, I love music and singing, and I was in between — we had just done Merrily We Roll Along off Broadway and we had about six months before we were bringing it to Broadway. We filmed it in June, so I was feeling like an itch to sing. Music has been a part of my life in such a big way for my entire life, and when I listen to music, I find I am so emotionally invested in what the songwriter was going through, what the lyrics say. I just hear and feel music in such a different way that sometimes I can’t even listen to music because I get so emotionally wrapped up into it.

So having a song that has this kind of powerful message that also is asking, “Hey, God, it’s me. Have you forgotten me? If you could just see me, I need to know that you’re here,” asking those really vulnerable questions and feeling hopeless but then also the hope that comes out of the end of that song and in the choruses really kind of jolted my spirit, and I was just like, this is great. And it’s actually a call to action, I believe, asking everyone to take care of each other. We could use a little more heaven down here. We have to be the heaven. We have to be the center part. We have to be the goodness, light, and joy to each other because we are what will help each other heal.

Heaven Down Here, Movie Premiere, Thursday, December 14, 8/7c, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries