As someone who owns the collector's edition box set of Gilmore Girls and has a lot of opinions about all of the occupants of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, I'm always excited to see one of the stars of the series show up in a new project. (I mean, it's still weird to see Kirk show up in all those Marvel movies, but Sean Gunn can't be typecast as the lovably annoying town weirdo forever, I guess.)
This week marks the arrival of a sweet new Hallmark movie, Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story, and I was surprised to learn that the film's co-writer also happens to be one of the most controversial cast members to appear on Gilmore Girls.
Vanessa Marano, who played April Nardini, the long lost daughter of Luke Danes who he never knew existed until season 6 of the series, got a lot of heat for her character. There are dozens of articles and Reddit threads that refer to April's storyline as "doomed" and blame her for ruining the final season. This is not Marano's fault as much as the creative direction the show took, but April was scapegoated as the reason Luke's relationship with Lorelai Gilmore ended. The passionate fanbase of Gilmore Girls waited years for Luke and Lorelai to get together, and so April (a child at the time, lest we forget) is often blamed for derailing the relationship and the trajectory the fans wished the show would follow. (In hindsight, it does seem like fans now sympathize with Vanessa/April and have softened their stance, but in 2006, people were not as chill.)
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Since Gilmore Girls ended, Marano has worked steadily on shows like Switched at Birth, Dexter, and even returned for Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, but I was excited to see her name show up as the screenwriter for A Bills Love Story, which is out on Nov. 22 on the Hallmark Channel (and on Hallmark Plus on Nov. 23). The movie is the second Hallmark collaborations with the NFL. Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story of 2024 was a romance set in Kansas City, while A Bill's Love Story is about two childhood friends from Buffalo who eventually realize they were meant for each other. The film is listed as Marano's first-ever writing credit (co-written with Danielle Morrow) and it is an impressive debut. There can be a fine line between many of the generic holiday romances that air on Hallmark and movies that stand out by developing realistic characters and imbuing them with humor and emotional connection. A Bills Love Story is truly an elevated entry in the genre.
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And there is not only a Gilmore Girls connection to the movie, but there is also a Sopranos connection. Joe Pantoliano and Steve Schirripa, the stars of the acclaimed HBO series, have prominent roles in A Bills Love Story. (The cast is one of the more impressive ensembles on Hallmark this year, as the film also stars Holland Roden, Matthew Daddario, Tracy Pollan, Caroline Aron, and a dozen or so past and present Bills players like Damar Hamlin and Dion Dawkins.) I have been watching many (okay, most) of the entries on Hallmark's Countdown to Christmas, and for me, Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story ranks No. 1 in the AFC. For our purposes, that stands for Achievement in Festive Cinema.
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In A Bills Love Story, Roden and Daddario star as Morgan and Gabe, the romantic couple at the center of the film. The pair are childhood neighbors who find themselves trying to solve a mystery about who has been anonymously sending Morgan's Uncle Tommy (Pantoliano) a Christmas gift every year for 50 years.
In the same way that Marano will always be April to me, Pantoliano can be hard to separate from his past roles — I have spent my lifetime thinking of him as Francis Fratelli from The Goonies, and he won his Emmy for his role as Ralph Cifaretto on The Sopranos — but here, he plays completely against those types as the warm father figure to Morgan, a man who sacrificed his dreams to support his family. Seeing him play such a softie is what helps give the movie its emotional weight, but he is given a solid script to work with, and hopefully it is not the last we hear from Marano over here in the Hallmark cinematic universe.