Team Pinstripe forever! Dan Jeannotte has nothing but love for his Bold Type costars — and thinks Meghann Fahy’s performance in The White Lotus is something to be revered.
“[She was] incredible. Fantastic. She has such a charming natural presence,” Jeannotte, 41, exclusively told Us Weekly while promoting his latest Hallmark movie, Sweeter Than Chocolate. “Where you feel like she’s really just being herself. And so at the beginning of The White Lotus, you could almost think this is a bit like Sutton from The Bold Type in a different circumstance, but then things go on and she reveals these different layers of her character. She was just amazing.”
The Good Witch alum starred alongside Fahy, 32, as well as Aisha Dee and Katie Stevens on the Freeform show from 2017 to 2020. Jeannotte portrayed Ryan “Pinstripe” Decker, the love interest of Stevens’ Jane Sloan. The twosome’s on and off romance immediately resonated with fans who were rooting for the couple to ride off into the sunset together by the series finale.
When — spoiler — Ryan cheats on Jane in season 3, however, the pair ultimately call it quits for good, leaving many fans feeling that they’d been cheated out of a relationship they’d invested in for years. Their frustration is something the alum can resonate with.
“I was sad that it didn’t work out for [Jane and Ryan].” Definitely sad, but I think it made sense in a lot of ways. I’m not angry at the writers. I know some of the fans are [and] I understood where they were coming from,” he explained to Us. “I think it was really lovely that in the final episode, Jane and Ryan got to have a kind of a little moment — not to say necessarily like that there’s romance again in the future for them — but just that they can see each other again as friends, as peers.”
Jeannotte added that the duo’s dynamic “wasn’t all heartbreak” and he’s glad the characters realized there was “something good” between them before the show came to a close. “I like to imagine them in the future getting back together. When he’s a bit older and more mature,” he confessed.
While the majority of Jeannotte’s time on The Bold Type was spent opposite Stevens, 30, the Canada native admitted that he yearned for more scenes with the rest of the cast — especially 32-year-old Fahy.
“That whole gang was just incredible and I hope I get to work with them again,” the Reign alum gushed to Us. “The whole cast was just — they’re fantastic people. Katie Stevens, who I did most of my scenes with, is a real dear friend now. And the rest of them too. We always talked about how I wish I had more screen time with Meghann Fahy.”
While Jeannotte is admiring the Massachusetts native’s work on The White Lotus from afar — and hoping the twosome will reconnect on screen one day — he’s also busy with his thriving career starring in Hallmark’s upcoming movie Sweeter Than Chocolate.
The Valentine’s Day-themed film, which premieres on February 4, follows Jeannotte’s Dean as he investigates chocolatier Lucy Sweets (Eloise Mumford) — who he suspects is producing magical cupid treats that bring the consumer true love.
“When I first read the script, it immediately struck me as a different kind of story than some of these rom-coms tend to be,” he told Us. “Because we weren’t just focused on the love story between the two main characters. You also get to see these snippets of a lot of different kinds of love stories.”
Dean and Lucy’s romance is just one of the tales told in the film, which airs during Hallmark’s “Loveuary” programming next month, and delves into the origins of various people’s love stories. Jeannotte, for his part, had his own fairy tale when it came to falling in love with wife Heidi Hawkins.
“We met doing a play together. We are both acting in As You Like It, [a] Shakespeare romantic comedy. And that’s one of his plays where by the end of the play, everybody is getting married,” he told Us, laughing. “So we were actually getting married at the end of this show. We played characters who fall in love, but because we were not the most important characters in the show, we just fall in love, like instantaneously in the space of a line. It was a very cute and funny beginning to our relationship, but it wasn’t actually the start of our relationship yet.”
The Royal Nanny actor explained that he and Hawkins, 41, “couldn’t be together” when they first met, but the “spark was ignited” between them. “Maybe a year or two later is when we actually started dating. And now we’ve been married for 10 years,” he said.
For Jeannotte and the Crawler star, it’s all about continuing to “find delight in each other” as the years go on.
“You have to be ready and accepting of the fact that you’re going to change, you’re both going to change,” he explained. “The person that I am now isn’t exactly the person that my wife married 10 years ago. I’ve changed. She’s changed. And so you have to keep meeting each other anew. You have to keep rediscovering each other and rediscovering what your connection is, what your bond is, you know? So ideally you keep falling in love over and over again.”
As for if Dean and Lucy get their own happily ever after in Sweeter Than Chocolate, viewers will have to tune in to find out.
Sweeter Than Chocolate premieres on Hallmark Channel Saturday, February 4, at 8 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
