Hallmark’s Paul Campbell can’t get away with every joke.
Campbell, 44, opened up about transitioning from an actor on the network to a writer during a recent interview with Vulture. Since he started writing for Hallmark, he’s helped create Christmas at Castle Hart, An Unexpected Christmas, Moriah’s Lighthouse and Three Wise Men and a Baby.
“Three Wise Men and a Baby was a big swing,” Campbell said. “It was something they’d never done before. The idea of putting three male leads together in a movie was a little scary, because they didn’t know how that would be received.”
He continued: “As a writer, there’s no defined formula, but intuitively, we all understand what the thing is. I understand the feeling we’re trying to provoke. More and more, we’re telling stories about people who have more damage and conflict. It’s not as glossy as it once was.”
Campbell explained that because his Three Wise Men character, Stephan, struggled with anxiety disorder, he experimented with comedy.
“The more broken, hurt or pain someone is feeling, the funnier you can make a script,” Campbell said, adding, “Comedy only comes from pain, so the more pain there is, there’s more humor. It’s a great balance.”
Although Hallmark lets Campbell crack a few jokes here and there, he claimed he still has to keep it family-friendly. “I can’t write ‘sucks,’ [but] I can write ‘jerk,’ which is pretty fun and opens some doors,” he quipped. “I have to do ‘stinks.’ Now I just lean older with word choices. I’ll write ‘rats’ or ‘jeepers.’”
Elsewhere in the interview, Campbell revealed a joke that Hallmark execs didn’t let him keep in a script.
“I wrote a joke about marrying a cat in a recent script,” he recalled. “There was a joke where my character went, ‘Marriage is different for everybody. Love is different. I love my cat, but I wouldn’t marry my cat.’ Then another character goes, ‘Yeah, because of the legal red tape.’”
Although he thought it was a “good joke,” he claimed Hallmark told him, “We can’t tell a joke about the only reason he’s not marrying his cat is because legally he can’t marry his cat.”
Campbell has also starred in Hallmark’s Surprised by Love, Once Upon a Holiday, An Unexpected Christmas and more.
