With the holiday season just around the corner, Jaicy Elliot caught up with HELLO! to talk about her brand new Hallmark movie – My Southern Family Christmas. Plus, the Grey's Anatomy star opened up about her co-star Ellen Pompeo's surprising departure from the long-running medical drama.
RELATED: Meet Grey's Anatomy cast and their real-life partners
The actress, who has gained widespread recognition in her role as Dr Taryn Helm on Grey's as well as the popular spin-offs Station 19 and Grey's Anatomy: The Webisodes, is officially a proud member of the Hallmark family. Joining the Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell and One Tree Hill's Moira Kelly in her latest movie role, Jaicy revealed what drew her to the project, and she also talked about her special connection with Ellen Pompeo.
Jaicy Elliot spoke exclusively to HELLO!
What drew you to the role of Campbell?
When they called me for the role and they offered me the role, obviously I wanted to do a Hallmark Christmas movie because it's kind of an iconic American tradition, so I was very inclined to say yes without even having read the script. But then I read the script and it was sort of a no-brainer for me because the character's arc, and the storyline, is about her relationship with herself and her identity through her relationship with her father whom she's never known and she's grown up without him.
WATCH: Jaicy Elliot talks about her new Christmas movie and Ellen Pompeo's exit from Grey's Anatomy
It's her story about her going to find him and there's a bit of a vaudeville sort of situation where she doesn't tell him who she is. She's there under, you could say, false pretense but not really because she's a journalist so she's there to do an article about the Cajun culture where her dad lives and so it was a perfect mix of discovering Cajun Christmas, which I knew nothing about and being French, it sounded like something I wanted to discover. Also [it is] about the love between a daughter and her father which I felt was something different for Hallmark and was exciting.
The actress portrays Campbell in the Hallmark movie My Southern Family Christmas
Those were the initial things that pulled me in, and then I heard about the cast and working with Bruce Campbell, Moira Kelly and Ryan Rottman. It was all sort of a pretty little package, it was hard to say no.
DISCOVER: The top 15 Christmas movies of all time
MORE: Grey's Anatomy stars' chic homes: Ellen Pompeo, Patrick Dempsey and more
What is your favourite Christmas movie?
It's funny because I just went to New York to do some press for the movie and I was with Nikki DeLoach the whole time when I was doing press and it just happened to be that at the end of our press tour I had to tell her that her Christmas movie was my favourite Hallmark Christmas movie that I had seen.
Jaicy would love to work with Nikki DeLoach
It's pretty popular, it's Dream of Christmas. She's such a great actress, it's a great story, she's with Andrew Walker in this movie and they're a great pair so I had a little fangirl moment, it was really sweet.
On that note, would you love to work with Nikki DeLoach?
Oh, anything that we could find to work together on, yeah.
How will you be spending Christmas this year?
This Christmas I am going home. I'm french so I'm going home to France to spend it with my parents and my sister and my cousins, but I'm also introducing my partner to my family for the first time so it's going to be like a movie! We look forward to it and at this time of year when we're coming to Thanksgiving, Christmas feels like it's a day and a half away. I'm excited to be there and be in the snow with everyone, so it will be really nice.
Ellen Pompeo has announced that she'll be leaving Grey's, what was your reaction when you first found out, and what do you think the show will be like without her?
We found out that was what the season was built around. It's such a huge departure for the show to have Meredith Grey step away and so the season was sort of built around us knowing that was going to happen and wanting to ensure that we maintained some legacy and a form of Grey's that we knew, that we know with Meredith, and that we have known in the past.
So creating links I think to the past and the future was very important. That was really brilliantly sort of figured out by our showrunner Krista Vernoff with the new class of interns that are just as spunky, I would say, as the first class of interns was way back, the magic group.
Jaicy Elliot also stars as Dr Taryn Helm on Grey's Anatomy
Obviously, it's the end of an era. I know it's had like a shock wave through social media but you know Ellen is great, she's been such a terrific mentor and she's like a precious source of information. She's given a lot of really great advice to me. I started on the show and she was there and she sort of pushed me along and helped me find my way. It's going to be different to work without her and it's going to be a different show but I think it's so inherently about Meredith Grey that she's going to be there in spirit. She's made the show what it is so we're sad to see her go but I'm excited to see what she does next.
Do you have a stand-out piece of advice that Ellen Pompeo has given to you?
It's been six years so there's been a lot of moments! In the time when you start something, whether it's high school or a job or a relationship or a lot of new beginnings, I think in these moments when we can all be a little confused and overwhelmed.
Sometimes it could take more or less time to find our sort of step and our stride. She gave very good advice in helping me to find my own voice and be my authentic self and I think that's why she's so good about being Meredith Grey because that's also who she is as a person.
Ellen Pompeo recently announced that she would be leaving Grey's Anatomy after season 19
I think the best advice… I don't remember words exactly right now – I should have them written down somewhere – but I think the best advice was to really trust myself and give in to my creative artistic self and try to let that shine through as much as possible.
Having known that Ellen was leaving, did the last season feel more emotional to film?
Yeah, it did. I mean, it does, we're still in the middle of filming this season. It does feel different, it's a whole new show. It feels like being part of a new cast almost. It's a very lively young group of people and we're all sort of latching onto their energy and so it's felt like a different show.
Ellen's departure has set the tone for all of that, but it remains Grey's Anatomy and there are still a lot of people there that I've known and worked with all this time and love, and it's still very much home.
As well as remembering dialogue and marks, you've got to do these really intense surgery scenes, is it more of a challenge to film those scenes?
We have a fantastic team of doctors who work on the show who help us sort of work out the kinks of what surgery has to look like to be somewhat realistic because of course we're in a dramatic heightened version of reality, so we get a lot of help and a lot of assistance. However, a good piece of trivia is that any time you have a surgical montage it can take up to two days to shoot and it's really just thirty seconds. It's a lot of work and in those moments you are reminded of what it takes to create a moment. Whenever you see a montage think of us because it does take a lot of time and precision to get those right.
Jaicy made her first ever appearance as Taryn Helm during season fourteen of Grey's Anatomy
What would you say is the most challenging part of filming for Grey's Anatomy?
What I found difficult for a long time but I've made peace with is the language and the medical jargon. When I moved here I definitely had spoken more French than English my whole life – I moved to the states about seven years ago. And so that was hard for me to sort of get the words in my mouth and remember all of that but I wouldn't call any of it a challenge, I would call it a fun experience. At the end of the day, it's very much a group effort so I always have a lot of fun.
What's next in your future on Grey's?
You know there is a whole other second part of the season that's coming up and there are some exciting things happening so I'm going to let you discover that. There's a lot happening this season so it's best to find out week by week because I don't want to give any spoilers away!
Could we potentially see you on any of the spin-offs? Maybe Station 19?
It's a good question, as of now I haven't but we are still… both shows are still working on our seasons and it's very possible that we will crossover. There's a chance that I might appear in both because the show is sort of shot in real-time. We [will] find out when we're shooting so, I don't know.
What would your dream project be?
You know I just went to a premiere last night for Women Talking. It's a Hear/Say Production, a Plan B production movie about women in the Mennonite community. It's very gripping. It's a very good movie, it's very emotional and it's about women's freedom and women's conversation and sisterhood and the place of women in society. I would really enjoy being in a movie like that, I would really like to tell those stories.
The TV star would love to appear in more movies that confront important social issues
I'm lucky enough that I've landed Grey's Anatomy which is very forthcoming with storylines about daily issues that we deal with in society. What makes the show successful, I think, is that we talk about things that we need to hear about in society, I just want to do more of that and I want to hopefully do more features on that. I'm working on a personal project right now and there's a lot to be done but hopefully, it touches on the sort of conversations that I want to be having with the world so we'll see. When we get to it, maybe I'll come back and we can talk about it.
Do you feel a lot of pressure when portraying sensitive storylines and situations, particularly in Grey's?
When we're portraying an important issue I think it's important to just play it as people living it because it's not some mystical situation, it's an everyday life or struggle for some people who just kind of have to live through it. For example, Taryn, my character, right now she's been in the bar for the first part of the season and Krista Vernoff, our showrunner, had mentioned that it would be a slow return for her to the hospital.
That's very intentional because what Taryn talks about is how underpaid our health professionals are, at a certain level, and how important it is to value them in our society. When playing Tara, I don't want her to come across as bitter or hurt. She's made peace with it, it's just she speaks her truth and it comes from a place in her heart.
In my case, I think just trying to make it as real and as tangible to people, and sometimes it comes across as like just a random piece of information but if you stop and actually think about what's being said it can be a little more heartbreaking than we think.
Like this story? Sign up to our What to Watch newsletter and get the heads-up on the shows and films everyone’s talking about.