Nikki DeLoach is ready to make some more special memories with her Hallmark family.
“I actually have a movie coming out,” DeLoach, 45, exclusively shared with Us Weekly earlier this month at the Children’s Heart Foundation’s Congenital Heart Walk in Los Angeles. “I’m doing a movie called Home Turf that comes out in the fall. I filmed it in Utah and wrapped it about a month ago. It’s great.”
According to DeLoach, the upcoming TV movie has everything fans expect from Hallmark films, including love and laughs.
“It’s football, it’s romance, it’s college campuses, it’s multi-generational, it’s funny,” she teased. “Warren Christie is my costar again. We’ve been reunited from Christmas. And I gotta tell you, I have not had this much fun on a set in a really long time. I am so excited about this movie!”
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DeLoach and Christie, 49, last starred together in Our Holiday Story. The film, which premiered in November 2024, showcased a couple who recounted their Christmas love story to their daughter’s boyfriend.
It’s one of the many Hallmark projects DeLoach has been a part of over the years.
While every film has its own special set of memories, the actress said Five More Minutes and a Gift of Peace — two movies that explored grief and healing — hold special meaning to her and many viewers.
“I always say I am our audience,” she explained to Us. “I’m that mom that has spent months and months and months in a Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit looking for hope. I am a daughter who was a caregiver to her dad with dementia. I have watched my dad take his last breath. I am our audience, and I’m always looking for that thing that is hopeful, and it’s going to make me feel like in the end, everything’s going to be OK.”
DeLoach continued, “I know what our movies give people because when I’m in them, they give me the same thing. … I think it’s just such a gift and a blessing to be a part of people’s lives in that way.”
When she’s not in front of a camera providing both entertainment and comfort to fans, DeLoach is using her platform to raise awareness about congenital heart defects.
According to the Children’s Heart Foundation, congenital heart defects are America’s most common and deadly birth defect, with nearly 40,000 babies born with a CHD each year in the United States.
“My son Bennett is a heart warrior, and he was born almost eight years ago,” DeLoach shared with Us. “He had four congenital heart defects and without immediate intervention, he was not going to survive. At five days old, Dr. Vaughn Starnes at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles — one of the world’s top pediatric heart surgeons — saved his life.”
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After two additional heart surgeries, Bennett is now thriving in life as he enjoys piano, soccer and other activities with his peers.
Looking towards the future, DeLoach hopes she can use her family’s story to push for more heart checks at hospitals when babies are born.
“I hope by the time I take my last breath in this world that it will just be a part of the screening of every newborn,” she said. “When they are born, they get their ears checked, their eyes checked, everything else and their hearts. It sounds like a no-brainer to me.”
