Country music superstar Reba McEntire has been acting for over three decades and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Her latest project is a Lifetime original movie, titled Reba McEntire’s The Hammer, premiering Saturday, January 7th at 8/7c. As an executive producer, Reba got to call a lot of the shots, including when it came to casting. “We first worked together on the Kenny Rogers "Gambler" movie,” Reba said of her beau Rex Linn during a recent TCA press conference. “Of course, I've worked with Melissa [Peterman] since 2001,” she added about reuniting on screen with her real-life friend from her legendary sitcom. “Everybody in the cast was wonderful. We all fell in love with the crew. We fell in love with everybody that we got to work with and be around.”
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Based on a true story about real-life traveling judge Kim Wanker in Nevada’s 5th District, Reba stars as Kim Wheeler, whose life is upended when the previous judge is murdered and the leading suspect becomes her sister Kris. “As a lot of sisters do, they had different experiences growing up in the same place with the same parent, and I think Kris bears some guilt,” Melissa Peterman said of her character in the film, a far cry from Barbara Jean on Reba. “I think she wishes maybe she’d helped her sister more, and I think she misses her sister and wants to be closer and wishes she was. And so when that opportunity comes and she’s back into town and they’re reunited, I think she really wants to repair that relationship with her sister.”
“For my role, they were looking at Brad Pitt,” joked Rex Linn, who plays Bart Crawford, a mysterious cowboy. Asked about what Reba is like as a boss, he was quick to say “She's never bossy, never,” earning the superstar’s praise on the Zoom call. Diehard Reba McEntire fans are likely already aware that The Hammer isn’t their only current on-screen pairing. “Rex and I both are thrilled to get to be working together on The Hammer with Lifetime and then Big Sky on ABC, having a blast with it and we love television,” Reba added.
Dating since 2020, Rex was all set to accompany Reba on a research trip to Nevada to meet Kim Wanker, a trip that ultimately had to be canceled. “We wanted to run with her, go in her truck, and go from courtroom to courtroom,” Reba revealed. “But she was having a pretty serious trial when we were going to go, and we didn’t want to interfere and be a nuisance. But we did text a lot. I talked to her on the phone. She sent me books about what she does in Nevada, and the stories that she told when Karen [Wyscarver] and Sandy [Golden] had first written the script. There were some things that they had left out that Kim had told me, and when I got to talk to Sandy and Karen about it, they said, oh, my gosh, I forgot all about that. So, they put it in the script.” Kim Wanker’s real life sometimes sounds too wild to be true, but much of what is depicted in Kim Wheeler’s story is true. “The hammer thing, when she goes the gavel, I was like, okay, well, she did it. I have to do it too to make it look true to life. Although our characters are fiction, but she is such an inspiration to all of us. Kim is a terrific and very strong woman.”
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Kay Shioma Metchie plays Kim’s righthand woman, a bailiff named Vicky. “It was a dream come true to work across from Reba and Rex and Melissa, just amazingly talented actors,” Kay gushed. “[Reba] knows what she wants, and I think she portrayed that wonderfully as Kim. With Vicky and Kim, she has to find the right balance to be able to gently nudge Kim into doing things the safe way, maybe, the correct way, but you don’t want to stifle the creativity of Kim Wheeler.”
Everyone had such a good time making Reba McEntire’s The Hammer that they’d like to return for a sequel or even a series. “When we were doing the movie everybody was sitting around, the cast, crew, everybody, we were talking about, ‘Oh, my gosh, we would love for this to continue,’” Reba concluded. “Iit could have been a limited series. It could be a series. It could be movies continuing on, because Kim does have so many great stories to tell, and Melissa said that also several times, “Oh, my gosh, we could do this again.” Rex and I loved it. Kay had a great time. Everybody involved in the movie, we really enjoyed it.”
You can enjoy it, too, when Reba McEntire’s The Hammer premieres on Saturday, January 7th, at 8/7c on Lifetime.
Lifetime is part of A+E Networks, a joint venture by Hearst Communications and The Walt Disney Company.