For four seasons, Melanie Scrofano has played the great-granddaughter of the legendary Wyatt Earp in the Syfy series Wynona Earp, battling evil spirits with a magic gun called “Peacemaker.”
This weekend, she will appear in a different role entirely in the Hallmark Channel movie Welcome to Mama’s. Scrofano stars as Amy, a young woman who inherits an Italian restaurant and works with a chef to bring it back to its former glory.
Co-starring Daniel Di Tomasso and Lorraine Bracco, it’s the final movie in Hallmark’s Loveuary event.
On Twitter, the actress shared a fan-designed meme that compared her new character Amy to her old onscreen persona Wynona.
“Who’s the better chef?” she wrote in the caption.
Fans replied, naming some of the more interesting culinary creations her character served up over the years on Wynona Earp.
“I mean, I like kraft dinner with hot dogs and a Twizzler chaser,” one fan wrote.
“I mean, who doesn’t like mac and cheese with a ketchup glaze, but I’m thinking maybe the better chef would be the one with the restaurant,” wrote another fan. “Really looking forward to seeing your new movie, Mel.”
The legendary Wynona
Scrofano had bit parts in the TV shows Supernatural, Warehouse 13, and Heartland before landing the role of Meredith Fox on Degrassi: The Next Generation. In 2015, she was cast as the lead in Wynona Earp.
Based on a series of comic books of the same name by Beau Smith, Wynona Earp followed legendary sheriff Wyatt Earp’s great-granddaughter, an unlikely hero who chases down “revenants” (the ghosts of outlaws killed by her great-grandpa).
The series ran for four years and developed a cult following among fans who adored Wynona’s larger-than-life personality and the quirky characters who helped her. The show included an ongoing romance between Wynona’s younger sister Waverly and Officer Nicole Haught, played by Kat Barrell, who also appeared on Hallmark Channel’s Good Witch. The series was nominated for GLAAD Media Awards in 2017, 2019, and 2021.
It won the People’s Choice Award for Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Show in 2018 and 2020.
From Syfy to Hallmark
In Welcome to Mama’s, Scrofano plays a much less quirky character. Amy is a restaurant manager who inherits a restaurant in Brooklyn from her late friend (played by Lorraine Bracco), known to everyone as “Mama.”
In an effort to revitalize the place, Amy hires an egotistical chef (Di Tomasso), who is looking for a second chance to prove his skills. Though the two butt heads at first, eventually, they come to respect each other.
Throughout the movie, flashbacks show how “Mama” built the restaurant up from nothing and kept it going for decades.
In an interview with Monsters and Critics, Bracco said it was a nice change to do a movie for Hallmark.
“It was just a lovely story. I thought it was charming, and I’m really all in to have some nice, feel-good movies and TV,” Bracco said. “The fact that I can have some kind of movies in my lifetime to show my two grandchildren makes me very happy because I have a lot of movies that I can’t show them.”
Welcome to Mama’s will premiere on Hallmark Channel on Saturday, February 26 at 8/7c.