Holland Roden Interview: “The Buffalo Fandom is Just Like the Hallmark Fandom”

Holland Roden may not have gone into making Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story as a Buffalo Bills fan, but by the time the cameras stopped rolling on the Hallmark Channel Countdown to Christmas 2025 movie, she admitted that “they turned this theater kid into a sports person.” I talked to Roden in the press room ahead of the Hallmark Hallstars panel at San Diego Comic-Con and she provided some insight into how special the experience was.

“The Buffalo fandom is just like the Hallmark fandom,” she said. “It was so much fun to have the [Buffalo] background that oozed the Hallmark essence because they were such big Bills fans.”

A Bills Love Story features Roden and Matthew Daddario as two Buffalo Bills fans whose families live next door to each other in the heart of Bills Mafia country. When Roden’s Morgan goes on a holiday mission to solve a decades-long family Christmas mystery, Daddario’s Gabe is eager to help. Suddenly, as they spend more time together these lifelong friends start to see that they share more than just a passion for the Bills.

Production took place in Buffalo, New York, to help capture the spirit of the Buffalo Bills fandom in the community. Roden noted that the Bills Mafia maintains a strong presence just about everywhere you look. “The amount of buses and wraps around the buses, and even the fire engines had Buffalo memorabilia attached to them,” she said. “The city feels like there’s an election going on because that’s how many murals and yard signs that are up year-round in Buffalo.”

Filming in the heart of Buffalo Bills country is something Roden cherishes. “It’s not lost on me that this is a very special experience and the players – I say I’m not a football fan but I’m watching every Buffalo Bills game this season. It’s nuts. They turned this theater kid into a sports person. That’s a hard thing to do.”

Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story premieres Saturday, November 22, at 8pm ET/PT on Hallmark Channel and streams the next day on Hallmark Plus.