Donna Kelce is everyone’s favorite football mom after cheering for sons Jason and Travis Kelce for years in the NFL — but what do her Hallmark costars think of her?
“We love Donna,” Hunter King exclusively told Us Weekly while promoting their Hallmark Channel movie, Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, alongside costar Tyler Hynes.
In the upcoming movie, which airs on Saturday, November 30, Donna, 72, makes a cameo as a restaurant manager at Arrowhead Stadium, where the Kansas City Chiefs play.
While the holiday rom-com is one of Donna’s first movie roles, King, 31, and Hynes, 38, couldn’t tell. “She never seemed nervous. She was just so confident,” King told Us. “It was so casual, and she nailed it. She was just so much fun to have. She’s a breath of fresh air.”
Hynes couldn’t agree more. “It is an incredible thing to see,” he shared. “I think of my mother and her walking in that circumstance and how overwhelming it must be, and she came in and did her thing.”
Hunter also gushed about Donna, adding, “Every moment she’s on screen, we’re all luckier for it. It was unbelievable.”
Even though shooting ended over the summer, Hynes and Hunter have kept in touch with Donna. “We were on a [Hallmark] cruise recently and we all began singing that Garth Brooks song, [‘Friends in Low Places’],” Hynes recalled, noting the actors sang it “in honor of Donna.”
Hynes told Us that he videotaped the sing-along, which included the audience joining in. “[It] was lovely. And I sent that to her the other day,” he said of Donna. “We send her the odd picture [too].”
Donna was thrown into the limelight when her sons, Jason, 37, and Travis, 35, played each other in Super Bowl LVII in February 2023 as part of the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, respectively. The Kelce family continued to grow in fame after Travis began dating Taylor Swift in summer 2023.
When it comes to her Hallmark projects, Donna said she’s honoring both of her kids. In addition to Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, she makes a cameo in Christmas on Call, which premiered on Friday, November 22.
“It just was something that they thought they’d throw in the movie,” Donna told Vulture in September of her “teeny cameos” in the two movies. “So, it’s kind of fun. One of them’s about Philly and the other one’s about the Chiefs. So it kinda made sense.”
Christmas on Call follows doctors in Philadelphia, which is the city where Jason played for 13 seasons before he retired earlier this year. Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, meanwhile, pays homage to the Kansas City team, where Travis plays.
Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story follows Alana (King) and her family, who are diehard Chiefs fans, as they compete to win the “Fan of the Year” award. As the Chiefs director of engagement, Derrick (Hynes), who determines the winner, gets to know Alana, the two spark a romance of epic proportions.
While Hynes and Hunter have been in a lot of Hallmark movies, they both told Us that this holiday film is special. “There’s so many beautiful moments and so many fun moments in this movie. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite,” Hunter told Us, calling the scene where she and Hynes get Arrowhead Stadium to themselves a career high.
Donna Kelce gave a sartorial nod to Taylor Swift while announcing her upcoming Hallmark Christmas movie, Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story. In an Instagram video announcement posted on Sunday, July 14, Donna, 71, wore a gold chain link bracelet bearing the letters “TTPD.” The bracelet, which is available for purchase on Taylor Swift’s official […]
She added, “That one’s definitely up there. It’s just you and I when the big drone shot comes and it’s just us in the stadium and it truly was magical. It was so surreal. We’ll never see anything like that again in our lives. That was wild.”
Hynes remembered that day as “magical,” revealing that getting to work so closely with Kansas City residents as extras and in the crew was the cherry on top.
“I don’t know that I’ll ever experience [anything] quite like that again. And it speaks to the people who are in that city,” he explained. “It seemed like it was the best of America that we got to serve with this.”
Hunter teased, “It felt like a Hallmark movie within a Hallmark movie.”
Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story premieres on Hallmark Channel Saturday, November 30, at 8 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
