Why Kevin McGarry & Erin Krakow Pushed for a Bold WCTH Script Change

When a key musical moment in “When Calls the Heart” didn’t feel quite right, Kevin McGarry and Erin Krakow took matters into their own hands. In a recent interview with The Edify Show, McGarry revealed that the song originally chosen for Nathan and Elizabeth’s duet in season 12 episode 7 wasn’t the perfect fit. Wanting something slower and more meaningful to their characters’ journey, the two stars collaborated to make a pivotal change—one that added deeper emotional resonance to the scene.

The Original Duet Song Was ‘For Me & My Gal’

McGarry talked at length with The Edify Show about why he and Krakow decided they needed to change the song for their characters’ duet.

Originally, the script for season 12 episode 7 had Nathan and Elizabeth singing “For Me and My Gal.” But Krakow and McGarry thought the scene called for a very different type of song.

“‘For Me and My Gal’ was the original one,” McGarry said. “And then Erin and I kind of talked. It was too fast. We wanted one that was a bit slower. And we wanted one that was more to Nathan and Elizabeth’s story. So we switched to ‘You Made Me Love You.’ Which is just more like, ‘and I didn’t want to do it,’ but you know. So this kind of idea that they … fought this for a long time … and then it was just, it was already in the stars. We thought that was a more appropriate song. We said, ‘Hey we’re going to sing this one instead.’ And they let us!”

Here’s what “For Me and My Gal” might have been like:

McGarry added that he and Krakow had a lot of fun filming those scenes and finally bring a true sense of the 20s to “When Calls the Heart.”

“(It’s) this song and dance moment in the middle of the show…” he said. “It’s so much fun to shoot because we’ve never done it before. It was a lot of fun… We’ve been talking about the 20s for so long and it’s kind of tough to bring it to a small frontier town. So for us to be able to kind of go off and create this kind of new world…”

The Beautiful Union City Set Had to Be Torn Down the Very Next Day

McGarry also told the Edify Show that he loved the movie theater set they used in the episode.

“Production built this amazing set for this city…” he said. “It’s this movie theater with all these blinking lights. We’ve got actual real posters from the 1920s… They’re leaving this big theater in this big city and there’s a bunch of cars driving around and we’ve got a hundred new background we’ve never seen before in fancy tuxedos and stuff…”

He said the set design was done so well, it was impossible for viewers to realize they were on the same set used for Hope Valley.

Production designer Sarah Mabbely told The Edify Show that it took three weeks to create the sets for the Union City movie theater scenes and the party. She said the movie theater was created from the yellow building on the Hope Valley set that is right across from the judge’s building. They refaced the building, added massive marquee lights, and new paint and signs. They also had to repaint and change some of the surrounding buildings too so it would look like Union City and not Hope Valley.

“We had to take it down the next day,” Mabbley added. The very next day, they had to go back to filming in Hope Valley.