PRACTICALLY PERFECT
Few celebrities manage to balance real-life and spotlight perfectionism the way Nikki DeLoach does. The Hallmark star has made a major impact on the rom-com world since her first made-for-TV movie with the network in 2015. Yet this Southern girl is decidedly much more than just a pretty face.
Growing up in Georgia, Nikki credits her opportunity and inspiration primarily to one person: “A lot of it had to do with my grandmother … she loved the movies, I mean loved the movies … and I stayed with my grandmother a lot. I was with her probably at minimum three nights a week if not more. We would always go to the movie rental store … and we would rent (especially if I stayed with her all weekend) five different movies—as many as they’d let us rent.” They’d watch movies at night and eat popcorn together, Nikki recalls fondly.
Needless to say, she was hooked from girlhood. “My parents will tell you that at three years old I pointed to the TV and said, ‘I want to do that!’ … There’s never been a time in my life where I’ve never not known that becoming a storyteller was the thing that I wanted to do as far as my job.”
At seven, Nikki really started to pursue professional work in the form of commercials and kids print work. And her grandmother went with her for all of it, even moving with Nikki to Orlando when she landed her first big break on The Mickey Mouse Club in the 1990s (cast alongside Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Keri Russell, and Ryan Gosling) when she was 12. “When the show was over, she moved with me to Los Angeles for work afterwards.”
A slew of acting jobs followed, notably a starring role (opposite Mark Wahlberg and Bill Paxton) in the feature film Traveller. She was part of the main cast in the TV series Misery Loves Company, and played Anthony LaPaglia’s daughter in the television movie Never Give Up: The Jimmy V Story.
But in 1997, Nikki decided to take a break from acting, shifting focus to the world of pop music. Signing with RCA and BMG Records, she became a member of the girl group Innosense. When the group disbanded six years later, Nikki reentered Hollywood with sustained success.
She has guest starred on some of TV’s biggest hit shows, including NCIS, Criminal Minds, CSI, CSI: NY, Cold Case, Mad Men, and Without a Trace, to name a few, and was a series regular on the popular show North Shore. Nikki’s films include Love & Other Drugs, Flying Lessons (opposite Maggie Grace and Hal Holbrook), and the French comedy Hollywoo.
And then came Awkward, a #1 scripted and critically acclaimed series from MTV, in 2011. For five years, Nikki portrayed Lacey Hamilton (one of television’s “hottest moms”) on the show. Awkward won a People’s Choice Award for “Favorite Cable TV Comedy” and was nominated for “Favorite Dramedy” while on the air. It was while still on Awkward that Nikki got her first Hallmark movie role, which actually premiered on Christmas Eve.
“I was home in Georgia over the holidays, and we had a Christmas Eve service, and the pastor was like, ‘We gotta get everybody through and get you guys home because Nikki DeLoach is gonna be on Hallmark tonight!’ You’re talking about a church that has 1,500 to 2,000 people,” Nikki reminiscences of the Christmas Land debut. “The whole church went home and everyone watched my movie … I’ve just never had that type of a reaction from my hometown. Granted, they weren’t really the demo for Awkward,” she says with a laugh.
“There was an energy, a really connective tissue that existed and I felt it when they would talk to me about the movie,” she realized. This experience and feedback deeply resonated within her. Nikki had always wanted to do a Hallmark Christmas movie—watching them, with a bottle of wine while wrapping presents and decorating, has been a secret guilty pleasure of hers for years.
The transition from TV series work to television movies answered multiple desires and needs in one stroke for Nikki. She and husband Ryan Goodell have two children: Hudson, who just started kindergarten, and Bennett, whose birth and risky open-heart surgery was featured in a People magazine exclusive in 2017.
Given the nature of her family’s personal needs at the time, Nikki’s schedule wasn’t exactly flexible. “It was actually perfect timing in my life for Hallmark to come in and be like, ‘We want to do more with you!’” Shorter shooting schedules allowed her to work and be a mother simultaneously, and she could take the kids with her if need be. “It just actually was the perfect working situation for me for the last couple of years in my life”
Plus, “I love working in the genre of romantic comedies … I want to make someone laugh and I also want to make them cry. I want to make them feel everything.” Hallmark viewers will also recognize Nikki from her starring roles in the network’s original movies, including The Perfect Catch, Christmas Land, A Dream of Christmas, Truly, Madly, Sweetly, and Love Takes Flight, all of which premiered as a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation.
Nikki’s experience and perfectionist tendencies shined when she developed, executive produced, and starred in Reunited at Christmas, which premiered on the network last November. “I loved it—I thrived!” Having worked in film and television in all genres and in so many performing capacities, “if you take everything, all the information, all the knowledge that I have and I bring to the table, it really honestly is the perfect amount of experience that lends itself to being a producer.”
“I love working in the genre of romantic comedies … I want to make someone laugh and I also want to make them cry. I want to make them feel everything.”
Storytelling is a central theme in Nikki’s life. Referencing how she was raised, Nikki reached a point in her twenties where she was determined to be simply herself. “Growing up in the South, this was a hard thing for me because while I had this beautiful, idyllic childhood, there was also this expectation of perfection that I got from my family … I was told everyday, ‘This is who you are.’” Of course nothing ill was intended by this, as Nikki clarifies, speaking to the way she, her mother, and her grandmother were all raised. Nevertheless, “I went from a family that expected that of me to an industry that expected that of me. I never in my life had this chance to kinda be like, ‘Who am I? Like really and truly, Who am I outside of this industry? Who am I as a person outside of my family?’”
“Jen [Dede] kinda walked into my life at that point in time where I was like, ‘I want to wake up and I want to be the most authentic version of myself. And I don’t care if it’s messy and I don’t care if it’s ugly. And I don’t care if my messiness makes people uncomfortable.’ This is important. This is important to living a good life.” From this revelation, Nikki and Jen co-founded What We Are—what started as a hobby blog has now turned into a platform and a movement for women about women.
A spokesperson for the Alzheimer’s Association (in honor of her father, who is living with a rare form of dementia called Pick’s disease), Nikki also passionately supports Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), which provided life-saving care for her son, Bennett—in fact, Nikki and her family now “adopt a family” at CHLA each Christmas, which helps support the most vulnerable and financially challenged patients and their families.
We’ve seen Nikki’s characters in several TV Christmases now, but what does Christmas actually look like in the DeLoach-Goodell household? “It really and truly looks very similar to a Hallmark movie!” To start, the family picks out a real tree at the lot. “I actually am a fan of having really personalized ornaments on your tree.” She has collected ornaments from all her travels, and puts up those from her kids and her own childhood, too. Matching pajamas on Christmas Eve and morning are a must. Nikki even commits to wearing an ugly sweater almost every day in December! But spending Christmas Eve with extended family in Georgia is her favorite part of the holiday.
Nikki can next be seen in Hallmark’s upcoming Christmas movie Two Turtle Doves, opposite Michael Rady. The movie premieres on November 1st on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Though Nikki would love to eventually work her way into the director’s chair, starring in this latest Christmas movie was a nice break in the action. “It was actually kind of a pleasure just to be responsible for my lines and show up on set,” and working with a team that she has nothing but praise for made the experience even more pleasurable—they did “the job that I would have done had I produced it.”
“Sometimes you don’t produce and you watch. You should always be watching, you should always be observing, because we are never not learning,” says Nikki, and one can’t help but agree. “It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done something. If you are in a place where you’re like, ‘I have nothing left to learn,’ then you should probably quit and go do something else.”
No matter where one is in life or how perfect something may seem, it’s difficult to argue with that ideal—it is in the pursuit of perfection that perfectly imperfect is conceived. Nikki DeLoach is the essence of just that.
Managing Editor Lauren Barisic
Photographer Inda Reid, Images by Inda @imagesbyinda
Hair Kyle Hennessy @kylehennessyhair
Makeup Ashley Beverly Cordova @ashleybeverly
