Lori Loughlin’s New Show ‘On Call’ Is a Complete Departure From ‘When Calls the Heart’
Lori Loughlin has traded prairie dresses for a cop’s uniform. The Full House alum is back on TV in one of her first major roles since the 2018 college admissions scandal derailed her career.
Loughlin’s involvement in the scam – which involved parents’ paying money to ensure their children would be admitted to elite colleges and universities – led to her being abruptly fired from her role on Hallmark Channel’s frontier drama When Calls the Heart. She eventually served two months in prison for fraud. Since then, Loughlin has been relatively under-the-radar, taking on just a handful of TV roles, including a brief stint on Blue Bloods and several TV movies for Great American Family. But she’s poised to make a splash with a recurring role in Prime Video’s gritty new cop drama On Call.
Lori Loughlin plays a no-nonsense cop in ‘On Call’
On Call is Law & Order and Chicago Fire producer Dick Wolf’s first foray into streaming. The intense, 30-minute drama follows veteran cop Traci Harmon (Troian Bellisario) and her rookie trainee Alex Diaz (Brandon Larracuente) as they patrol the streets of Long Beach, Calif. Loughlin plays Lieutenant Bishop, Harmon and Diaz’s no-nonsense, F-bomb dropping superior officer.
The role is a major departure for Loughlin, who cut her teeth on the 1980s soap The Edge of Night and became a TV icon due to her turn as Aunt Becky in Full House. Later, she played the sweet-tempered mayor of Hope Valley in the gentle drama When Calls the Heart and portrayed an antique dealer with a knack for solving murders in Hallmark’s cozy crime series Garage Sale Mysteries. Her On Call character is tougher and rougher around the edges. Bishop doesn’t hesitate to call out her officers when she’s not happy with their work.
The ‘When Calls the Heart’ alum ‘shocked’ herself with ‘On Call’ performance
Viewers who hit play on On Call when it debuts on Jan. 9 might find themselves doing a double-take when Bishop first pops up on screen, and not just because of her simple hairstyle and makeup-free look. The character is intense and hard-charging. Even Loughlin was surprised when she saw her performance.
“I think I shocked myself,” Loughlin admitted in a recent interview with the AP. “When Eriq showed me the first episode, he screened a rough cut for me, and when I came on the screen it took me a moment [to realize] ‘Oh, that’s me.’ So I do think it’s very different from anything I’ve played. And I do think it will be surprising to people.”
“People weren’t expecting this side of Lori,” her co-star Eriq LaSalle said. (LaSalle is also one of On Call’s executive producers and directed several episodes.) “But she has it. She has that talent … she got it and she devoured this character.”
All eight episodes of On Call premiere Thursday, Jan. 9 on Prime Video.
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