Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with When Calls the Heart’s Paul Greene

Paul Greene stars as Dr. Carson Shepherd in Hallmark Channel’s When Calls the Heart. The hit series, now in its sixth season, reminds us of the importance of community and simpler times.

When Paul isn’t on set performing brain surgery, he can be seen working on his upcoming album, Freedom for Your Soul, or his new book, The 52 Ways to be the Dad You Wish You Had, both dedications to his father.

Pop Culturalist had the pleasure of speaking with Paul about the exciting year ahead.

PC: Tell us about When Calls the Heart, your character, and what drew you to this project.
Paul: When Calls the Heart is a period drama. It’s a close relative to Little House on the Prairie. Michael Landon Jr. (Michael Landon’s son [Little House on the Prairie]) created the show with Brian Bird years ago based on the books by Janette Oke and it’s been a huge success. It’s set in 1915 and has a large ensemble, which includes Lori Loughlin, Erin Krakow, Jack Wagner, Martin Cummins from Riverdale, Andrea Brooks from Supergirl, Kavan Smith, Pascale Hutton, and of course, myself. It’s a Hallmark series that became super popular on Netflix and season six is premiering on Sunday!

When Calls the Heart is almost like an unexpected hit. When you watch it, it transports you to another, not just time, but feeling when everyone took care of each other. There’s also a lesson at the end of each episode like Little House on the Prairie. I think the show has become popular because of the divisiveness of our society right now. It’s an escape for people—not just our show, but the whole Hallmark channel.

It’s a show that draws in the family; you can watch it with your grandmother or your kids. It has romance, adventure, and it reminds us of the communities we’ve lost and the tribes where they all took care of each other. It has a nostalgic feeling about how our ancestors used to live. I play Dr. Carson Shepherd, the town doctor. I came in during season four. I have a very mysterious past that everyone’s trying to figure out. While performing my wife’s brain surgery, she ends up dying in my arms. This upcoming season is about healing and resolutions.

I’ve done a bunch of films for the Hallmark Channel with Danika McKellar and Candice Cameron. This role was so compelling. I’m very drawn to medicine, especially natural remedies. Back then, they didn’t have pharmaceuticals, so I was curious to discover how they would heal someone. This takes place before penicillin too. Sometimes a cold would kill someone; it’s a very different time. I wanted to be a part of a conversation that’s also part of the solution.

What else is exciting is that Janette, the author of the books, knew my grandmother. They grew up in the same town and went to the same high school. There’s a lot of synchronicity and a lot that drew me to this role. Plus, my girlfriend and mom were binge-watching it and I was like, “What is this show?” I got sucked in a few times, and before you knew it, I was being offered a role.

PC: You’ve been part of this series since season four. As your character has grown, has there been anything that surprised you about his journey?
Paul: There hasn’t been anything that’s really surprised me. I have been really intrigued exploring the journey of letting go of your past and not letting that affect your performance in the moment or the future. For example, my character has to perform the same surgery on his sister-in-law. How can he overcome his past, while not letting it go? That’s the lesson for Carson. How can he move forward without having his past determine the rest of his life?

PC: You got your start in modeling and transitioned into acting. Was that a challenging pivot?
Paul: It actually started the other way! I was acting in school and church, and I kept having this recurring dream where I was in a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie fighting next to him. They would yell, “cut,” and I would wake up asking myself, “What is going on?” It happened enough that the week I got my driver’s license, I drove up to Edmonton, the nearest town to the farm I grew up on, and I put myself in Darryl Mork’s acting school.

I’ve always known that I wanted to act but growing up in a small town, I couldn’t even envision it. How could I go from a farm community to Hollywood? I can’t even explain it any other way than saying it was destiny. When I was in college, I met a modeling agent named Kelly Streit from Mode Models. At the time, he had just discovered the newest supermodel of the world, Tricia Helfer, who’s actually an actress now. She’s been in Lucifer and Battlestar Galactica and won the supermodel of the world competition in 1992. Kelly discovered me with my shirt off dancing in a nightclub eating an apple. [laughs] I was very health conscious.

He invited me down to meet all his models and Gerard Yunker, this amazing photographer. So, Gerard Yunker took photos of me and then the next week I was off to Toronto. The moment I got there, I booked a national Levi’s commercial and it took off there. I, then, found myself in Europe: I lived in Milan, Paris, London, and Tokyo for a few years. After that, I ended up in Miami and New York. When I got to New York, I made the decision to get back into acting school.

It was in New York that I rediscovered my love for acting, but then 9/11 happened. I watched the towers fall with my own eyes. My son was born a couple of years after that. I kept wanting to go to L.A., but with my modeling career, I was working 270 days a year. I worked with everybody from Armani to Tommy Hilfiger to Dolce Gabbana, J. Crew, L.L. Bean, you name it. My career was very, very busy. But, I decided when my son was six-months-old that it would be a good idea to leave New York and make a break for California. It was a big risk. I left a very stable career to pursue a dream that a little farm kid had.

PC: Were there any doubts when you made that transition? How did you overcome that?
Paul: Of course! I showed up with a really funny attitude in L.A.: I was interviewing agents and I would say, “I’m not sure I want to be with you, but I’m seeing a bunch of agents.” [laughs] I was fortunate enough to have some investments, which gave me a bit of a cushion. My approach was very, very confident. Once I got out here, there were so many commercials that filled the gap for modeling. There were 10:1 commercials here to New York.


So, the transition was actually great. I ended up getting a big break with Tatum O’Neal opposite her in 42 episodes of a series called Wicked Wicked Games. Then, David Kelly saw me on that and brought me onto Wedding Bells and has used me several times. I’ve had a couple people like David Kelly along the way that have been taking care of me and bringing me in for things. I also got to work with Kathy Bates because of David. I did another pilot with him and, of course, Wedding Bells.

A few years ago, my manager said, “You’ve been on 660 auditions here in L.A.,” and I was like, “That’s amazing!” Then I realized I had 630 “no’s” and 30 “yes’s”. I’ve had 30 jobs in my fifteen years of being here. The amazing thing about that is people always ask me about acting. I’m like, “You have to get really good at handling rejection and not taking it personally or making it mean anything about who you are as a person.” It’s like Rocky Balboa. It’s like going out into the rain and saying, ‘Alright, let’s do it.’ I just prepared four hours for this audition. Give me my 30 seconds in front of a camera and I’ll go drive home for another hour. Let’s do that 660 times.”

PC: You’re a man of many talents. You’re an actor, a musician, an author, and a model. Is there one that you naturally gravitate towards?
Paul: Music! I grew up in church, so I was always around music. I was a drummer for church and I’ll never forget the girl who bought me my first guitar. I fell in love with it. I’ve carried my guitar with me for the last 25 years. I never put it down. I’d pick it up and there’s something about the wood vibrating on my ribs that makes me so happy.

I’ve also really grown into my voice in the last ten years. I work pretty hard. I have great vocal teachers and I work on it every day. My happy place is performing for a small group of friends, like a dinner party where everyone has a little wine and great food. I’ll grab my guitar and play five or six songs that really matter to me: some covers and some originals.

Then, the highlight of my music career, and what got me turned on to it, was being invited to play Carnegie Hall. It reignited my spark. I did a film a few years back called Buttons, which had Kate Winslet, Jane Seymour, Angela Lansbury, and Dick Van Dyke. What’s crazy is this movie benefits autism. When they offered me the role, I was like, “Are you kidding?” My agent and I didn’t think it was real.


At the end of the filming, Tim Janis [director], who’s also a composer, told me that he shared my cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. He liked it so much, he asked me to do it at Carnegie Hall with a 200-person choir and 100-part symphony orchestra. Of course, I said yes! That’s when I started retraining my voice and writing my album. It’s almost done.

PC: What can you tease about your upcoming album?
Paul: It’s a tribute to my dad who died of ALS. A portion of the sales will be going to a charity that I raise money for called TDI [Therapy Development Institute]. They’re a small, family-owned-and-operated biotech lab in Cambridge.

I grew up listening to some Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and some old country music. The album has a country-gospel vibe, but it’s also like a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack. It’s a ten-track album and on five of the songs, we have a brilliant pedal steel guitar player. The album is called Freedom for Your Soul and it’s about forgiveness.


There was something in my life that I was dealing with and a very important mentor at the time told me that this “unforgiveness” that I had would come after my very soul. He said, “Let it go. Freedom for your soul.” The narrative of the album is about forgiveness, but it also has a lot of my dad all over it. There’s a cool picture in there from 1977 with my dad, brother, and me. It should be out in March.

PC: You also have a book coming out. Can you tell us about that?
Paul: My dad was such a great father and that’s why I wrote The 52 Ways to be the Dad You Wish You Had. I was lucky to have a great father, but that’s not the case for everyone, so I was inspired to write a book with lessons from my dad and son. It’s a reminder of how to connect with your family, and it’ll be out on Father’s Day.

To keep up with Paul, follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and catch the season six premiere of When Calls the Heart this Sunday on the Hallmark Channel.