With the eighth episode ofThe Way HomeSeason 3, “Smoke on the Water,” arriving today, we’re in the clear to share our full on-set interview with Alice herself, pastCollider Ladies NightguestSadie Laflamme-Snow! Back in November of 2024, I was invited to visit the set of the show. Given the fact that I hadn’t seen any episodes at the time, the interviews demanded I play detective and Laflamme-Snow was an especially adept clue-giver. In fact, she was so skilled at teasing Alice’s Season 3 arc that much of the conversation could speak to the character’s current headspace, and where she might be heading in these final few episodes.
At this point in the show, Alice is splitting her time between the present day and 1974, spending her time there with her grandfather, Colton (Jordan Doww), and teen Evelyn Goodwin (Devin Cecchetto). In the present, the Landry family is going through it in a multitude of ways. Not only does Jacob’s (Spencer MacPherson) return, and recent departure, change everything for Kat (Chyler Leigh) and Del (Andie MacDowell), but Del learning about time travel also completely turns her relationship with Alice on its head. Not to mention, this is Alice’s third season time traveling. At this point, she’s learned quite a bit and that experience heavily impacts how she uses the pond.
Check out what Laflamme-Snow had to say about all of that and more while filming the third season. And stay tuned, we’ll have loads of spoiler-heavyThe Way HomeSeason 3 content coming your way through the finale.
Alice Has a Very Different Approach to Time Travel in Season 3
“Alice has a new kind of confidence in both her life as a regular teenager and also as a time traveler.”
What’s something about your approach to the work that has stayed consistent from season to season to season? But then can you also isolate something about Season 3 that demanded you do something different?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: Something that’s stayed consistent is keeping, at the center of my imaginative work as an actor, family and my relationships to family as a big theme. I find all the emotions and all the relationships I have to the scenes become super obvious when I keep that as the heart of why things matter, even if it’s boy problems or whatever, reallyremembering the fondness I have for the version of us that we were in ‘99 and remembering the fondness I have for those scenes with Teen Kat from the first season, it gives me a huge well to work from, even as we move further and further away from those original scenes. I think it keeps it consistent, and it also brings me to emotional places right away because I’m so attached to what we’ve established already.
And something new this season is Alice has a new kind of confidence, in both her life as a regular teenager and also as a time traveler. This isn’t her first rodeo, and she knows that now, and I think it’s cool to see how she understands her place in her new environments as a time traveler. She knows she can get herself out of situations.Things are not happeningtoher as much as when she sees something happening, she’s like, “Okay, I know what to do.”It’s really cool.
“The More Answers You Get, You’re Left With Even More Questions”: Chyler Leigh Teases ‘The Way Home’ Season 3’s Twists and Turns
During an exclusive set visit, Leigh told Collider’s Perri Nemiroff all about some of Kat’s biggest Season 3 challenges.
Going back to the first half of your answer. Is there any particular scene from Season 1 or 2 that you find yourself carrying with you the most?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: The first scene that Alice comes through the gate and meets Colton for the first time, and just seeing the house again.I think I didn’t really understand at the time, because I was also super green, that a lot of it is through Alice’s point of view, but when we shot that scene, it became super clear to me what that meant. I think I’ve said this before, but I also don’t know my paternal grandfather — he passed away before I was born — and so that just feels really like a core memory about this show that just reminds me, if I could go back and have that moment again as Alice or as myself, it just really grounded me in what the show is about.
Reframing How Alice Views Jacob in ‘The Way Home’ Season 3
“We have such a weird relationship.”
I’m obsessed with this ensemble and I think everyone is exceptional, but it’s also so cool how every single step of the way, people can grow and evolve. Can you tease a point in the season when you saw a costar do something that, even after two seasons, made you stop and go, ‘My god, I knew you were good, but I never realized you’d be able to take it tothatlevel?’
LAFLAMME-SNOW: In Season 2 I didn’t really get to have any scenes with adult Jacob. I was just really excited to meet and work with Spencer [MacPherson] because I’d seen him and seen his connection with Chyler as siblings in the past season, and so it’s been really exciting to work out that relationship.We have such a weird relationship, our characters, because it’s like he was a child when I knew him, and I was an adult, and he’s my uncle, and he lives in my house, and I’m like, “I don’t know you!” To watch him become a multi-dimensional adult person as a character has been really cool because he’s a child, kind of a symbolic Jacob that we’ve been looking for for so long. So, that’s been really exciting.
I love to see Andie and our relationship, grandmother/granddaughter, kind of mature. I thinkthe more that Alice and Del become a unit, the more they can be real with each other, and that’s not always real in a way that’s comfortable. We had some scenes where we could really get into it, and it’s such an honor to do that with her, to push myself and to be pushed by her, so that’s been really cool.
“I Wanted To Cling to the Idea That She Thought It Was a Bad Idea”: Andie MacDowell on How Del Feels About THAT ‘The Way Home’ Game Changer
MacDowell’s Del just had her world rocked in the biggest possible right at the top of Season 3.
Digging into the 70s of it all now, what is the biggest difference for you as an actor doing the 70s material versus the 90s material?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: I think the ‘90s has this very wholesome, family sort of nostalgia to it, and the ‘70s has a very — there’s something kind of romantic, sort of a falling-in-love vibe to it. There is romantic love, of course, but sort of a free-spirited romance to it that’s really cool, and a little bit more grown-up for Alice because she’s meeting these characters not at 15, but sort of the end of their high school journey, so life is kind of happening to them in a way that it’s a bit different than when we meet Teen Kat. She’s really like, “At home with Mom and Dad and my little brother.” It’s just such a different phase of life. That freedom is really like,all the kids are kind of on the loose, and they’re dreaming big, and it’s really cool. The first day we shot in the ‘70s, Grant was so excited. He’s like, “I love it here!” He could not stop talking about how much he loved it, which was really fun.
I don’t know if you’re able to speak to this, but because you just brought Grant up, what is the visual style of the 70s compared to the 90s and present day?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: The ‘90s was super handheld. It kind of felt almost like a person was filming it, which I think was cool. It was very natural. And the ‘70s seems kind of smooth, kind of glide-y. It keeps that romantic feeling. It passes off between characters. Everything kind of flows into each other. There’s a lot of music in the ‘70s, as well, so even if there isn’t music playing while we’re doing the scene, a lot of the scenes are in a context where there would be music playing, so we feel that in the way that the scenes are blocked.
Does that encourage Alice to tap into her own music more than she has in past seasons?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: Well, she starts the season feeling really practical about things and not really interested in music, but we know that her relationship to Colton has a lot to do with music, so there’s a sort of ‘70s musical piece that might have to rub off on her at some point.
She’s a high school senior now, right?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: Yes.
Is she thinking about the future, like college and what’s going to happen next?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: Yeah, that’s a huge theme for her this season, and I think it’s hard for everybody. I think it’s hard for Kat, it’s hard for Del, it’s hard for Alice because they’re finally really feeling like a family, especially with them being reunited with Jacob. Alice thinking about things beyond Port Haven or beyond the immediate family is kind of hard for everyone. I think Kat has trouble with her growing up a little bit, but at the same time, she’s a good mom. She knows that she has to let her kid be her own person. But it’s not an easy thing, and I think we meet Alice at a really practical place at the start of the season where she’s finally like, “Okay, Jacob’s home. I’m gonna focus on my own life. I can’t do all this time travel drama. I just want to be a teenager.” And so it’s always an interesting place to start the season because there’s a lot of places to go.
What is her top priority at the beginning of the season? Is it her relationship or something else?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: Something else.
My mind is running wild with all the possibilities!
Going back to the 70s briefly, you were telling me that she’s become a more experienced and confident time traveler. What is the biggest difference between how she goes about solving whatever mystery she needs to in the 70s versus how she tackled that in the 90s?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: I thinkin the ‘90s she still believed that she could change things, and now she knows that she has a place in what happens, but it’s not something that will change where she’s at in the present. Well, it will change where she’s at in the present, but she can’t go back and, like, stop the car accident. She can’t go back and stop Jacob from going missing. She knows that she has a place in what happens, so it does give her a different purpose. I think she thought her purpose at the beginning was, “I can change things. I can warn people,” and now she’ll find herself in a situation going, “What am I even here for?” And then, all of a sudden, it’ll come to her, “I’m here because I need to be here for this person, or I need to get this person away from someone else. I need to offer comfort to someone,” or whatever it is I think she finds a new sort of confidence doing, whereas before I think she thought, “This is my opportunity to make something different,” but we realize that that’s not really possible.
Alice’s Love Life Is a Whirlwind in Season 3
“She’s suffering the consequences of feeling like she knows her future.”
I have to jump to relationships now because I think the scene we’re watching later focuses on that big time. Can you tell me a little bit about Max? How do they meet, and what does she see in him that attracts her to him?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: Well, the thing is, Alice is not really interested in Max at all when she meets him. If anything, she hates him.There’s sort of an enemies-to-something[laughs] that she goes through with this season.Things are actually going really well with Noah in most of the season, and you realize that she’s really ready to have something real that’s not what she had with Nick, that she always had to run away from because, at the end of the day, she couldn’t stay there. She didn’t want to break his heart, and she didn’t want to break her own heart. It was so hard. Actually, things are going super well with Noah, but she is so convinced she’s going to end up with a Goodwin that when Max comes in, things go crazy.
Can you tell me the reason she’s so convinced?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: Based on some time-travel knowledge, she’sconvincedthat she will end up with a Goodwin — not happy but convinced. And when a Goodwin guy around her age shows up in town, she’s like, “This is it,” but he sucks, so she’s mad.
With the scene I’m going to see later, is that connection almost out of obligation because she’s destined to wind up that way anyway?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: She definitely feels like she can relate to Elliot in that she told him everything about his future kind of by accident, but because she needed his help.She’s suffering the consequences of feeling like she knows her future, so it’s really painful for her because she’s like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I did this to people. I can’t believe this is happening to me.” There’s definitely a sense of obligation and a sense of, “Well, this is where it’s headed.” But as things always go onThe Way Home, expect the unexpected.
Putting pieces together, does that mean time travel into the future is possible?
LAFLAMME-SNOW: As far as I know, there’s no one time traveling to the future.
The Way Home
Three generations of strong and independent women living together in the small farm town of Port Haven embark on an enlightening journey none of them could have imagined as they learn how to find their way back to each other.
