Ashley Williams: 'Barcelona' heroines 'see themselves in each other'

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Ali Sweeney (L) and Ashley Williams star in "To Barcelona, With Love," premiering Saturday. Photo courtesy of Hallmark
NEW YORK, June 7 (UPI) -- Sister Swap alum Ashley Williams and Hannah Swensen actress Alison Sweeney say they wanted to star in To Barcelona, With Love, and its sequel, To Barcelona, Forever, because the TV movies are about two very different women who find they bring out the best in each other.
"Throughout the journey, they also change in different ways and then start to see themselves in each other, which is a really cool thing about our story I really love," Williams told UPI in a Zoom interview Thursday.
Premiering on Hallmark Saturday, With Love brings American author Anna (Williams) to Barcelona, the only place in the world where her novel is being celebrated.
Once there, she quickly learns that the book -- which she wrote having never visited Spain in real life -- is so popular because U.S. ex-pat and aspiring writer Erica (Sweeney) has beautifully translated it from English to Spanish and added her own thoughtful observations about the country and its people.
Erica has a lot to share with Anna, but will that include the secret rewriting of her book?
Watch #ToBarcelonaWithLove Saturday at 8/7c and stream the next day on @HallmarkPlus. @Ali_Sweeney #AshleyWilliams #PassportToLove pic.twitter.com/bl5FxOAROI— Hallmark Channel (@hallmarkchannel) June 6, 2025
"I love that Erica is a little more buttoned-up and organized," Sweeney said.
"She's a little more embracing of this whole European lifestyle, but, also, really afraid to be who she is," she added.
"She just kind of has settled for being the friend and translating other people's work and, then, through this series of events, she ends up kind of really needing to push herself and admit how she really feels."
Her new friendship with Anna is integral to catapulting Erica out of a comfortable rut.
"Anna is living out loud," Sweeney said. "She's just bright and big and has a big personality and is fun and a daredevil. She's a risk-taker and Erica is terrified of taking a risk. ... I think that's a really fun thing they learn about each other."
Unaware that Erica is secretly in love with him, Nico (Alejandro Tous), an adorable book-store owner is bewitched by what he thinks is Anna's beautiful writing and enlists Erica's help to court her.
Anna is charmed by Nico, too, and also depends on Erica to feed her all the right things to say to him in the tradition of the 19th-century, love-triangle drama, Cyrano de Bergerac, and its 1987 film adaptation, Roxanne, starring Steve Martin, Daryl Hannh and Rick Rossovich.
"I was so in love with the idea of getting to kind of borrow the Cyrano idea and play it with Ashley and do the comedy of it," Sweeney said.
"I can't tell you how thrilled I am with how it turned out. It makes me laugh every time," she added. "It was such a fun thing to twist it around the two women who are doing the Cyrano thing and then getting to play that kind of physical comedy actually was a dream come true."
In addition to being hilarious, these scenes also show Erica and Anna supporting each other, Williams said.
"It's: 'Hey, I have confession. I'm in over my head. You're the answer. Can you help me?'" she said.
"Erica puts Anna's needs ahead of her own. Erica is deeply in love with this person [Nico], but her fear about coming to terms with that and her loyalty to this fellow female in need [influence her actions]," Williams said. "That is so flawed and so beautiful and something that I relate to as a person who just loves the women in my life more than anything."
Williams said the spark for the movie came from an experience she had feeling like a failure about her own writing endeavors, while she was browsing the stacks of best-sellers at an airport newsstand.
"I thought, 'Well, i'm such a bad writer that the only way that I would ever have a hit book is if I wrote a book and somebody who's actually a good writer translated it in another language and that became a good book,'" she recalled. "And I was like, 'What a complicated idea, but, also, a good idea for a movie."
Williams pitched the concept to screenwriter Julie Sherman Wolfe.
"She said, 'Well, we would need another Hallmark actress that spoke a different language,' and, right then, Ali Sweeney -- who I loved and had been friends with for years and always wanted to work with -- was walking by, and I said, 'Ali, do you speak a different language?' And she said, 'Spanish,' and I turned to Julie and I said, 'So, it's in Barcelona.'"
The sequel, To Barcelona, Forever, picks up five months after the events of the first film and is set to air on Hallmark June 14.
Ron Oliver directed both movies.
Williams and Sweeney also have a podcast in which they discuss their adventures in Spain.