Matreya Scarrwener sat down with Fantasy Land News to talk about her role as Rachel Yost in Hope Valley 1874, the Hallmark+ prequel series now airing weekly on Thursdays. Rachel is Lars Yost’s wife, the young mother raising a baby on the frontier and quietly holding her family together while the settlement around them grows into something bigger. Matreya is an award-winning performer with credits spanning ABC, Netflix, CBC, and the big screen, but this conversation had the easy warmth of someone who genuinely loves the project she is part of and cannot wait for the audience to see where it goes.
We spoke with Grayson Gurnsey last week about Lars. You can read that interview at fantasylandnews.com, along with our full Hope Valley 1874 cast interview series with Benjamin Ayres, Brad Abramenko, Chelsea Hobbs, and Jedidiah Goodacre.
Matreya described Rachel in terms of what she represents rather than just what she does, and it was a lovely way to frame it. Rachel is a young mother raising a baby in a tent on the frontier, feeding people, supporting her husband, and reaching out to those around her. Matreya said the two words she kept coming back to were hope and resilience, which happen to be the two biggest themes running through the show itself. Everyone in this territory is tough in some way just to be out here at all, but Rachel’s toughness lives in her warmth and in how consistently she shows up for others, even when her own circumstances are hard. That combination of vulnerability and quiet strength is exactly what the Yost family storyline needs.
Unlike Brad and Chelsea, who went out for drinks specifically to build chemistry before production started, Matreya and Grayson already had a prior connection from years of working in Vancouver’s acting community. Grayson had worked at an audition studio back when in-person auditions were still the norm, and their paths had crossed. When Matreya found out she was cast, she did what she described as classic detective work, messaging male actor friends one by one asking if any of them were her husband. At the costume fitting she got the answer: Grayson Gurnsey. She texted him immediately. They got together, she made him dinner, and the rest took care of itself.
They carpool to set together every single day now, and she talked about those drives with genuine affection. The friendship is real and organic, and you can feel it in how naturally the Yost family dynamic reads on screen. She called herself a big Grayson fan, which is the kind of thing you can only say and mean when you actually like someone.
She Roots for Lars From the Sidelines Too
One small moment from the conversation stuck with Holly long after it was over. Matreya described standing on set watching the monitor during a scene where Lars confides in Hattie about his fears, something he had not yet shared with Rachel herself. She said she was watching from off-camera and found herself wanting to go in and hug him. She was rooting for her own onscreen husband from the sidelines in real time. That kind of investment in a castmate and in the story you are telling together is exactly what makes these performances feel as lived-in as they do.
The Frontier Is Her Natural Habitat
Matreya is no stranger to this kind of production. She has worked in period and frontier settings before, and she was refreshingly honest about why she keeps coming back to the genre: she just loves being outside. She knows the Jamestown location is rainy and cold and physically demanding, and she prefers it anyway to a sound stage. Horses, chickens, trails, streams, sunlight coming through the trees across the rolling hills of Langley, BC. She said it with the enthusiasm of someone who means every word of it. The environment puts you in the story in a way that a controlled interior set simply cannot replicate, and for an actor who works as intuitively as Matreya clearly does, that matters.
Baby Ned: She Feels the Weight of It
The baby the Yosts are raising is a young Ned Yost, the beloved general store owner Hearties have known for years in When Calls the Heart. Rachel is Ned’s mother. That is a lot to carry, and Matreya said she and Grayson both feel it.
She described being on set with the newborn and playing those scenes with a quiet awareness of where this child ends up as a man. It gave every moment with the baby an extra layer of meaning that she clearly found moving rather than pressuring. She talked about it as an honor, and about the bridge the Yosts form between the two shows as something genuinely exciting to be trusted with. She also said something that was unexpectedly charming: even as one of the actors making the show, she finds herself watching the weekly episodes like a fan, wondering what Lars and Rachel are going to do next. That level of investment in a story you are literally inside is a pretty good sign that the story is working.
Matreya Scarrwener was a warm and easy presence in this conversation, the kind of person who makes an eight-minute interview feel unhurried. What came through most clearly was how much she genuinely cares about Rachel and about the Yost family as a unit. The image of her standing off camera wanting to hug Grayson during a scene he was filming without her said more about who she is as a performer than any formal answer could.
Fantasy Land News is fully team Lars and Rachel, and after talking to both Grayson and Matreya, it is easy to understand why that family has already found a place in the Heartie community. They are easy to root for on screen because the people playing them are genuinely rooting for each other off it.
Hope Valley 1874 is streaming now on Hallmark+, with new episodes dropping every Thursday.
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