Virgin River made its long-awaited return to Netflix in September after more than a year of waiting to see what would happen in the wake of the Season 4 finale's shocking reveal, and the fifth season delivered a huge tragedy for Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) and Jack (Martin Henderson). While the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes meant that nobody from the show could weigh in on the heartbreaking twist earlier in the fall, Breckenridge has now opened up about performing Mel's traumatic experience.
The reveal of Mel's pregnancy came back in the Season 3 finale, and seeing how that story progressed was one of the most highly-anticipated elements of Season 4 for some viewers with Netflix subscriptions. Unfortunately, she suffered a miscarriage halfway through the first portion of Season 5, and Breckenridge shared the emotional toll of performing that development for her character. She told THR:
It was really difficult. It was very draining. You know, if you look back at season one, coming into Virgin River, Mel was very deeply in loss and trauma, and as an actress that was something I was looking forward to getting out of. Because when I do that kind of work, it takes me there personally. So I really wasn’t looking forward to it, to be honest with you, because it takes me through the trauma. I have my own trauma, just as everybody does, and for me, it felt close to home and something that I can relate to as a mother.
As Breckenridge noted, the miscarriage in Season 5 wasn't the first time that she had to portray a deep personal loss as Mel. The show started off with the character struggling to deal with the death of her husband, and her journey over five seasons of forming bonds in Virgin River has been emotional, to say the least. The actress, who is mother of two children herself, continued:
And so I just used my own experience in that area, and I’m not going to lie to you, there was a weekend where I was just a total disaster on the couch after filming all of that. Those episodes were really hard. I was just watching TV all day and I had to call Martin [Henderson], and I was texting with him and he was like, ‘Are you OK?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t think so [crying voice].’ But he was extremely kind and talked me down from my heightened emotional state.
While the storyline wasn't easy on Alexandra Breckenridge, she was able to rely on her Virgin River co-star for some support. The miscarriage happened halfway through the first portion of Season 5, when the happy holiday celebration of Part 2 was still a ways off. She didn't delve into the order of when scenes for Season 5 were filmed, but she did elaborate on her struggles with performing the storyline:
It’s hard. As much as we want to say, 'I can go into this character and come out of it on the other side,' I think you always bring a piece of you in and you take a piece of them away with you, and your body, your cells remember that. And then you do the scene over and over again, and so you’re just basically living trauma just constantly. I remember watching actresses when I was younger play these roles where the entire movie, they’d just be crying. . . . But I felt ultimately that it was such an incredibly important story to tell for women who had infertility and have not been able to conceive themselves, but look forward to having a family just the same.
Even though the miscarriage heaped more tragedy onto Mel, it did tell what Alexandra Breckenridge considers an "incredibly important story," and it doesn't mean that Mel and Jack still can't build a family together. It just may mean that some hopes and dreams will have to be adjusted. On the whole, it was an emotional arc in the fifth season, and the setup for what's next for Mel can be explored, as Virgin River is already set to return for a sixth season.
As for when the sixth season will arrive, only time will tell. For now, you can revisit the first five seasons of Virgin River streaming with a Netflix subscription, or check out one of our picks for shows like Virgin River to watch now. If you're ready to start looking ahead to the new year, be sure to take a look at our 2024 TV schedule.
