AnnaLynne McCord Dishes On Lifetime's Latest Holiday Movie, Dancing Through The Snow - Exclusive Interview

From her early parts in "American Heiress" and "Nip/Tuck," to her starring role in "90210," AnnaLynne McCord has been a regular on our screens for almost two decades. And just in time for the holiday season, McCord is back in Lifetime's "Dancing Through the Snow," starring opposite "Virgin River" actor Colin Lawrence, and which debuts on November 19.

In "Dancing Through the Snow," McCord plays Olivia, a single ballet teacher running a local dance studio. As the festive season approaches, Olivia meets Michael (Lawrence), a hunky firefighter, and quickly realizes that she teaches his daughter, Lily. Needless to say, the course of true love never did run smooth, and both Michael and Olivia find themselves hit with the realities of everyday life. But this wouldn't be a Lifetime movie without at least a little romance, and viewers will not be disappointed, especially thanks to the immense chemistry between McCord and Lawrence.

Nicki Swift caught up with actress and activist AnnaLynne McCord to talk about Lifetime's "Dancing Through the Snow," her "Unzipped" podcast with Shenae Grimes, and all things "90210."

You have such great chemistry with Colin Lawrence in "Dancing Through the Snow." What was it like working with him?

Oh, I absolutely hated him. No, we really do have good chemistry and just from day one, we were just shooting the s*** and bantering. And we really worked in the short period of time that we had, with the limited resources that we were given because of COVID really making things difficult as far as having limited crew and limited accessibility to certain venues and things that we would typically be able to easily have access to. We really just tried to float with the tide and make things work, and we had moments where days got difficult, because everybody has to test and everyone has to do all the different protocols, and it was a very tight schedule.

We just pulled out some Christmas movie magic and made it work. So it was great working with him, but really cool watching him and his dynamic working with his daughter, being both an actor and then dad, and then dad of an actor. He was playing a lot of roles and wearing a lot of hats on that project so it was cool watching him manage that, and his beautiful wife was on set and came to hang out too. So it was really cool. ... It was a family affair.

So many of us know you from "90210." What impact did that show have on your life?

It was the classic coming of age moment, but I had done "Nip/Tuck" just before. So "Nip/Tuck" really put me in a position where I was feeling like I was breaking in and there were more opportunities. And as a result of that, I did have a little bit of the 19-year-old ego. I was like, "I'm working on a critically acclaimed show." I was having a whole meltdown. And I think that after it, when it finished, I had done a couple projects and I was kind of in this space of ... Acting I loved, but everything that came with it was a lot. And I think I was a bit overwhelmed, and also the trailer park in me was like, "I can't deal with these people. I don't fit in. I'm a nonconformist."

So I had a split moment where I thought I was not going to be an actress anymore and I actually talked to other actors and they're like, they all say they go through that moment, but I was like, I'm quitting my career, moving back to New York, I'm going to work at Starbucks and find a new passion. That was around the time that "90210" was being offered to me. And I really, I think I didn't have the gratitude and the appreciation you start to learn when you're a little bit older and experience has taught you a thing or two about life, but I was going through this moment in my life where everybody was telling me that I'd made it and I got my big break and it was the thing, and I just was dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression.

And I talk about a lot of mental health things out in the public because of the fact that things ain't what they always seem like they're cracking up to be, as we say in the south. It ain't all what it's cracked up to be, because we're sold a lie. We're all sold a lie. We drink the Kool-Aid in our little sippy cups when we're babies and we think that if you get there one day all your problems will go away. And what happens is it almost doubles down and you kind of feel like, "Oh, now it's so much worse because I have to now pretend and play into the story that everyone told and be happy and yay." So "90210," there was a duality to it.

I'm incredibly grateful for all that it has provided me in so many different aspects of my life, but it also was highlighting a really dark period in my life where I had to find myself. And I realized that in my nonconformist ways that it was okay to also appear weak, which was the story that I was telling myself. And at that time, especially, I think the story in the world was that to admit to any kind of mental health concern whatsoever would've been a no-no zone. So now I'm grateful that several things in the last decade or so have changed and we are talking more about this with openness. And my biggest thing is I want access for children to not have to do the work I've done. I would love for children to have tools where we don't give them the Kool-Aid in the sippy cup and make them think that they've got to go out there and hustle, hustle, hustle, and then that's going to pay off and they'll be so happy forever, the end. It's like, no. Let's get you happy now. Let's keep your happiness because children actually just find a way to play.

And so "90210" has provided me also this demographic where I get to speak about these important things that are dear to my heart. And it resonates with the next generation, the youth. And I think that out of everything, that's not what I would have foreseen as my 9-year-old self wanting to be an actress in Hollywood, but it has been the most gratifying, I believe.

I came up very early on in the podcast talking about how I'm all against shame culture. I do not support the cancellation of people at the level that we're doing it. And people wrote in, "We don't like that you're talking about cancel culture." And I was like, "Oh cool, then I'm going to talk about it more." But the point being, if you don't feel comfortable having a conversation about something, you aren't solid enough in your stance. And if you can't sit there and sit across from someone and hear them say an opinion that differs from yours, and you be strong enough in yourself to own your conversation, but also be strong enough as a human being to realize that you're not the only person in the world and your opinion isn't the only opinion, then you should go back to the drawing board a little bit and figure out why believe what you believe. Did you read it on a bunch of memes and then you agreed because everybody was saying it?

And because I'm such a nonconformist and so is Shenae, we want to talk about these topics, because if you don't ever look at the other side, you only get on the bandwagon, you only follow the trends. You don't invite in redemption for one, which is what Shenae and I had. If we had bandwagoned it and canceled each other, we would never be friends after ["90210"]. We would never have figured out that we actually were being lied about by certain people to each other and didn't know that this was happening. And we certainly wouldn't be doing a podcast together. So I think that there's a lot of room for gray area where our world has become incredibly black and white and cut and dry.

And so it's nice to go "Unzipped" and talk about things that we get s*** for later and be like, "Thank you. You're voicing an opinion. Do you understand how that makes the world diverse and beautiful?" You might be trolling us and saying it in a way that could be done better, but we are still going to welcome that negativity even for the simple fact that someone is offering an opinion. It's very hard to offend me. I would like people to try. Go ahead. Let me see, because I am solid and strong in who I am and I spent a lot of time building, taking off the layers of what was put on to me, and unbecoming so that I could return to who I am. And you cannot change my mind on s***. You better have a solid argument if you want to change my mind on something because I know why I feel the way I do.

I've lived it. I've experienced it. I've gone through the pain of it. I have seen all the sides of it. And if someone comes in and has that much strength in their opinion and they show their very well thought out argument, I'm all ears and I'm ready to change my mind, but you better be on your toes because I'm going to poke holes in your theory so hard. So "Unzipped" gives us that platform to be able to kind of dive a little bit deeper than short form, and that's what's really fun about it.

People on the internet especially can be so closed off. So I think it's refreshing you're having those conversations.

It's nice. It allows for whoever is able to pop in and listen in. And hopefully at the very least, they give themselves the room to have a different opinion from someone else because sometimes it's us. You don't want to be trolled. It's not fun, but at the same time if you aren't giving yourself that exposure therapy and putting yourself out there, we're just all going to have a singular note world and that's really boring and we've done that. We're over that. We want diversity and inclusion now.

One of them was very powerful. It's called the meta meditation. It's a compassionate meditation and it's loving kindness to yourself, which is really hard surprisingly. It's the hardest thing. It's like, "Oh, I've got to love myself? No, no, no. I didn't sign up for that s***. Okay, I can love every child in the world. I could send love to my trolls. I could send love to every ... No, no, I can't love myself. What are you talking about?" So that was the first step, learning that self-compassion, and then extending it to the people you care about, you just feel so good. It's all this energy in your body while you're doing meditation, you just want to hug and squish your people. And it feels so yummy. 

And then it's like, now take all of that energy and send it to someone that you hate or send someone that you're estranged from or someone who's hurt you really badly. And then you're all back to like, "Nah, I didn't sign up for this" again. But gradually I got to a point as I practiced and practiced this, and I started sending that compassion to the person who perpetrated those sexual abuses onto me as a child for years and years and years. And the only way to describe it is alchemy because some kind of crazy explosion happened in my body of emotion and energy and it was anger. And I was like, "I hate this person, blah." And then it was like, "Wait, I feel so much love. What's happening?" And my doctor explained it like this. She said, "You were building on four walls and a cracked foundation with no scaffolding, no support beams, nothing to hold up, and you just kept putting layers of rooms on top of rooms and it was going to cave. It was going to collapse doing this work, put up those pillars, that reinforcement. It refilled the concrete foundation."

And I had a solid foundation and I started to be able to actually build a quality of life where I feel now, every day I wake up with gratitude and I feel grateful to be alive. And I didn't want to be on the earth for a very long time. So in that process, The Love Storm was born because it was this storm inside of me that I was able to turn into love. And that's what my girls who are survivors of human trafficking that I work with had taught me, was we forgive the pimp, we forgive the trafficker. I'm like, "No, I'm from America. We blow them up. We go kill them. We get big guns and we go shoot them." And they're like, "No, sister, we don't kill them. We forgive them." And I'm like, I could not get into that. That was a really hard one for me until it happened to me.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

So it is a love storm. It is storming the planet with love. And I didn't want it to be something that was silly. I'll hug a tree any day of the week, but I'm not a tree hugger. I will punch you in the face with my love. It is intense. It's fierce and ferocious so it's a storm. And we're going to come to England. We're going to come to Australia, Johannesburg, South Africa. We have a lot of cities around the world to visit. And like I said, as soon as everything is really up and going, we'll probably hit our U.S. cities first just because travel is a little bit easier domestically right now, but that's the plan.

And hopefully it will continue to expand as we build out the network of these organizations around the world, and that also allows people to have a place where, if this has been an issue that really is on their heart, you can click and like, "Okay, in my city, where can I help? Or in this country, I'm going here. Is there something I can do to support an organization in this country that I'm visiting?" We really want you to feel like you're not constrained to any one organization. Obviously, I'm biased, but if your heart is somewhere local or something different, you should be able to have access to that as well. So that's the point of The Love Storm in a very long drawn out tangent.

That's amazing. I love that you took something so personal to you and threw that into this big organization, because that's not easy. You did that hard work for yourself and now you're helping others.

It's honestly how I can say thank you because my girls really ... I can't imagine remembering the things that I remembered that happened to me, and not know that they were there. Ten days after my memories returned, I got on a one-way flight to Cambodia and I was there with 78 girls who have similar stories to mine. Eleven of which had my exact same story, and I was able to just be one of the girls and be in that healing peer-to-peer energy where you don't feel shame and you don't feel yucky and gross and all those icky things that your mind tells you. I just got to be loved, and it's my forever, the rest of my life, it'll be a love storm thank you note to my girls.