Skyler Samuels and Billie Lourd haven’t worked together since Scream Queens — but they have each other’s backs when it comes to motherhood.
“Billie definitely gave me some sage advice,” Samuels, 30, exclusively told Us Weekly on Tuesday, August 6, revealing the pair recently reconnected in Canada when she was in town to film Hallmark’s My Dreams of You. “I was very grateful for that.”
Samuels called Lourd, 32, a “seasoned mom” because she has two kids under the age of 4, while she and husband Lucas Till share one baby. “One tiny person [is] chaos. Two? I’m like, seriously, ‘How are you doing this?’” a stunned Samuels said, noting that Lourd had “great” advice as an acting mom since she worked during and after both her pregnancies.
Lourd shares son Kingston, 3, and daughter Jackson, 19 months, with husband Austen Rydell, whom she wed in March 2022. Samuels, meanwhile, announced in April that she quietly welcomed her first baby with Till, 33.
“It was very helpful to see that someone had done this and she’s doing it with two,” Samuels continued. “It was like, ‘OK, Billie can do this with two, I can do this with one. Like it’s gonna be OK.’”
The Hallmark actress confessed that “no one really knows what they’re doing when it comes to parenting anyway,” explaining that “we’re all making this up as we go.”
Lourd, however, has been in Samuels’ shoes so she helped her navigate getting back into acting after giving birth. “It’s a weird job. We get sent on location, we have to go to all these places [and] traveling with a baby is like moving,” Samuels revealed. “You have to bring everything you own. It’s unbelievable. I didn’t know you could check so many pieces of luggage until I traveled with a baby. It was spectacular.”
Luckily, Samuels met up with Lourd earlier this year while on set in Ottawa, Canada, and picked her brain. Samuels was up North to work on Hallmark’s My Dreams of You, which premieres on Saturday, August 10, while Lourd was in town for a separate movie.
Samuels recalled that on one of her first days on location, she noticed Lourd’s picture on the wall of the production office. “I haven’t seen or spoken to Billie in years, and I texted her and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m looking at a picture of you in a business office in Ottawa. Are you here?’” she remembered. “And she’s like, ‘Oh my God, this is so crazy. I’m literally gonna be there in a couple of days.’”
Lourd and Samuels played Chanel #3 and Grace Gardner, respectively, on Scream Queens. The TV series lasted two seasons and ended in 2016. Nearly a decade later, the actresses met up for a “surreal” catch-up in Ottawa.
“She’s there with her two kids and her husband and I’m there with my husband and my baby and she’s like, ‘Dude look at us,’” Samuels told Us, noting that “life comes at you fast.”
At the time, Samuels said she thought it was “so funny” to be back together as such different women. “[I was] like, ‘We’re just like moms now who are, you know, on location and working in Ottawa,’” she explained. “But when we met you know in our early 20s [on] Scream Queens [and there was], like, chaos, [it’s] just so different.”
The women aren’t the only Scream Queens alums who’ve become moms since the show wrapped. Emma Roberts shares son Rhodes, 3, with ex Garrett Hedlund, Keke Palmer shares son Leo, 17 months, with ex Darius Jackson and Lea Michele is pregnant with baby No. 2. She and husband Zandy Reich already share son Ever, 3.
“It really gave us such a laugh, but it was such a nice opportunity to catch up,” Samuels gushed, joking it was “not the city” she thought she’d have a “reunion with anybody in but it was wonderful.” She added, “I actually have My Dreams of You to thank for that because that was really fun to reconnect with Billie.”
Fans can see the movie responsible for the mom meet-up — which does not star Lourd — this weekend on Hallmark Channel. In My Dreams of You, Samuels plays an aspiring writer named Grace who can’t stop dreaming about a man named Michael (Kapil Talwalkar).
She later learns that thanks to a mix-up at Dream Central, Michael is real, but she’s never actually met him. Throughout the film she goes on a quest to locate Michael and see if their love can be more than just in her dreams.
“Watching [Grace] in the movie really make the decision to go for it even though it’s not in her nature — and putting herself out there to try to find her dream guy [is so cool],” Samuels told Us of the movie, teasing that her character lands on an “incredible trip” that includes “getting to fall in love with this person who she thought was maybe not real, who is real.”
She added that taking a risk — as Grace does on more than one occasion in the film — is always “worth it.” Samuels admitted, “It can be scary to take a chance on things, but it does pay off.”
My Dreams of You premieres on Hallmark Channel Saturday, August 10, at 8 p.m. ET.
