Hallmark’s Costa Rican Wedding Stars Joke About Their ‘Trauma Bond’

Hallmarks A Costa Rican wedding sounds glamorous, but shooting in the jungle was wild, full of bugs and sometimes muddy for stars Rhiannon fish And Christopher Russell.

“Chris and I hit it off so well right away,” Fish, 33, shared exclusively We weekly while promoting her new rom-com. “We joked that maybe part of it was a trauma bond.”

The actress explained that the film from Costa Rica showed the beauty of the country, as well as some of the more treacherous parts of the jungle. “A lot of it was stressful, high-stakes situations that we found ourselves in,” Fish said. “But we formed this very close friendship very, very quickly. And I think that also translated very well into the characters and their relationship.

A Costa Rican wedding follows clumsy bridesmaid Emily (Fish) as she ventures into the jungle with best man Ryan (Russell), who happens to be her nemesis, to find the bride’s lost wedding rings. The couple must locate the items in the wild while keeping their mission a secret from the bride and groom.

During their journey, the duo encounters many wild animals, including monkeys, alligators and a tarantula that lands on Emily. “I was so scared,” Fish said Us of the spider scene. “It was honestly the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

The actress joked that working with the creature helped her become more humane about “ethically removing spiders from my house,” and even getting a “spider vacuum” to handle them more safely. “Now I suck them in and set them free because nothing will ever be as bad as that tarantula on my body,” Fish revealed.

As far as Fish knows, none of the animals in the film are trained. “It was scary, but… you just have to trust that you are in safe hands and that they will never put you in a dangerous situation,” she recalled. “They were all real and they were all scary.”

Russell, 41, was equally nervous about coming face to face with the animals on set, tellingly Us that alligator fans see in the film is one that “just lives in that river.” He recalled that the reptile was “very close,” but not close enough to worry about its safety.

Elsewhere in the film, the characters encounter a snake, which was again real and terrifying. “They brought in a theoretically trained snake,” Russell recalled, adding that the animal “looked quite untamed” despite there being snake handlers on set.

He wondered how the tarantula Fish worked with had been tamed. “I don’t know how well you can train a spider, but that’s for sure,” Russell joked, noting that the monkeys in the film were local to the area and lived in the trees.

In addition to animal work, Fish and Russell had to overcome several elements that make up the Costa Rican landscape.

“I was sweating from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed and probably while I was sleeping. It was crazy,” Russell recalled narrating Us that a local resident told him it was “the hottest ever” recorded when they were in town. “I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a steam room, but take that and magnify it by a thousand. It was crazy.”

The actor compared the experience to “being in Jurassic Park” after spotting a grasshopper that was “bigger than a shoe” on a craft table during a nighttime shoot.

Fish, meanwhile, was impressed with how “practical” the whole adventure was, including the team’s choice to create a “real mudslide” for one scene. While filming had its ups and downs, Russell and Fish really bonded on set and soon embraced a brother-sister relationship.

“It turned out we had similar ways of going through the script and how you prepared it,” Russell recalled of meeting Fish after their long flight to Costa Rica. He teased: “I think if you’re just talking to someone, he or she is just really rude to you. But in the best possible way.”

Russell joked that he and Fish hooked up over making “little sarcastic comments” and had a “natural” off-camera banter similar to that of their characters.

“I think it was just the fact that we had both just been thrown into this job in the jungle and we just happened to have a good rapport from the start [that made it work]”, he added. “They were lucky in casting that these two people are in fact the characters.”

Fish agreed, noting that she and Russell didn’t have to turn on the cameras. “He made it so easy,” she said.

A Costa Rican wedding premieres on Hallmark Channel on Saturday, August 17 at 8pm ET. It is also available to stream on Hallmark Movies Now.