Clint Black and Wife Lisa Hartman Black Talk Turning Their No. 1 Song Into a Lifetime Movie at the Film’s Nashville Premiere

Clint Black and Lisa Hartman Black are giving new life to their hit song. The couple recently teamed up with Lifetime to turn “When I Said I Do” into a new movie of the same name.

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Black wrote the eventual No. 1 song in 1999 and, after much encouragement, enlisted his wife to sing on the track with him.

“I listened and it brought me to tears. It’s incredible. Different than anything he’d written and so special in so many ways,” Hartman Black said following the world premiere of the film at Nashville’s Franklin Theatre. “He asked me to sing it with him, and I went, ‘No.’

“He said, ‘I can’t sing that with anyone else.’ I thought, ‘Good point!’” she added. “I was just scared, obviously. It just seemed so big and so many things. My heart was racing but I finally came around.”

Black had a similar hesitancy when executive producer Adam Reed approached him with his idea to turn the song into a movie.

“He said something to the effect of, ‘Well, you know, that’s the song we’ve protected our entire careers,’” Reed recalled. “The weight of that really landed with me.”

After a meeting, however, Reed managed to get the Blacks on side.

“I was so excited to do it at that point that I didn’t care what happened to the song. I don’t mean that really,” Black joked. “The whole thing, it was so much fun because Adam really empowered us to be a part of the creative process and to have enough input for us to feel like this was going to be in partnership with our song and our sensibilities. That was most important to us.”

What to Know About Clint Black’s When I Said I Do

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And thus, When I Said I Do was born. Starring Sarah Drew and Eric Johnson, When I Said I Do follows Ali, a widow who falls for her search-and-rescue colleague Shawn, despite her hesitancy to open up her heart again.

The Blacks appear in the film as fictionalized versions of themselves. Throughout the movie, Shawn turns to the couple for advice by calling into their relationship podcast.

The Blacks offer him some much-needed wisdom, and so it’s apt that their song is the soundtrack at Shawn and Ali’s eventual wedding reception.

Seeing everything come to life, Hartman Black was thankful that she said yes to recording that song all those years ago.

“To this day, I thank God that I did it,” she said. “I think about what I would’ve missed out on—what we would’ve missed out on—if I hadn’t.”

It’s a sentiment with which Johnson connected, noting, “that’s really the theme of the movie.”

“People are scared to take that leap, scared to risk something, and then great rewards come after that,” he said, before quipping, “The other lesson in the movie is just to listen to Lisa.”

“It is a song and a movie about perseverance, about never giving up,” Reed agreed. “There’s going to be times you cry, there’s going to be times you laugh, there’s going to be times you’re tortured, angry, and frustrated, but through it all don’t give up.”

Reed added, “This song has incredible lyrics that people have gotten married to and danced to. Now to see that with the visuals and the storyline and the depth of character, it’s very surreal. I’m grateful they trusted in us to do it.”

When I Said I Do will premiere May 23 at 8/7c on Lifetime.

Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images