Christmas is just around the corner, and Jonathan Bennett’s gay holiday film ‘The Holiday Sitter’ is nearing its premiere date as well!
The upcoming movie is Hallmark Channel’s first-ever LGBTQ+ Christmas film, and the ‘Mean Girls’ actor talked all about it in a recent interview with Slice. He opened up about the holiday season for queer people expressing,
“The holidays, for queer people, is something that no one will really understand unless you’re a queer person.”
He continued,
“For me, I was lucky enough to have a family that supported me, but I know that’s not the case for a lot of queer people. The holidays can be a sticky situation because everyone’s going home to their families and having these traditions and moments. There’s a lot of queer people that don’t have families to go back to or don’t have their places they grew up that they can go home to. So that’s why I think representation and chosen family are so important because what I’ve learnt, for me, is that it’s not just about your family that you’re born with; it’s about your chosen family.”
Bennett further explained that ‘The Holiday Sitter’ will make queer people feel that “Christmas is for you as well.”
“For the holidays, to be able to see a movie where there’s representation of queer people on screen, it makes you feel like Christmas is for you as well.
Because a lot of times when we watch these movies – at the holidays when we watch movies, if we don’t see ourselves in them, it almost feels like the holidays aren’t for us. But by doing movies like The Holiday Sitter and showing queer love on screen during Christmas, it’s letting all the queer people feel like they have a seat at the holiday table, too,” the 41-year-old actor expressed.
Aside from starring in it, he also wrote the story and executive produced the film. Hallmark has supported Bennett’s vision, and they built an entire queer creative team.
“We have a whole queer creative team, from our director to our producers to our writer to our actors. Everyone’s queer on the team, so it’s really cool having all those different sides of the community weighing in and making decisions creatively on every aspect of the film,” he noted.
The actor also talked about the plot of ‘The Holiday Sitter’ stating,
“It’s about my character, [Sam], who comes back to his hometown for the holidays because he has to babysit his niece and nephew because his sister and her husband are adopting a new baby and the mother goes into labour. So they have to, right before Christmas, they have to rush home go pick up the new baby and welcome the baby into the family and they have no one to watch the kids.”
He further shared,
“So they call on Sam, who’s the eternal bachelor living in New York, living his best life, just having fun and working, to come home and babysit and basically put on Christmas for his niece and nephew. It’s a classic fish out of water story that leaves so much room for laughs. And what’s so fun is that he falls in love with the hot, hunky neighbor next door, [Jason], who happens to be the carpenter building the addition onto the house. So you have two things that Sam’s never experienced: building and children, and you throw them into this world that is completely not his and hilarity ensues.”
The role of Jason is played by George Krissa, and it seems like he had a lot of fun filming the Christmas movie alongside Bennett. Here’s the two stars’ “boys will be boys” fun behind-the-scenes:
‘The Holiday Sitter’ is scheduled to premiere on W Network on December 11 at 8 p.m. In the meantime, you can watch the trailer to keep you in the festive mood.
Source: slice.ca
I believe this is the first Hallmark movie with gay leads.
I know Hallmark movies are cheesy but I’m happy they’re featuring a gay Christmas movie this year. Looking forward to owning it.