I Owe Chad Michael Murray an Apology

The actor proves me wrong in "The Merry Gentlemen." Plus: The best and worst new holiday movies, and an interview with author Timothy Janovsky.

Here is a button where you can subscribe to this newsletter if you haven’t done so. I hope you like it! The first half of today’s letter is unusually “punchy,” even for me, but that’s what happens when I decide to write about frothy holiday movies. And if you don’t like frothy holiday movies, this email will now self-destruct.

When Netflix released the first images of Chad Michael Murray stripping for his spicy new holiday rom-com, The Merry Gentlemen, I nearly spit out my Diet Coke.

That was in October, two months from Christmas, but for the internet, Santa had come early: The Cut soon reposted Murray’s washboard abs on Instagram alongside the headline “Merry Christmas to Us All.”

I love The Cut but threw Grinch-y shade on their joyful reaction.

“Lol nobody wants this!!!” I wrote in my Stories, to which my friend Sanjay replied, “i’m in! it looks awful but good for cmm,” a.k.a. Chad Michael Murray. “he needs the work. and missed out on magic mike.”

thecut

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You know what? I like Sanjay’s attitude. Despite my initial bah-humbug reaction, I happily streamed The Merry Gentlemen after it hit Netflix this week. Murray formerly starred on the CW teen series One Tree Hill and is now 43 years old and the better for it. His wrinkles are earned, and those abs? Not spray-painted. Murray, long banished to the Siberia of basic cable, was never going to be the next Brad Pitt, but The Merry Gentlemen is his personal Brad-Pitt-in-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood moment. I know plenty of people who would be happy to dissociate from the news cycle and watch Murray roof a house à la Cliff Booth for three hours.

Plot-wise, The Merry Gentlemen contains actual substance to balance the frothiness. It revolves around an industrious millennial named Ashley (Britt Robertson), who is unceremoniously fired from her big-city job dancing for the Jingle Belles — the movie’s nod to the Rockettes — and replaced with a younger model. Dejected, Ashley returns home to her quaint hometown, where her parents own a fading music venue dubbed The Rhythm Room. When the landlord threatens to shut the place down and turn it into a juice bar, Ashley gets the bright idea to revive their small business by staging a Magic Mike-style male dance revue. She taps handyman Luke (Murray) and other chiseled volunteers to join her harebrained yet ingenious scheme. The ending: Predictable, but enjoyably so.

Anyway. Chad Michael Murray, if you happen to read this, my sincere apologies for being a Scrooge. You proved me wrong, and I am sincerely humbled. And while I’m on the subject of seasonal movies, here are two others I’ve enjoyed and one that could have been great, if it had the right script:

• Meet Me Next Christmas: This is a winner, friends. My face hurt from smiling as I watched the luminous Christina Milian portray Layla, a plucky, semi-delusional romantic who believes she will meet The One at a Pentatonix concert on Christmas Eve. There’s a major problem, though. The show is sold out. Will Layla’s unassuming professional concierge (Devale Ellis) help score a ticket in time? It’s a joy to witness their journey together; the world needs more heartwarming movies filled with good people finding love in unexpected places. (Oh, and lots of hijinks.) Now streaming on Netflix.

• Sweethearts: If plucky heroines aren’t your thing, you’ll appreciate Kiernan Shipka’s cool-girl cynicism in this clever coming-of-age comedy from writer-director Jordan Weiss. College freshman Jamie (Shipka) and her best friend Ben (Nico Hiraga) make a pact to break up with their respective significant others the night before Thanksgiving. As the pals summon the courage to break hearts, tension builds: They’re cute, they’re funny, they obviously love each other. Could they possibly be more than friends? That question provided ample material for Nora Ephron while she wrote When Harry Met Sally in the late 1980s, and inspired Weiss, whom I profiled for The Los Angeles Times this week. You can check out the story here. Streams on Max beginning November 28.

• Hot Frosty: I really wanted to like this flick, but alas, it didn’t work for me. Its premise, however, is irresistible, and it does boast some laugh-out-loud moments. The rom-com stars Lacey Chabert as small-town widow Cathy, who magically brings a snowman to life. In human form, he’s Jack Snowman (Dustin Milligan), whose guileless joie de vivre cannot be contained and infects everyone around him. Jack and Cathy spark a romance amid her concerns about his mortality — yes, he’s melting. Did I accidentally sell Hot Frosty to you? Well, maybe you should stream it and judge for yourself. I can’t help thinking that the cool concept (get it?) would have been vastly improved in the hands of the late, great Penny Marshall, who directed The Preacher’s Wife remake with Denzel Washington as a Hot Angel. Penny had the magic touch, and I imagine her screaming “GET ME A REWRITE!!!” Now streaming on Netflix.

As the clock ticks toward December, and Mariah Carey defrosts to belt “All I Want For Christmas Is You” at full volume, her vocal runs blasting through the sound-system of every CVS in the nation, I will also be seated to watch Lindsay Lohan in Our Little Secret (November 27, Netflix), Danny Pellegrino in Deck the Walls (November 29, Hallmark) and this Saturday, Hallmark’s Christmas in the Spotlight, which is loosely inspired by Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

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YOU’VE GOT A BOOK RECOMMENDATION

‘Tis also the season for holiday romance novels, and my friend Timothy Janovsky has written a delightful twist on the genre with his USA Today bestseller The Merriest Misters. Timothy’s writing is so smart, and so funny, and so deliciously fast-paced, that I never feel the wheels spinning as he hits all the time-honored rom-com beats. Reading his work is like watching a classic Hollywood film that playfully subverts formula and winks at the viewer. I was excited to get Timothy on the phone the other day. Our Q&A has been edited and condensed.

Tim, tell us a little bit about The Merriest Misters.

It’s a queer marriage-in-crisis romance. It takes [some] inspiration from the Tim Allen movie The Santa Clause, and it is about a newlywed couple, Patrick and Quinn, who are kind of crumbling under the pressure of being newly married and are feeling very stuck and in a rut. They've just purchased their first house and they're going to host Christmas for the very first time, and through some holiday hijinks on Christmas Eve, Patrick ends up fry-panning a man he thinks is a burglar — but turns out to be Santa Claus taste-testing their cookies. Santa rage-quits on the spot, and the only hope to save Christmas for that year is for Patrick and Quinn to put on this enchanted cloak, get into a reindeer-guided sleigh, and deliver the rest of the gifts.

Brilliant, I must say!

And then they're in for a big shock: If they don't take on the [Santa] role for the following year as well, then that Christmas might be in jeopardy. They have to decide: Are we going to move our lives to the North Pole? Are we going to become toymakers? What do we do now? I basically took this real-world marriage drama and was like, Where's the weirdest setting I could possibly [stage] this? And I plopped them in the North Pole. It’s definitely got hijinks and angst, and I think it’s pretty fun.

What inspired you to write this story?

Weirdly, and maybe sadly, my original inspiration for the story was actually Doug Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris' husband. When she first took office with President Biden, I was seeing a lot of photos of Doug Emhoff in the press, and people asking, What do we call him? What is he wearing? [There were] conversations about him stepping into this role that has historically been held by a person of a different gender. And he also happens to be from Matawan, New Jersey, which is where I grew up, which I found a strange connection in as well. I knew I wanted to write a holiday story at that point, and I just got consumed by this idea of “What if the North Pole had its first gay Santa Claus? What might the role of Mrs. Claus look like?”

I started writing a scene [for] the character Quinn [where he’s] walking into his walk-in closet for the first time at the North Pole and being greeted by red-velvet dresses and stodgy bonnets and little booty kitten heels. And he's like, “What am I supposed to do with all this?” And that just made me laugh. And from there I just was like, “Oh, I'm going to build a story around this idea,” and it just kind of flowed. It was a fun little world to escape into for a while.

Let’s fan-cast Patrick and Quinn. Who should play them in the movie?

Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey [from the Showtime political romance Fellow Travelers].

I was watching Fellow Travelers and I enjoyed it. There's definitely a lot to chew on in that series, but I was like, “I want these two people to be happy. I want these two people to be in love. I want them to do a rom-com.” They're maybe not who I fan-casted when I was writing [The Merriest Misters], but I think they have that right chemistry that would be fun to play around with in a North Pole setting. I think Matt Bomer had said in an interview — and maybe this is why I can't get [the idea to cast him] out of my head — something along the lines of, “It’d be great if I could be in a Hallmark movie, and I could be Santa's son.” That was like, “Great, somebody get him the book.”

I will personally deliver the book to him. As well as your other great books! You’re extremely prolific. How do you start each day?

I get up in the morning, I eat my breakfast, I go on a sizable walk just to kind of clear my head. So, it's either sans headphones — if I'm being really brave or my AirPods are dead — or listening to an audiobook or a podcast that's loosely connected to what I'm working on. Right now, I'm in Austen Autumn, so I've been re-listening to a bunch of Jane Austen novels. And that's a great way to get me into the right mind-space.

Do you have a favorite Christmas song?

Judy Garland's “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” [from Meet Me in St. Louis] will always be my favorite Christmas song. One, because I'm gay, but also two, because you could just feel the weight of the world on her shoulders. It’s the one Christmas song where you can hear a cover of it, and just listen to the lyrics purely and the jolly background mix and be like, Oh my gosh, so joyful, so wonderful. But when you really listen, there is this undercurrent of bittersweet.

I don't say that my books are not fun, but every book that I've written always has this underpinning of emotion that isn’t tied to just pure joy or pure rapture or pure romance. I think that song, when [Garland’s character] comforts her sister about their family’s move, I mean, it’s just one of those moments that I don't think I'll ever be able to shake. It just puts me right in the space of being both jolly and grounded.

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END CREDITS

• Becca Freeman reacts to the news that Anne Hathaway will star in the big-screen adaptation of CoHo’s Verity.

• Jason P. Frank defends Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater’s Wicked chemistry.

• Jo Piazza sings the praises of Rag & Bone’s sweatpants jeans.

• Jason Diamond riffs on soup’s favorite companion, writing, “Grilled cheese needs to be a little sloppy and slightly burnt; if the slices of bread line up perfectly with each other like some guy used a ruler to make sure it was a perfect square then I don’t want it.”

I hope you have a nice Turkey Day, wherever you are. And if you’ve got movie/TV/book recs, I’m all ears!

Warmly,

Erin