Oliver Hudson had the most important crush on Cher Horowitz.
When he was 19 years outdated, Hudson swooned for her after watching “Clueless,” the 1995 teen comedy that reworked Alicia Silverstone into an in a single day sensation. The movie was completely forged. Each actor oozed Important Character Power, however the plot absolutely revolved round Silverstone’s Cher, the bubbling queen bee of Beverly Hills.
Younger girls wished to decorate like Cher. Hudson wished to this point her.
“Cher was my No. 1,” the actor, now 49, mentioned in a current interview. “I attempted to seek out Cher in Los Angeles. Didn’t work out. However I simply thought [Silverstone] was so lovely in that. And he or she’s a tremendous actor even past that.”
Hudson welcomed the chance to work with Silverstone in “A Merry Little Ex-Mas,” Netflix’s vacation film premiering Wednesday. Earlier than studying the script, nevertheless, he anxious that the venture would contain partial nudity. Dustin Milligan went shirtless for “Scorching Frosty.” So did Chad Michael Murray in “The Merry Gents.” The latter was “dancing together with his shirt off and he’s all shredded,” Hudson mused. “I’m like, my gosh, I hope after I learn this, this virtually 50-year-old man doesn’t need to do something of this type. As a result of I don’t wish to dye my grey chest hair at this level in my life.”
“A Merry Little Ex-Mas” spares Hudson the embarrassment. He and Silverstone play a divorcing couple who spend one final Christmas collectively as a household within the fictional small city of Winterlight, Vt. Hudson is Everett, a workaholic physician, and Silverstone is Kate, a people-pleasing, eco-conscious handywoman who can repair something besides their marriage. The exes grew aside whereas elevating their youngsters, Sienna (Emily Corridor) and Gabe (Hudson’s real-life son, Wilder), with Kate expressing deep, justifiable resentment regardless of her cheery disposition. She regrets deciding years earlier to surrender a promising profession in Boston, the place she was a inexperienced architect, to observe Everett to the countryside. There, he began a profitable medical observe. Kate seems like she missed her likelihood to make a constructive affect on the planet. The street not taken is gnawing at her soul.
Wilder Hudson, left, is Oliver Hudson’s son on-screen and in actual life, and Emily Corridor performs Sienna, Kate and Everett’s daughter.
(Marni Grossman / Netflix)
In some ways, this film checks off all of the containers for a seasonal, feel-good flick. There are many hijinks. There are twinkle-lights galore. There’s actual snow. However there may be additionally actual drama. The battle between Kate and Everett? That’s neither cute nor gimmicky. That’s grown-up stuff.
“I don’t know anybody who will get divorced evenly,” mentioned Silverstone, who produced the dramedy alongside Melissa Joan Hart and her mom, Paula Hart. “I simply don’t know anybody who goes, ‘I’m out. I’m bored. Let’s go away,’” particularly if each events “nonetheless love one another.”
The narrative needed to ship a contented ending, however Silverstone wished to make the pair “wrestle and combat” for it. In any other case, she mentioned, “It appeared too foolish that two folks would simply determine to interrupt up after which understand they wish to be collectively” inside a tidy, 90-minute time span.
Enter Jameela Jamil and Pierson Fodé, every a formidable, fleeting impediment on the trail towards marital reconciliation. With cheekbones as sharp as her tongue, Jamil exudes playful, feline glamour as Tess, a New Yorker who runs a worldwide nonprofit and breezes into Everett’s life after falling on the ice and needing medical consideration. He invitations her to spend the vacations with him … and Kate. (Awkward.) For Jamil, who grew up “worshipping” Silverstone and Hart within the ’90s, deciding to do the function was a no brainer.
“They might have been making a porno and I’d’ve mentioned sure, to be completely trustworthy,” gushed Jamil, an irreverent alum of NBC’s “The Good Place.” “After which I obtained to learn the script [by Holly Hester] and thought it was so candy and such a stunning, practical tackle Christmas.”
She appreciated that Tess managed to flee a lazy cliché: “the traditional big-city bitch” who rolls into city with a significant angle.
“We’ve seen that character a thousand occasions,” Jamil mentioned. “I wished a genuinely likable character who was troublesome for Kate to hate as a result of she’s on her personal journey. I discuss with it as ‘Perimenopause: The Christmas Film,’ as a result of all of us are going by it, and she or he’s simply an harmless lady searching for love, clearly having her personal manic episode. As a result of why on Earth is she spending Christmas with this man she’s simply met and barely is aware of? And I assumed it was good to see a personality that had a bit extra nuance than simply being impolite and snobby and superior.”
Chet (Pierson Fodé) catches the eye of Kate (Alicia Silverstone) at a tree farm. (Marni Grossman / Netflix)
Everett (Oliver Hudson) meets Tess (Jameela Jamil) after she falls on the ice. (Marni Grossman / Netflix)
In the meantime, Kate attracts the eye of a 28-year-old hunk named Chet (Fodé), whom she meets at a Christmas tree farm. He’s 6 ft 4, with an enormous coronary heart and dazzling smile. He fingers her a enterprise card that reads “I put on numerous hats.” Amongst his facet hustles: Santa-for-hire, “manny” and “unique dancer.” At one level, Chet — mimicking Murray’s “Merry Gents” striptease — tears off his tuxedo, and whereas baring his washboard abs, tries to save lots of the day when Kate’s Christmas tree catches hearth in homage to “Nationwide Lampoon’s Christmas Trip.”
“I used to be utterly bare,” mentioned Fodé, who beforehand starred within the hit Netflix rom-com “The Flawed Paris.” “I imply, I had sock garters on and a pair of candy-cane underwear, so you actually can’t get rather more bare than that with out altering the film title. I had an absolute blast.”
Filming the over-the-top scene, “I went in on that first take so onerous and heavy that everyone screamed,” he recalled. “Actually, Alicia jumped and screamed and Melissa, Jameela began laughing instantly.”
Fodé and Jamil turned quick associates on the snowy Toronto set, the place the previous stored a chilly plunge tub. “Everyone’s welcome to come back practice on the fitness center with me,” he mentioned. “That is my method of bonding with folks.”
Jamil, calling herself a “very nonathletic individual,” took him up on his provide, and “he personally skilled me and he went so onerous that I obtained a literal hernia. In the event you’ve by no means exercised earlier than, don’t train with precise He-Man.”
Fortuitously, she was capable of proceed filming. “It was so terrible however hilarious,” she mentioned of the incident. “Nearly price it for the way humorous it was. However he’s the most effective.”
“I went in on that first take so onerous and heavy that everyone screamed,” Pierson Fodé recalled of his ab-baring scene. “Actually, Alicia jumped and screamed and Melissa, Jameela began laughing instantly.”
(Courtesy of Netflix)
Director Steve Carr, whose credit embody the comedies “Subsequent Friday” and “Daddy Day Care,” inspired improvisation as he strived to recreate the magic of the season — simpler mentioned than finished. Lots of effort goes into designing the look of a movie like this. The unstated aim is that the decor meets Mariah Carey’s requirements. To that finish, Paula Hart’s directions had been “very ‘Christmas in each shot,’” Carr recalled.
He grew pissed off at occasions, like when a location scout discovered an “completely beautiful” home that was proper subsequent door to an airport. One other time he suggested a prop man to think about a bacchanal whereas setting Kate’s breakfast desk. “I get there on the day [of the shoot],” Carr recalled, “and there’s eggs and sausage … Then I spotted the man didn’t know what ‘bacchanal’ meant.”
In hindsight, Carr loved “the chaos” of the job. He championed the concept of casting 18-year-old Wilder, who makes his movie debut reverse his dad regardless of some inside opposition.
“He’s not your typical teenage actor,” mentioned Hudson, who shares Wilder, 15-year-old son Bodhi and 12-year-old daughter Rio with spouse Erinn Bartlett. “This child is actual. He’s not jaded or tainted by something but. And to Netflix’s credit score, they took an opportunity on him.”
Hudson obtained emotional watching Wilder recite a heartfelt speech within the movie’s finale.
“I simply began to cry as a result of I’m simply taking a look at my son and I’ve been doing this for 25-plus years,” he mentioned. “I’m like, he’s in my world now and he’s doing this and he’s doing effectively, and he’s obtained this complete future forward of him if he desires it.”
Silverstone handled Wilder as if he was her personal.
“It was candy as a result of he was 17 on the time, and my son [Bear] is 14, and I can’t bear the concept of a 17-year-old boy not desirous to be near their mother,” she mentioned, recalling that Wilder “let me kiss him quite a bit and simply dote on him as if he was nonetheless a child.”
She and Kate share a typical ardour for environmental activism. (At one level, Kate explains her five-minute bathe rule to Tess, quipping, “Nobody takes showers for greater than 5 minutes until you’re a dick.”)
Jameela Jamil says she grew up “worshipping” Alicia Silverstone and Melissa Joan Hart within the ’90s, and deciding to affix “A Merry Little Ex-Mas” was a no brainer.
(Marni Grossman / Netflix)
“When you consider an environmentalist and an actor who embodies that, [Silverstone] is that through-and-through,” mentioned Melissa Joan Hart, who performs Kate’s sassy finest pal April within the movie. “After which on high of that, I really feel just like the ‘nostalgia folks’ kind of miss her and miss her face and really feel comfy along with her.”
As for Hudson, the son of Goldie Hawn and brother to Kate Hudson, “a brick wall might fall in love with Oliver. Simply dreamy eyes [on] that man,” she noticed. “I imply, I had some incidents after I was twentysomething years outdated in a couple of nightclubs. Bumped into Oliver and simply type of [started] blubbering and never making any sense. And also you’re like, ‘Whoa, what is that this allure this man has?’”
Silverstone, for her half, mentioned she didn’t know Hudson earlier than his title got here up as her potential co-star. The 2 linked on the cellphone for a chemistry learn when she was in Eire capturing the Acorn TV collection “Irish Blood.”
“It was clear that he was stable, that he had all of the issues I wanted,” she mentioned.
Then, after they met in individual, “we instantly turned a household,” Hudson mentioned.
The actors crossed paths within the airport lounge and realized they had been on the identical flight to Toronto for the six-week shoot.
“We obtained to Canada and I took her passport with my son’s passport and went by customs, went by the immigration, went by the work-permit stuff, and I used to be dealing with it as if I used to be the husband,” he mentioned. “And we had been laughing collectively, like, ‘Wow, we obtained off on the precise foot, I assume, proper right here.’ So it was type of fast. We assumed the roles in actual life.”
