Jennifer Love Hewitt Made a Christmas Movie to Help Process Her Grief

12/13/2024 09:00 AM

It seems like a candy-striped glitch in the matrix — an oversight so unbelievable, it's a wonder casting directors missed it. How the hell has Jennifer Love Hewitt, known to her Instagram followers as the "Holiday Junkie," never starred in a Christmas movie until now?

At long last, Hewitt debuts her first Lifetime holiday film this week (called, of course, The Holiday Junkie). Hewitt stars as Andie, who makes a living decorating people's homes and scheduling their holiday plans for maximum cheer. When we first meet her, Andie is grieving the loss of her mother, the original "holiday junkie," who passed her love for the holiday (and the family business) down to her daughter. While Andie hopes to grieve alone this Christmas, she instead gets stuck working with Mason, a wealthy client's house manager who also happens to be a bit of a grinch working through some grief of his own.

For Hewitt, this film is unusually personal, and not just because her real-life husband, Brian Hallisay, co-stars as her prickly love interest. She pitched the story to Lifetime herself, inspired by the loss of her own mother, Patricia Mae, to cancer in 2012. For Pat, Christmas was more than just a holiday; it was almost a state of mind. Hewitt has memories of her mother stringing up Christmas lights to lift her spirits on a bad day and surprising the family by dropping a blizzard of fake snow on their front yard. In both The Holiday Junkie and her new memoir, Inheriting Magic: My Journey Through Grief, Joy, Celebration, and Making Every Day Magical, Hewitt processes what it means to mourn a loved one during the holidays.

The Holiday Junkie features all of the expected genre tropes and story beats of a Christmas movie — like the feverish cookie baking, the meddlesome friends, the ominous travel delays, and the emotional tug-of-war between a sentimental soul and a hot grinch — but it is also disarmingly heartfelt. The plot might be made up, but Hewitt's delivery (and her tears) feel real. Apart from starring in it, Hewitt co-wrote, produced, and directed the film herself — her feature debut. She felt she was the only one who could do the material justice.

How far into preproduction were you when you pitched yourself as a potential director?
We were pretty far, to be totally honest. Brian being in it and me directing it were pretty much the last two pieces of the puzzle before we went into filming and I think only because we had so much other stuff to do — working on the script, making sure we could shoot it in L.A. because it had to be done in the time between me wrapping 9-1-1 and then going very quickly back into it.

I threw that out there, and, and then, sort of simultaneously, they were like, "Well, you know, we haven't talked about casting yet, but what do you think about Brian for this?" Brian and I had met on and done a show for Lifetime called The Client List, and so they still loved him from that. I didn't think of him for this initially because he's not a Christmas movie guy. He loves that I watch 900 of them a season, and he'll watch the classics with me and the kids. But when I mentioned it to him, he's like, "Yeah, of course, I want to be in it. This would be so fun, and it honors your mom."

After The Client List, you worked with Brian on 9-1-1 as well. What is it like bringing a romantic relationship onscreen together? Is it ever awkward or challenging?
No, the funny part was that Anna [White], the writer, was on set a lot, and she would constantly scream, "Kids, keep kissing!" during our kissing scenes. Or the crew would be like, "Ooooh, Andie and Mason!" So them being dorks was the only awkward part about it.

The rest of it was lovely, and it's funny, most of the time, either I'm running off to 9-1-1 or Brian and I are, like, trying to get errands done while our kids are at school — sometimes meeting for lunch, high-fiving in the hallway. With three kids, we don't get tons of time to just sort of, like, stare into each other's eyes. We got 15 days of that on this movie, and it was so wonderful. Even though I had 100 jobs on this movie, my main job was to just, like, look at him and be with him and fall in love with him again. And I did, and he felt the same.

We kind of ended the movie going, "Wow, all married people should have this opportunity. Like, this was really lovely." And it's captured onscreen, so our kids get to always have it to watch and see, even if they don't like the kissy parts.

Your mom and her love of the holiday inspired this story. When did you first start thinking about this idea and writing it out?
I started writing the book a little over two years ago now — maybe two and a half years ago. I write about this in the book, but I definitely felt grief with all three pregnancies and births, just because your mom's supposed to be there, right? She's supposed to come and visit and hold them and meet them. My kids never got that experience, and I feel really sad about that. I've tried, since they were all born, to keep her alive for them in some way, which was why it was important to do the movie and the book. I want them to have something always to hold on to that is representative of Mimi and my love of her.

Of course.
And so I just sort of sat down — I think in postpartum, really — to write stuff about her. I hadn't been able to do that yet. I mean, it really took me 12 years, or 11 years at the time that I started writing the book, to be able to do that. I would read stuff to Brian and sob uncontrollably. And he'd be like, "This is good. This is a new part of grief. Keep writing and get it out."

I remember my first thought after losing my mom — besides How am I going to do this? and I can't believe she's gone — was, Oh my god, all the magic I've known my entire life is gone. Like, nothing will ever be magical again because she was the magic, right? And then I started having my own children, and in that first Christmas after my daughter, Autumn, was born, I realized I couldn't sit in grief that whole time. I had to create magic because I now had a family, and I realized that my mom, her magic probably came out of some sort of grief, too. She and my dad were divorced, and maybe it came out of that for her. Maybe we were more alike in that moment than ever before.

How else did your mother shape this story? Are there more literal nods to her in the Holiday Junkie script?
Kristin Chenoweth actually does the two voicemails of my mom in the movie. She was really good friends with my mom, and my mom absolutely adored her. Kristin also lost her birth mom, and so the two of us connected about that. When I called her, she literally, in two seconds, was like, "I'll do anything for Pat." So that's sort of a nod to my mom.

When Mason does the Christmas lights in the room for me, that's a direct nod to something that my mom used to do for me. When she knew that I was heartbroken or if I had bad cramps or whatever it was, she did that to kind of make things magical. I say in the movie that my mom would take me out of school on a random Thursday to celebrate life, and she did, in fact, do those things. Her name is Mimi in the movie because my niece — my brother's daughter, who was the only grandchild that my mom got to know — that's what she called her.

There were paparazzi outside my house, and there were people that just constantly wanted to know how I was feeling, and I was like, This is so inappropriate.

There's a glitter Santa in the movie, and that's mine that my mom gave me, oh my gosh, like, 20-something years ago now. I bring it out every Christmas. The penguins that are in the movie, those are a nod to my mom. Those were her favorite, and one of the last trips she took, she got to actually go to Antarctica and have lunch with penguins. So there's lots of, like, little things sort of laid in there.

The same snow company that we used for the movie to make the snow at the cookie-swap scene, my mom surprised us with real snow in her front yard, and it was that same company. We actually called them, and the guy was like, "Of course, I'll do anything for Pat." There were so many times people would be like, "Of course, for your mom, anything." So she was very present and alive in the movie.

You've said that the media knew about your mother's passing before you did, and that that was sort of a familiar experience for you. Was that difficult at the time?
Yeah, I mean, being brutally honest, I was really angry about it for a long time. That was a hard one for me — not because they knew but because probably the first, you know, two months after her passing, I literally had to remind myself, "Oh, I have to get out of bed this morning and do things. I can't just lay here and miss her and ask myself over and over again, 'Why did this happen? What is my life going to look like now?'"

There were paparazzi outside my house, and there were people that just constantly wanted to know how I was feeling, and I was like, This is so inappropriate. I don't know how I'm feeling, and if I'm going to give anybody the answer, it's certainly not going to be a random photographer outside my house.

There was this moment where this guy was outside my mom's house. I was trying to throw away stuff from the house, and I remember him sitting there. I went up to his car, and I did ask him, "What are you trying to capture?" And he was like, "I think people just want to know that you're okay." And I was like, "I'm not okay, so stop taking pictures because I'm not okay." Like, you're not going to get an okay picture for me.

Right.
I will say, he was very human. He was like, "I'm so sorry. You're right." He put his camera down, and he was like, "How are you doing?" And I was like, "I'm struggling, but I'm going to be okay. I just need to not be an actress right now. I need to not be in Hollywood. I just need to be a person."

That was hard for me, for sure, in the beginning — again, not because I don't respect what their jobs are or that people wanted to know. I mean, I'm a public figure. Everybody's known everything about me for as long as I can remember, and that's just a part of it. But when it came to her, it felt wrong.

I'm glad the photographer was receptive. 
He was, and he was very human. I did see him again after that a couple of times, and he was always very kind. It ended up as an okay moment, but it was definitely weird to land and get that news for the first time when it was already, like, [in] magazines and on talk shows. I was like, Wait, what? How is this happening? 

What was your hardest day on set — either as an actor, director, or producer?
Oh my gosh, so there is a crying scene in The Holiday Junkie where I'm on the stairs. Because I was doing 14 different jobs on this movie, I didn't realize that we scheduled that on the anniversary of my mom's passing. That's always just a really hard day for me. I was able to hold it together all day, and then we got there and I was like, "Oh no … Oh my gosh, this is gonna happen, and it's gonna hit me, and it's gonna hit me in front of the entire crew."

I will tell you, it was the most beautiful cry that I've ever been afforded because the crew knew. I gave everybody a warning. The first AD, Will, he was so sweet. He was like, "Oh my God, why didn't you tell me?" And I'm like, "No, I actually think it's good." We set up a picture of my mom, and I played this song in the background that I love and that I listened to a lot when she passed, and they just rolled the camera. Everybody was really quiet, and I literally just sat in a room full of love and support and just cried about missing her.

We were all a hot mess. It just did not feel like we were shooting a movie at all. This felt like a very, like, human experience, and it kind of bled through, and it's there in the movie. It ended up being so beautiful, but it was hard. That whole day, I was like, "Oh my God, what have I done to myself?" It was perfect, and it was exactly as I would have wanted it. And I think she would have wanted it.

In promoting The Holiday Junkie, you've said you're "finally" making a Christmas movie. How long have Lifetime and Hallmark been begging you to make one?
I've never been offered a Christmas movie.

Really? That shocks me.
Right? Like, I am the quintessential Christmas movie person. I'm basically a descendant of someone at the North Pole — unofficially, probably, if I did one of those swab tests.

I'm such a go-getter and a hustler normally in my business, but a Christmas movie has never been something I've gone out and searched for. So the only thing that I could say to myself in this process is that this is the one that was supposed to be the first. But now that I've done one, like, if somebody doesn't come and offer another one, they're going to hear about it because I love them and I had a blast. Send me all the scripts, guys; I'm ready.

Did you go straight to Lifetime with this one, or did they beat out other studios like Hallmark and Netflix?
The truth is, I only went to Lifetime, and they bought it immediately, which I was obviously very thankful for.

I lost my mom when I was doing The Client List while I was at Lifetime, and I had to go back to work pretty quickly after her passing on that. They took really good care of me. They really cared about me getting through that, and there were some people there who were very kind to me about her passing, so it felt like a safe place for me again.

The pitch was pretty vulnerable. It was like, "I don't have a script. I just have this thing in my heart that I want to do." I was able to do that on the Zoom with people that I knew and who honestly had known her or known of her in our relationship.

You've directed before, but this was your first feature film. What did you enjoy about that experience, and what surprised you?
I truly would stop everything else and only direct if I could. I'm creative and bossy by nature, sometimes to a fault, which is great in directing because people are waiting for you to control all the things.

I think what surprised me about doing this the most from a director standpoint is how crazy a Christmas movie schedule is. It's 15 days in and out. We did, you know, like, 120 scenes or something in 15 days, and I was in 98 pages of that, if not more. The prep is fast, and this was the first time directing that I actually got to be a part of the editing process.

When you direct TV, you get your quick cut, but then you pass it off and you don't really see it again until it airs. This, I mean, I picked the sound effects of the door chime at the diner, what the oven timer sounded like. I got to color-time every version of this movie. There was not one part of this movie that I did not get to be a part of. I mean, we literally sat on the Zoom for four hours like, "Oh, I don't love that that chair slid back like that. That sounds weird. We've got to take that out." It was wild.

The whole time, I was like, "Guys, this is awesome. I love this." They got the biggest kick out of it. They were like, "Oh my God, she's literally never done this before." I learned just so much.

What kinds of projects would you like to direct next?
I would really love to do a young-adult something, only because I was a kid actor and I think that it would be really fun to take a bunch of young actors and give them all the information that's been helpful to me and then just watch them flourish and grow and make it into something.

I would definitely love to do some more Christmas movies. I'd love to do an edgier Christmas movie — something like a Netflix comedy Christmas movie that's got, like, some fun edge to it. And I really want to direct a 9-1-1,even though it would be bananas. I'm really open, but those are probably the three things that interest me the most.

Are there any young actors who jump out as someone you'd want to work with on one of these projects?
Lacey Chabert, the queen of Christmas movies, and I would really like to do something together in the Christmas space — or in any space. And Jenna Ortega is somebody that really shines for me. God, I would love the opportunity to direct her. I think that would be tremendous.

In the spirit of the holiday, I wonder if you'll indulge just one sentimental question: If you could tell your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
I think I would tell her to relax. I feel like I spent so much time in my earlier career, don't get me wrong, enjoying it and loving it, but worried — worried that I wasn't enough or comparing myself to other girls at auditions. I had dragged my mom and my whole family into this crazy business, and was I going to even make it to another audition? Or were they going to tell me to pack up my bags and go? I feel like I was so consumed with that that maybe I didn't fully understand that it was working and that we were doing it and it was going great. I would just want her to stress less.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.