There’s no doubt how entertainment can affect us. It can be moving and thrilling and take us places we never imagined we go.
It can also bring us together through shared experiences.
Sometimes, it does a little of everything, as I discovered during a recent interview with Corey Sevier about his Christmas in July movie airing tonight, Take Me Back for Christmas.
This is a movie very close to Sevier’s heart, as his wife Kate Pragnell wrote the script, and he directed the film.
He also costars with Vanessa Lengies, who starred alongside him in another Hallmark movie, Heart of the Holidays, and whom he had known since he was ten, having met when he starred on Lassie.
I’ve always been a fan of Hallmark Christmas movies that do the unexpected, and Lengies stars in the movie as Renee, who always dreamed of owning her own business. But when her mother got sick, she and her husband Aaron (Sevier) put their dreams on hold to care for her.
A decade later, she’s in a rut with mounting bills and a dead-end job putting pressure on her usually happy marriage. Through a little Christmas magic, she’ll have a wish fulfilled that will challenge everything she feels.
Sevier, who said that, like me, he’s “a fan of Christmas movies, especially when there’s a little bit of Christmas magic in there,” shared that he and Pragnell developed the concept together while watching one of my favorite movies, The Family Man starring Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni.
“My wife and I were literally sitting down on the couch watching it one night, and I turned to her, and I said, ‘You know what? What if we made a Christmas movie like that?’ And so we started developing it. Next thing you know, here we are a year later, and the movie’s about to air.”
Discovering another who is interested in the delightful film got us talking about it a bit and what makes it so special. Sevier said, “It’s one of those where no matter if it’s on, I can sit down and watch it. It’s funny, it has that magical element, but it’s also grounded and has great family messaging.
“It had all those elements that I loved. And so we did our best to create our own version and make it our own, but very much inspired by that.”
He didn’t want to give too much of the movie away lest he spoil the very magic he wanted to create, but he offered a little more for us to chew on as we wait for the premiere.
Sevier noted that Aaron recognizes that Renee is struggling, and he is trying to push her to the next step. “Let’s take a leap. Let’s get back to what we envisioned for our lives. And she has many reasons for not going on board with that as quickly.”
When Renee meets a woman working at a department store as a Christmas Elf, she’s offered the opportunity to ring a little silver bell. “She says, ‘Hey if you ever want to make a wish, make your wish and ring this bell,” Sevier said.
He continued, “And she doesn’t think anything of it. She rings the bell and wakes up in a completely different life. And she makes a wish, and I don’t want to give it away, but she wishes for something other than her current situation.
“The cautionary tale here is she wasn’t overly specific. So she ends up finding herself in a world that is not unlike the world of her dreams, but some key elements are missing, one of which is, in this new reality, she is no longer married to my character, Aaron.”
Sevier and Pragnell, who have been together for ten years, used questions within their own marriage to imagine how Renee and Aaron might act in the circumstances they created.
“We spitballed all kinds of alternate reality situations. And like in life, often when you find your partner, you do wonder if something had gone in a slightly different direction, what would your life look like?”
Although they are blessed to have a great relationship, they also recognize that they could face hard times in the future.
“The message in the film that I hope people will take away is don’t take what you have for granted. No matter what life throws at you, especially if you have someone you can build something with, really do your best to see it through.”
Sevier said it was so much fun working with Pragnell, who he credits doing the heavy lifting, to bring this story to life. “There was something really interesting about exploring the idea of dreams versus reality and what would you wish for,” he said.
He likes that this movie doesn’t start as a traditional Hallmark movie, with a meet-cute paving the way for a new relationship. “We reverse engineer it into she wakes up and now this man that’s been in her life for many years that she always assumed to be there, suddenly a different reality has taken place, and she has to win him back.”
So much comedy was involved in making Take Me Back to Christmas, which was ripe for exploring various emotional and dramatic scenarios in a fresh way. “Vanessa and the rest of her cast did such an incredible job of making it very funny but also very grounded.”
This is the third time Sevier has gotten to direct one of Pragnell’s scripts, which is a dream come true for the actor. “She’s the brains of the operation, for sure,” he said of his wife. She has been writing these films for a number of years, and it is a perfect opportunity for them to combine their talents.
Now that Sevier has successfully tried his hand at directing and acting, he doesn’t think he would ever want to give up either experience, and he especially enjoys the challenge of directing himself as an actor.
“The reward is you really get to get your fingerprints on every aspect. And in this case, with my experience so far directing from my wife’s script, you really want to do justice to what she envisioned. And being in the director’s chair gave me the best opportunity to do that.”
When directing a movie in which he’s acting, he tells the other actors that he’s right there with them the moment someone yells action. Someone said to him years ago that the key to good directing is to cast really well.
“I surround myself with fantastic actors and lose myself in it. But you have to be able to switch very quickly on the fly when, oh, okay, we’ve got to do one more. So my actors have often laughed at me.
“They’re with Corey director for a few moments, and then I disappear, but then I come right back, sometimes even mid-take if you have to take something back, and it’s kind of splitting your brain that way.
“But for me, ultimately, it is all just an extension of the storytelling process, and getting to know the script so intimately made it easier for me. I wasn’t as worried about the acting side. It was just getting all the other elements together so that we could have some fun and hopefully create something special.”
You’ll get the opportunity to see how special Take Me Back for Christmas is when you tune in tonight on the Hallmark Channel at 8/7c.
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Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She’s a member of the Critic’s Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on Twitter and email her here at TV Fanatic.
