Christmas With The Campbells Test Screenings Demanded More Hilarity From Julia Duffy And George Wendt [Exclusive]
"Christmas with the Campbells" is bringing some refreshingly raunchy comedy to the Hallmark holiday romance formula. For this new Christmas movie, producers Vince Vaughn and Peter Billingsley (star of "A Christmas Story" and its recent sequel), who have been friends since working on a CBS after-school special back in 1990, brought in bona fide Hallmark movie screenwriter Barbara Kymlicka to deliver your average holiday romance. But that was just the beginning. The plan was to take the script, about a messy break-up around Christmastime, and sprinkle in some R-rated humor that adds a little bit of naughty to everything that's typically nice about made-for-TV holiday romances. And that's exactly what they did.
Director Clare Neiderpruem, another Hallmark veteran, was brought in to take the helm, and "Christmas with the Campbells" came together with some surprising star power in the form of Brittany Snow, Justin Long, and Alex Moffat. All three are great as the primary characters, but it's Julia Duffy and George Wendt who steal the show as Shawn's parents, the titular Campbells. In fact, their part in the movie ended up being even bigger than originally planned.
Watch the Christmas with the Campbells trailer
"Christmas with the Campbells" tells the story of Jesse (Brittany Snow), who gets a bomb dropped on her when boyfriend Shawn (Alex Moffat) breaks up with her before the holidays. However, Shawn's parents still want Jesse to come visit for Christmas, especially since Shawn will be spending the holidays in New York due to a new job opportunity. While spending time in the snowy mountains of Idaho with the Campbells, Jesse meets the charming, flannel-clad nephew David (Justin Long), and there just might be new love in their air.
While Jesse tries to figure out what to do with this Yuletide romantic spark, the Campbells have no problem keeping the spark alive in their own love life. Shawn's parents Liz (Duffy) and Robert (Wendt) always make time for some bedroom activity. Liz in particular is quite blunt and vocal about what she wants and when she wants it. Duffy and Wendt get some of the most shocking and funny lines in the whole movie, which you can get a taste of in the trailer above, and it turns out that's because the audience wanted to see more of them after the initial test screenings.
'People really responded to their relationship and how they would give these sex jokes to each other'
In an interview with Collider, Billingsley mentioned that around five scenes were written and shot in the last two weeks of post-production. So when we spoke with director Clare Niederpruem leading up to the release of "Christmas with the Campbells," we asked about some of those last-minute scenes, which were created to give Duffy and Wendt more screentime, specifically in the bedroom. Niederpruem told us:
"So what happened is, Julia Duffy and George Wendt, who are so wonderful, when they were doing test screenings of the film, people really responded to their relationship and how they would give these sex jokes to each other. But then we never went to the bedroom to see them together alone. So Vince had the genius idea of, 'Well, why don't we just film it?' Definitely one thing I've learned from working with those guys is you can always improve. They were taking the information, like, 'Oh, this is really working,' this idea that this older couple has this very vibrant, crazy sex life. So they wanted to do more of that, and that was mostly what we added."
And that's how we ended up with the hilarious bedroom scenes scattered throughout "Christmas with the Campbells," from enjoying a nice dose of lean to plenty of sexy plans. Duffy and Wendt get some of the funniest bits in the movie thanks to those scenes, so it's a good thing the crew was able to get them into the movie so quickly.
"Christmas with the Campbells" is playing in select theaters and streaming on AMC+.