What do Lindsay Lohan, Lacey Chabert, Cristina Milian and Chad Michael Murray have in common? If we were asking this question in 2004, the answer might be that they were all in the latest issue of Seventeen magazine, or all took home surfboard trophies at the Teen Choice Awards.
In 2024, however, this crew of Noughties teen stars are united by something other than their former glory: They’re all starring in holiday rom-com movies, and it might just be the best thing to happen to their careers since wearing two tank tops layered on top of each other to a red carpet event.
Much like Britney, Céline and Adele turned the Vegas residency into a canny way to get those touring bucks without sacrificing a personal life, starring in a made-for-television holiday movie isn’t the last stop on the highway to career oblivion that it once was.
In fact, it’s quite a coveted gig — especially in an industry that’s been turned upside down by streaming, which means those residual cheques don’t come with as many zeroes as they used to.
Behind all the fake snow and flirty cookie decorating, these holiday romances are pop culture produced on an industrial scale, reaching a mass audience. Last year, Hallmark released 42 original movies, and 3.3 million people tuned into the premiere of its Lacey Chabert vehicle “A Merry Scottish Christmas,” outranking every cable news program.
In an era where brand deals are far more lucrative than acting in a prestigious indie film or trying to resurrect the music part of your multi-hyphenate career, follower counts and image matter, and these stars can’t beat the kind of positive exposure they get on, say, the Hallmark channel, which is watched by more people than CNN.
But it may not all be tree-lighting and hot cocoa: A casting director is suing holiday movie juggernaut Hallmark for age discrimination and wrongful dismissal, alleging a senior executive said, “Our leading ladies are aging out. We need to find new talent to take their place.” Chabert, known as “the Queen of Christmas” for her prolific holiday Hallmark hits, was singled-out in these comments (“Lacey’s getting older and we have to find someone like her to replace her as she gets older”) as was channel stalwart Holly Robinson Peete (“No one wants her because she’s too expensive and getting too old.”) Hallmark responded, “We deny these outrageous allegations.”
Casting these actors with long history in the public eye is a strategy that tugs on the heartstrings of nostalgia, one of the most powerful levers the zeitgeist has left to pull. It’s no Brat Summer, but if you haven’t had a big hit since before the Obama administration and/or you’re looking to reconnect with an audience who once had your picture in their locker, these holiday movies are where you’ll find the same Millennial viewers who made you a star the first time around.
Except now, rather than requiring them to line up around the block to be in the audience when you’re on TRL, you’ll meet them where they’d much rather be: in their comfies in their living room, with one eye on Instagram and the other on your character borrowing a scarf from a hunky small-town lumberjack because you forgot to pack one for this High Powered Business Trip that got derailed by a snowstorm and now, even though you’ll never get the promotion, you will find true love with a grumpy single dad.
Take, for example, Nikki Deloach. A member of the Mickey Mouse Club alongside Christina, Britney, Ryan Gosling et al, she’s had a second, arguably more successful act as a Hallmark actor and writer since 2018. “It’s safe. You want to live in these places, you want to go there for Christmas, you want to be their friends, you want to kiss that guy,” Deloach told IndieWire recently about her holiday movie career. “There’s always a happy ending, and in a world where so much is unknown, audiences want to be able to turn something on and know that for those 90 minutes, they can escape into a world that is full of love and hope.”
That too applies to the fading stars who have found fresh fame in the twinkling glow of fairy lights on a small town square. Here’s your primer on the current crop of rom-com stars.
The Christmas movie star: Lacey Chabert
How she got here: Chabert came to fame as little sister Claudia in “Party of Five” and then solidified her place in the Millennial canon as Gretchen Wieners in 2004’s “Mean Girls.” (So fetch.) In 2010, she got her first part in a Hallmark movie, but it took two years for her to land a lead role. Fast forward 12 years, and she’s starred in more than 30 Hallmark movies, written and directed for the network, and produced over 20 films for it, too.
The 2024 holiday movie: While she’s long been a Hallmark stalwart, and appears in 2024’s “The Christmas Quest” as an archeologist who travels to Iceland with her ex to search for treasure, this year Chabert is making a big splash on Netflix, in ”Hot Frosty.” Brace yourself for the plot: It’s about a muscular snowman, played by Dustin Milligan from “Schitt’s Creek,” who comes to life and teaches a widow to live, laugh and love again. It’s already become a hit. (“Netflix’s Sexy Snowman Movie Changed My Life,” goes one Daily Beast headline, while Stylist assessed that “This is more than festive fluff.”) Some insider intel for you: “Hot Frosty” was filmed in Brockville, Ont., with many locals signing up to work as extras on the movie and taking note of Chabert’s Starbucks order: an almond milk latte.
The Christmas movie star: Lindsay Lohan
How she got here: We’d need to be snowed in for three days in a tiny mountain town to fully explain Lohan’s career odyssey from “The Parent Trap” through “Mean Girls,” the wild and sad tabloid days and that temporary “Euro” accent circa 2016 to her current renaissance. Suffice it to say: LiLo’s had quite the reputational redemption arc, and she owes a lot of it to the Netflix deal she signed following the success of her 2022 holiday comedy, “Falling For Christmas.”
The 2024 holiday movie: In ”Our Little Secret,” Lohan plays a woman meeting her boyfriend’s family for the first time over the holidays, only to bump into a former flame, who’s there as someone’s plus one. To steal a line from the trailer: “Merry Ex-mas!”
The Christmas movie star: Cristina Milian
How she got here: Milian was originally a singer, and her greatest contribution to music is a toss-up between “AM To PM” and “Call Me, Beep Me!” from the 2003 Kim Possible soundtrack. But her original ambition was to be an actor, a dream she’s more recently made a reality with a string of rom-com films, including “Christmas Cupid” and “A Snow Globe Christmas.”
The 2024 holiday movie: ”Meet Me Next Christmas” is like “An Affair To Remember” — the one where Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr promise to meet at the Empire State Building in six months — but the meeting spot is a Pentatonix holiday concert (yes, the 2010s a cappella group) and the narrative driving force is Milian’s mad dash to get tickets to this sold-out show in time for her to be reunited with her dream man. It was the number one movie on Netflix in mid-November.
The Christmas movie star: Tamera Mowry-Housley
How she got here: Twins Tia and Tamera Mowry starred in the iconic nineties sitcom “Sister, Sister” — Tamera is older by two minutes. After a foray into reality television and a talk show, plus a role in 2002’s wildly problematic The Hot Chick, Mowry-Housley is now firmly ensconced in the festive firmament. In 2020, she inked a deal with Hallmark to star in and executive produce original projects, and so far that’s netted the likes of A Christmas Miracle and Christmas Angel.
The 2024 holiday movie: Joining a storied lineage of Hallmark movies that revolve around baking, ”Scouting for Christmas” is about a real estate agent and a baker who are thrown together while catering a scout troop’s holiday party. As you’d expect, the ending is tied up neater than a reef knot.
The Christmas movie star: Chad Michael Murray
How he got here: The dreamiest of all the early ’00s heartthrobs, Murray played the sensitive teen basketball star Lucas Scott in “One Tree Hill.” Ever since, he’s been giving the people what they want, which is him, smouldering while playing a series of onscreen love interests ripped straight from the pages of a romance novel, like a mysterious handyman in the slept-upon Canadian show “Sullivan’s Crossing.”
The 2024 holiday movie: Spicing things up from his previous holiday offerings, Murray strips down for ”The Merry Gentlemen,” in which a woman must save her family’s nightclub, “The Rhythm Room,” by staging a festive all-male “dance revue.” Murray and his abs take centre stage in this “Magic Mike”-lite production.
