Whether you’re a small-town baker or a high-powered lawyer from the city, everyone loves a good Christmas movie. Even the people who make them love watching them. At a celebratory dinner for Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia at Catch Steak L.A., cast members Sara Waisglass (Maxine), Jennifer Robertson (Ellen), and Mason Temple (Hunter) effused about the merits of the genre. Temple explained how watching such movies is different when you’re Canadian. For one thing, you know where all these allegedly American small towns actually are. Hint: It’s not America. “I love to watch for the locations,†he said. “I’ll be watching one and go, ‘That’s Niagara-on-the-Lake!’ And I was dead to rights on that one.â€
For Sara Waisglass, part of the charm of these movies is the predictability. She compared the experience to watching Friends reruns. Predicting which of the three or four basic stories each movie will use is part of the fun. “Honestly, nine times out of ten, I’m correct,†she said. She even plotted the movie she’d like to star in: “The show opens and it’s a girl on a treadmill. She’s a boss-ass bitch. She’s got the earpiece. She’s a big-shot lawyer. Oopsies! Her dad’s muffin bakery is in trouble. She needs to go back home. Who’s there? Her high-school crush, Trevor. So then Trevor has to help her rebuild her muffin factory. And there’s the point where she has to choose between her muffin factory and her job.â€
Jennifer Robertson, who Schitt’s Creek fans may recognize as Jocelyn Schitt, learned the hard way about avid fans like Waisglass. “I just did my first Hallmark,†she shared. Robertson played the sister of the big-city heroine in this year’s In Merry Measure. “What I learned is that Hallmark viewers love to rate and review. And it’s phenomenal. One lady in a full Snuggie and her cat is like, ‘Let’s talk about this movie! This lady’s hair was obviously a wig.’ And I was like, ‘That’s my own hair!’ But it was their favorite movie of the week.†You read it here first: Santa is real, and so is Jennifer Robertson’s hair.