[quote] Lacey Chabert On Reuniting With Scott Wolf For Hallmark Christmas Movie
Hallmark mainstay Lacey Chabert reunites with her Party of Five co-star Scott Wolf Nov. 18 in the channel’s A Very Scottish Christmas, a confection about a pair of once close siblings who reunite at their mom’s girlhood home in Scotland for the holiday.
Here, Chabert talks about working again with Wolf — who played her older brother Bailey in the Fox drama that ran from 1994 to 2000 — in her 38th (!!!) Hallmark movie, as well as what it meant to reunite with Lindsay Lohan and Amanda Seyfried in those excellent Walmart holiday commercials.
[bold]Hallmark really got ahead of things in anticipation of the strike. When did you shoot A Very Merry Christmas?[/bold]
I shot Haul Out the Holly in April and then filmed A Merry Scottish Christmas in June.
[bold]How much time does it take to complete one of these movies?[/bold]
Every single Hallmark movie I’ve done, all 38 of them, have been in about 15 days. It really is incredible to shoot that much that quickly, but it’s a pace and a rhythm that we’ve all become so accustomed to and it’s really nice that I get to work with a lot of the same crews. I’ve worked with the same directors and producers repeatedly, so there’s a bit of a family feel.
[bold]Whose idea was it to get Scott Wolf?[/bold]
Scott and I just love each other so much, and since the moment we wrapped Party of Five 23 years ago, I have hoped that we’d have the chance to work together again. And while he’s been in my life as a brother forever — we’re very, very close — we hadn’t yet had that chance to work together on screen. So when he did a Hallmark Christmas movie a few years ago, everyone started asking, ‘are you guys going to do one together?’ We both said we would love this opportunity and Hallmark embraced the idea and found this beautiful story.
They let us be involved in the development of the story and the characters because we wanted to make sure it felt right. I’m so excited to be talking about it today. I’ll never forget standing there on set before we shot our first scene. I got a little teary-eyed because I just couldn’t believe that I had this opportunity to play his sister again and to spend these three weeks with him and reminisce about our time together on Party of Five.
[bold]Were you clear to Hallmark that you had to be siblings and not lovers?[/bold]
A hundred percent. He and I both said that from the beginning, as did everyone else. It was never anyone’s idea for us to be love interests in the movie. No one wants to see that! We are forever brother and sister, and I was really happy that Hallmark was willing to embrace that being the core of the story. While there are romantic storylines in the film that are important and beautiful, having the brother sister relationship and the way they sort of find each other again as they get this news about their family in Scotland, was really important to us.
[bold]What were some of your memories of working with Scott on Party of Five? You were just a kid.[/bold]
I was 11. Can you believe that? I did it from age 11 to 17, and I was not much older than my daughter is now. I just remember the first time I met him. It was during the audition process and our very last read together. We all read together as a family, Neve and Matthew and Scott. It was at one of the offices at Fox and at the end of the audition they said, ‘should we tell them?’ We all looked around and they said, ‘you’re our Salingers.’
There was this immediate burst of laughter and tears and hugs. I didn’t really understand the scope of what it meant to be on a show, but I knew instantly that I was going to be a part of something very special, and that it was going to mean a lot to my life. I never knew it would turn into six years and 144 episodes. Who I am today as an adult is such a large part of the influence of all those wonderful people around me during that time.
