Paul Campbell, Tyler Hynes, and Andrew Walker Talk Three Wiser Men and a Boy and The Christmas Grump
The Brenner brothers are back for Three Wiser Men and a Boy! Together they help put on a holiday pageant for young Thomas, while dealing with life’s curveballs during the Christmas season. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with Paul Campbell, Tyler Hynes, and Andrew Walker about their much-anticipated Hallmark Channel sequel.
It’s been five years since the events of Three Wise Men and a Baby, but the Brenner brothers haven’t changed all that much. “The idea of evolution is really interesting because, really, how much do we evolve as people? You have this idea of where you'd like to be and you have the reality of where you are and then you have your own perception of yourself,” Paul Campbell told me. “At the end of the day and at the end of this movie, I think what we learn is we haven't necessarily evolved, we've just come to terms with who we are. We love ourselves because of it, not in spite of it.”
Andrew Walker continued: “This is how deep they go in their writing and this is how complex they get, which really makes it pretty easy for us to just say the words and have a lot of fun on set and explore these characters.”
In the film, they reimagine the story of a famous green meanie known as The Grump. “There's a lot of body dangling, flying wire, and all of the magical moments that come out of that. Tyler [Hynes] was pitching stuff even in that moment just because of the way that it worked out with me slowly rotating and then my butt is toward the audience,” said Campbell. “Tyler realized that he could grab my hand and slowly manipulate the way that I was hanging and then would just let me go at the wrong time. All these things that they're not in the script but the opportunities present themselves and these guys are so good at capitalizing [on it].”
“A scene like that would take three weeks to shoot normally. We shot that whole scene in a day,” shared Walker. “You got to find moments pretty quickly and that's why best idea wins. We're constantly just trying things and being very candid whether or not it's going to work.
The story of The Grump paralleled the journey the Brenner brothers go on in the film. “He's an outsider who doesn't think he fits in and then he comes to realize that he's accepted for who he is, right? So thematically that whole show wraps up all of the arcs that we've been working toward,” explained Campbell. “When the little girl sings at the end, she's singing about how he got it all. Wrong what made him special wasn't a song, it was what was in his heart. It was sort of an extra layer to the whole thing.”
Three Wiser Men and a Boy dropped this holiday season on Hallmark Channel.
