Jonathan Bennett and Finding Mr Christmas Cast On Holiday Hunks, Vulnerability, and Challenges
From the mind of Mean Girls star Jonathan Bennett comes Hallmark’s first ever reality competition series Finding Mr. Christmas. The show brings together 10 hopeful Hallmark hunks to compete in both festive and acting challenges to be crowned the first ever Mr. Christmas and lead a brand new Countdown to Christmas holiday film. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with Bennett and four contestants about the experience.
Bennett was inspired to come up with the concept after many of his actor friends asked how to get into Hallmark movies. “There's two people in the world: people that watch Hallmark movies and liars. Everyone wants in on the pop culture zeitgeist that is Hallmark Channel,” he told me. “I started thinking with my friend Ben Roy. I was like, what if we made a competition show where we let the audience in on the process of selecting the new Hallmark holiday hunk? That's how Finding Mr. Christmas was born!”
In order to win the competition, Bennett was looking for the crucial things that make someone a Hallmark leading man. “The things we're looking for are the things that the characteristics that all of our Hallmark stars have. All of our leading men have charisma, they have a sense of humor, they have a sense of wit. They have charm coming out of their ears. They're nice, they're kind, they're good people,” he revealed. “They have a huge heart and, at the end of the day, they look amazing in Christmas sweaters. They have great teeth and perfect hair and look good in a Christmas sweater. Those were the things we were looking for as our baseline, but then all of these guys brought so much more than we could have ever hoped for.”
The contestants has their own plans when it came to how they would stand out in the competition. “Jonathan Bennett and Melissa Peterman, whether you guys know it or not, you live and breathe all these examples for us,” said Ezra Moreland. “In between the challenges and everything, they're setting such an example for us. My goal going in was just listen be open and try to bring my own self but also emulate what the greats are doing.”
Gage Robinson went in with a plan… that quickly went out the window. “My plan was to win. I'm a very, very competitive person. I hate losing more than I like winning, so my plan was to go in there and do whatever it took to win,” he shared. “After meeting all of these guys and, as you get into these challenges, that plan quickly changed and kind of deteriorated as you realized you can't really have a plan going into these.”
Meanwhile Blake Kelley took away the most important lesson of all. “I learned something from Jonathan early on in the competition. He said, ‘You are going to be better at being you than anybody else.’ I didn't want to come in here and try to be him or be Tyler Hynes,” he said. “I wanted to try to be the best version of Blake and ultimately just see how far that could take me in the competition.”
The show features both physical holiday challenges and acting ones that the hopeful hunks were surprised by. “I was more nervous about the holiday challenges. They'd throw something at you and then it would have a twist to it. Now your brain is scrambled and then all of a sudden they say, ‘Ready, set, go,’ and now I don't have a plan anymore so now my competitive edge is completely taken away,” said Robinson, while Moreland wasn’t prepared for the level of exposure there is: “You don't realize the amount of vulnerability that's needed to portray a character and that caught me by surprise.”
Even Bennett was impressed by their ability to get challenges complete. “There's a challenge where they cut down a Christmas tree and run it through an obstacle course,” he laughed. “To watch these guys do it, it was challenging, but, at the same time, if it was me and Melissa, we'd still be there trying to chop down the tree.”
This year also marks 15 years of Countdown to Christmas, with Bennett sharing that creating this show has been his favorite memory in his tenure at the company. “My favorite moment of my entire life at Hallmark was the day that I walked into the house of Finding Mr. Christmas for the first episode and said, “Hey guys!” It was so magical because I created the show and dreamed it up in my head and put two and a half years of blood, sweat, and tears into making it happen. It was so emotional for me, not just because we were shooting the show that we created, but because for the first time I got to look out at 10 guys that all had the same dream that I had,” he shared. “They want to be a movie star. They want to be in Hallmark Christmas movies. So to look out and see these 10 guys that had so much life and excitement and hope it was like, oh my gosh, I'm actually doing something where I'm actually going to help these guys grow and learn and become better so they can be the movie stars that they want to be.”
Bennett continued: “I didn't tell them this, but after I walked out of there I went down to the control room and I just started crying. My husband was holding me. He's like, ‘What's wrong?’ I'm like, ‘I can't believe we're actually doing this. We're actually getting to do it.’ I was balling my eyes out in the control room. They're up there going, ‘Oh gosh, what are we gonna have to do now?’ There's so much emotion. That house is filled with emotion.”
New episodes of Finding Mr. Christmas drop Thursdays on Hallmark+.
