Producing Christmas

A conversation with Christmas movie producer Danielle Von Zernack

I watch a lot of HGTV and I also love the cheesy but mostly charming holiday movies on Lifetime and Hallmark Channel. One day, I was watching Love It or List It, when I saw a commercial for Designing Christmas starring, among others, Love It or List It designer Hilary Farr. It was a co-branded holiday movie which is kind of terrifying but also intriguing. I am absolutely the target audience for this frankenmovie. I casually mentioned my interest in this movie on Twitter and one of the producers, Danielle Von Zerneck, casually mentioned that she was one of the producers. I absolutely had to talk to her and so I did.

Roxane Gay:

Designing Christmas, this amazing collaboration with HGTV, I didn't even know that was a thing that could happen. I would love to know more about what you do, why you do it, how you do it.

Danielle von Zerneck:

The origin of Discovery Plus deciding to make these movies is someone at the company, pre-Zaslav, was like “we lose our viewers at Christmas to all those Christmas movies on other networks. Wouldn't it make sense, because all the subject matters are either food or home, to create some Christmas movies that would keep people watching us?” They did one [in 2021], Candy Coated Christmas starring Ree Drummond, and the smart, basic concept is to have the stunt casting of a Food Network or an HGTV star.  It killed it for them and they commissioned four more. I work with this writer, Michael Murray, who I really love working with and the things we're most proud of are producing the first gay Christmas movie for Lifetime that didn't have anything to do with coming out, just two people having fun at Christmas.

Roxane:

What movie was that?

Danielle:

It's called The Christmas Setup with Fran Drescher. It’s great.

Roxane:

Oh, yeah. Good one. [ed. Great, actually.]

Danielle:

I love that movie. And then we were able to do a follow-up the next year, with two women.

Roxane:

Nice.

Danielle:

And no coming out, just a fucking nice Christmas movie for two women falling in love. Prior to that, before we produced anything together, we were trying to pitch Hallmark. We'd come up with a concept about two HGTV hosts and one of them is going to get married and, meanwhile, they've fallen in love. We didn't sell it, but we had done it through MarVista that makes lots and lots of these kinds of movies. The guy there, Larry Grimaldi, he always sat there, it was a really good pitch.  When Discovery Plus was like, "We're going to make two that are home renovation-y and two that are food," he was like, "Oh, wait, what about this one?" He pulled out this project we had given him six years ago and they went, "We love this." Larry called me and Michael, while we were making Christmas Setup, and said, "I sold the designing," we called it Fixer Upper at the time, "To Discovery Plus." We paused and Michael said, “You’re going to have to remind us about what that's about," and it was very funny. Because all he had done was slap the word Christmas on it and gave it to Discovery.

Roxane:

Sometimes that's all it takes.

Danielle:

Discovery Plus was really interested in making it good or if not, better than the other stuff, elevating as much as possible but also having a meaningful star. We lucked out with Hillary Farr because she can act. Michael wrote the part for her knowing she had chops and we could really put her in a scene. But the thing I love as a producer and why I love the Christmas genre is because it's very specific and you've got to stay in these lines and things have to happen by certain acts. We ask ourselves, “What can we do to slightly subvert, get people thinking about some other shit maybe? How can we sneak in some themes and ideas throughout?” That's always been what keeps us motivated.

For this one, we didn't have any executives who were well-versed in the vernacular, so they were entrusting us with that. We didn't have the Christmas police people behind us and as a result, we were able to play with form a little bit and it felt like a more relaxed Christmas movie for us. Discovery Plus did a really good job understanding the needs for their company and how these Christmas movies would serve them. We'll see if they'll make more but, ultimately, this was a smart way to keep eyes on their network.

Roxane:

This is incredibly interesting, especially as someone who loves the genre of cable Christmas movie; it is a very specific genre. There's a range of quality across these movies.

Danielle:

You think?

Roxane:

It's fascinating. Some of them, you can tell were filmed in someone's backyard and others, you realize, okay, they're going full out here. There's a good script, there's a little location budget, it's amazing. In your role as a producer, how do you work to elevate your films and find ways of getting people to invest in them given how saturated the genre is?

Danielle:

I worked with Ana Gasteyer and Rachel Dratch and we made a parody of a Christmas movie you have to watch, called A Clusterfunke Christmas. We originally developed it at ABC then ABC was like, "We had a blood bath, we're not going to be making this." We ended up at Viacom and it was going to be Paramount Plus but ended up on Comedy Central which is such a bizarre place for it. But this movie, it is pitch perfect. Tina Fey came to watch it and she was like, "You fucking nailed it, you nailed it." So, we have inside baseball shit like you wouldn't believe and jokes about Canadians and the fake snow, but our story is airtight.

Anyway, there's such a range and different approaches. There's low budget Canadian acquisition Christmas movies so they make them at a really small price point and they have a decent story and it's good enough. And then you get a lot of stars or people who are considered stars in this genre, this little niche genre and they get a little bit more money and they have a brand so you stick closely to that and there's usually a range of stories that work for them. When you have those actors, you probably get the slightly better crews who actually worry about whether or not there's a fucking green tree in the shot or not because, boy, you watch some of these movies, they don't give a shit that it's not winter.

Roxane:

Here's a palm tree and there's a reindeer.

Danielle:

It's clearly May! And then you have crazy people like me who have such weird ego invested in making the best damn movie. My goal always is that, at the end of the movie, people go, "Oh, that's a good one." I care because, all of these productions, everybody has the same gack [production design stuff]. I can identify a production company, where it's shot, who it's been shot by, and I can see all of the Christmas stuff they have; you see it consistently in all the movies they make.

Roxane:

So, they just take it from one movie to the next?

Danielle:

Yeah.

Roxane:

Glorious, just glorious.

Danielle:

They have their little storage room full of Christmas gack. Even if I have to use the same Christmas gack, I can use it differently. There are some wonderful people working in the genre who are full of joy and really cool and super smart. And then there are the people who I feel have, especially in Canada where a lot of these are made because their government supports tax breaks and supports the arts there, I don't know, it's crazy. There are people who know how to do this, know how to be charismatic with the crew and everything but they phone it in. And those are great because, when you're making a widget, sometimes you just want a fucking decent widget and they'll do it on time and on budget. But the movies I've done, I tend to use them as opportunities for new directors. People who don't have a lot of credits, who are interesting so that they can go and work in this really weird, little area and maybe make something a little bit more interesting or maybe learn a little bit more about how they want to be a director. That makes for a more interesting experience all around.

Jill Carter, who directed two for me, she was a script supervisor; she was smart and interesting. And then this other guy, Pat Mills, who directed Designing Christmas, and also directed Christmas Setup, the first gay dude one, he's an independent filmmaker and writer in Canada who never would've gotten into Christmas if he hadn't been able to do Christmas Setup and, as a result, I got two really interesting movies.

Roxane:

Is it a tough sell when you take something like a Christmas Setup to a network and say it's time for this genre to really expand?

Danielle:

Michael and I had done a movie, I think, the year before called Christmas Around the Corner which had Alexandra Breckenridge and it was based on an idea where there’s a bookstore in Scotland in this town that has a bunch of bookstores and it has an Airbnb above it and, if you stay at the Airbnb….

Roxane:

You can run the bookstore? Yes.

Danielle:

We ran with that idea and it's actually adorable. But one of the things that was very important to Michael who's gay and was married for 30 years and all of that, he's quietly just been trying to find more representation in the genre as he goes because he's written Christmas movies forever.

Danielle:

One of them, this guy and he has a husband and they just adopted a baby. And it was part for our main character to realize small towns aren't necessarily reductive to people who were scared of the world and everything like that, it was more just about there can be all different kinds of people in a small town. And I know it sounds stupid but it was a big deal. But Lifetime dug it and there was a woman who was working there at the time, Meghan Hooper White, and Safna VS who is the one who shepherded a Christmas Setup but we both went back to them and we said, "It's time and we should be first." And they really trusted the us as a team and so that's how it happened. It was really born out of having this small thing happen, a C story make them realize that it's more exciting, it makes our stories more interesting.

Roxane:

Now, I'm always curious. What does a producer do? What is your job? Because it seems like you do a lot of everything.

Danielle:

There are so many different producers and, the TV movie business, the-two hour business, is its own little world. I am, an executive producer who ultimately acts as a showrunner on set and that's only in a TV movie world. I'm who the network looks to, to make sure quality is ensured, the communication is good, that our talent is happy, and we're delivering what we promised. I work really hard to make sure you're not just getting the same old, same old. I also tend to mentor and help talent feel empowered in the work they're doing.

Roxane:

How did you get into producing? Because I know you used to be an actor. How did you make that transition and what do you like most about producing?

Danielle:

Okay. So, my dad was a producer, nepo baby, I guess. What's your take on the nepo baby thing?