Now that the holiday season is here, your life is about to become saturated with Christmas specials, whether you like it or not. There’s one, however, that we are super-excited about. It stars Maya Rudolph and Matthew Broderick — two amazing actors with Jewish lineage — and it’s called “A Christmas Story Live!” It will air on Fox, which partnered with Old Navy to make it all happen.
As you may have guessed, it’s a new, live musical interpretation of the classic 1983 Christmas movie of the same name, which later became a 2012 Broadway musical. The musical is set in the 1940s and follows young Ralphie during the holiday season.
Rudolph recently spoke to EW about the role, explaining how she relished playing the role of a “quirky mother”:
I fell into the movie on my own. It was never a household Christmas tradition or anything, but I felt like I discovered it enough on my own that it felt a bit darker and more my sense of humor. I love Melinda Dillon [as the mother] in the movie so much. I didn’t expect to ever play her part in the musical, but she really shines for me in that movie. She’s just wonderfully warm and a little bit her own odd, quirky mother that’s not a normal mother but is a normal mother.
She went on to say how she loves the fact that the movie, despite being about Christmas, is about being a parent (which she knows a thing or two about as a mom of two):
It’s beautiful because the element of being a parent is there too in the story and so, as parents we experience Christmas from a completely different perspective. I definitely felt like it was the more adult version of Christmas when I saw the original movie. I was like, “Oh wait there’s parents involved in this too. It’s not just about my Christmas list, you know?”
Check out the preview below. The musical airs Dec. 17 at 7 p.m. Eastern on Fox.
https://youtu.be/g8y-RSftHKE
