[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
After kicking off the Christmas movie season back in October over on Hallmark Mystery with My Sweet Austrian Holiday, Brittney Bristow is back to close it out, this time on Lifetime, with Engaged by Christmas, directed by Dylan Pearce from a script by Emily Duncan and Olivia Hannah.
Reuniting with frequent co-star Marcus Rosner, who also produces through his Northern Gateway Films, Brittney plays proposal event planner Zoe, who embarks on a (planned) professional and (unplanned) personal transition in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Zoe’s wanted to break out of being the second seat – and the one doing the heavy lifting – of building events out of wedding proposals for her boss and finally makes the leap to starting her own business,
She writes to a local advice columnist, “Dear Adora,” for some guidance on the personal side of her life, gets it, and then it backfires when her presumed proposal instead becomes a break up. Suddenly her business plan — building couples’ experiences and ramping up an influencer blog to highlight local businesses who can provide the perfect ingredients for those experiences — is much less couple-y.
In a bit of a panic about all that, she tries to speak to Adora in person and discovers that Adora is actually Adam (Rosner), who ghosts the column. Skating right on the edge of desperation, Zoe is so rattled that there isn’t an Adora, and feeling doubly betrayed, she tells Adam she’ll protect his secret if he’ll help publicize her business and get it off the ground.
That’s where the title is a bit of a misnomer. While Zoe pines a little for the relationship she completely misread, the film is instead about her finding her footing on her own, bolstered by her two BFFs, Lauren (Colette Nwachi), and Emma (Megan Tracz) who are also navigating their own professional and personal situations but immediately show up for their friend.
And despite the slightly menacing way the friendship with Adam, who’s a good guy but overwhelmed by always saying yes, begins, he and Zoe help each other, too. She realizes it’s OK to loosen her grip on the perfect plan, and he realizes it’s OK to not be all things to everyone else all the time. He learns can put himself first. Earlier this month, I spoke with Bristow about the project. Here are the top takeaways from our conversation.
Rosner, who is a longtime friend, and with whom Bristow has previously worked on five films – The Love Club quartet and Love on the Right Course, which she wrote, sent her the Engaged by Christmas script, telling her he needed the right person to play Zoe, and she was it. She was excited to be invited in, and recalls that when she showed up to the very warm and welcoming Edmonton set, her first time filming there, it was still a bit daunting because everybody on the production was essentially a family unit that’s already worked on several films together. And director Pearce is another partner in Northern Gateway.
The first scene she shot was the encounter between Zoe and Adam where she goes fairly off the rails, and Bristow says she was terrified because it’s a big scene and wildly emotional, and she thought that if she didn’t nail it for this group, where she was essentially the newbie outsider, she’d have to pack it in and go home. She did of course nail it and they were off to the races.
Bristow loved the power of friendship that’s so integral to the film, sharing that it’s often hard to remember, when so many of the stories and songs about Christmas are about finding or spending time with that special someone, that the season doesn’t have to be about that. She points to Zoe’s friends dropping everything in their own lives to comfort her when she has heart broken, and a special moment of grace when she finds herself alone.
In the film, Christmas becomes what Zoe makes it, and as much as her friendships are central to that, so is finding her footing on her own. There’s a scene in the film that Bristow loves where Zoe makes plans that go sideways and she spends an evening by herself. Although she’s initially disappointed and sad about the unexpected change after investing care and thought into curating a special experience, she turns it into a lovely evening of personal resilience, reclaiming a Christmas tradition for herself. Bristow says she also appreciated that Zoe finds balance, letting go of the small hurdles that might have previously tilted her off course, while still keeping that drive that makes her who she is.
Engaged by Christmas premieres Sunday, December 22nd, at 8 pm/7c on Lifetime in the U.S. Bristow will be live Tweeting the premiere, and is excited to watch the film for the first time with the fans. Here’s a sneak peek.
Photos and videos courtesy of Hallmark Media.
