written by erika janes photographed by daniel doperalski
That’s Christmas decorations, to be clear. She’s ready for the blowback.
“The day after Halloween, pumpkins are going away and Christmas trees are going up,” she tells SheKnows. “I know that can be a little bit of a controversial point of view — people think it's too soon. But for me, it can't come soon enough.”
It’s a September afternoon as we talk over Zoom, and there’s nary a pumpkin to be seen in the “office-type room” of Chabert’s Los Angeles home. All Hallows Eve is more than a month away, but we’re skipping right over the spooky season to talk about the holiday that really gets the actress, entrepreneur, and mom of one excited. “Christmas has always been my favorite,” she says. “And it makes sense that I have found myself making so many Christmas movies because I wish it was Christmas all year long.”
For Lacey Chabert, decorating day is November 1 this year.
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the holiday issue 2023
Actress, HSN designer, and Hallmark movie star Lacey Chabert is showing her authentic self with an expanding apparel line and two new Christmas movies out this season. And she really does love the holidays as much as you think.
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written by erika janes | photographs by daniel doperalski | video by peter lee, butter la
Yep, it turns out that Lacey Chabert, crowned by the media as the queen of the Hallmark holiday movie, really does love Christmas as much as you might think — or hope — she would. To be sure, she’s showing off her acting chops in those small-screen, feel-good films, but when it comes to her wholehearted embrace of the holiday spirit? Well, that’s no act.
Chabert’s enthusiasm for all things holiday is palpable even over the extra-small screen of Zoom. While she wasn’t able to talk about the two new Hallmark movies she made that are part of this year’s famous Countdown to Christmas lineup due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, ongoing at the time of our initial conversation, she’s busy expanding her HSN clothing collection and looking forward to actually being home for the holidays this year. Hmmm… A famously busy Hollywood star is forced to take a break, finds a new passion, and makes holiday memories with her husband, young daughter, and extended family? It almost sounds like the plot of a Hallmark Christmas movie starring Lacey Chabert.
MOVIE MAGIC
Chabert may be known as Hallmark’s Queen of Christmas — and indeed, she’s starred in more than a dozen of the channel’s holiday films, including this season’s A Merry Scottish Christmas, which premiered November 18 and Haul Out the Holly: Lit Up, which debuted November 25 — but her career is much more storied than a series of Christmas movies. Practically a show business lifer, Chabert began acting at age 7 and got early breaks playing Cosette in Les Miserables on Broadway and a short stint as Erica Kane’s daughter on All My Children before landing the role of Claudia Salinger on the TV series Party of Five.
The show, which aired for six seasons, helped make her a household name, but her role as Gretchen Wieners in the 2004 hit movie Mean Girls cemented it. She’s also had a successful run as a voice actor, playing Eliza Thornberry in The Wild Thornberrys Movie and Rugrats Go Wild among many others.
Still, it’s her work with Crown Media Family Networks, Hallmark’s parent company, that has earned her a loyal fan base and given her a place to grow as an artist. Chabert made her Hallmark Channel debut in 2010 and starred in her first holiday movie for the network, Matchmaker Santa, two years later. In total, she’s appeared in more than 30 Hallmark films.
“These shows are me standing up there, talking to the customer, and I'm not going to lie. I have to be as authentic as I can. And so it's my responsibility to make sure I've done everything I can to make the best product I can. That's how I view it, whether it's a movie or a piece of clothing.”
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“I've been an HSN customer for a long time. I love the experience of watching these different vendors talk about their product and then getting it on your doorstep. And so when they came to me with the opportunity I was just thrilled.”
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“You know, you're trying to create this perfect memory, but to our kids, for the most part, it doesn't matter if the pie was perfectly baked or the decorations look perfect or if everything was beautifully wrapped. I don't think that's the thing that kids take away from it.”
lacey chabert
When we speak again, it’s November. The SAG-AFTRA strike has ended, and Chabert is thrilled to finally be able to talk about her latest on-screen projects: A Merry Scottish Christmas and Haul Out the Holly: Lit Up. Her work, always personally meaningful, has been even more so this year because, as she puts it, “it’s been a year of reunions.”
Chabert says reuniting with the Haul Out the Holly cast and revisiting Evergreen Lane was a “joyful” experience, and that’s a word she reaches for again when describing the time she spent with her Party of Five co-star and TV brother Scott Wolf in A Merry Scottish Christmas, where they play siblings once again.
“I got to have this lovely reunion with Scott, who is my dear friend and forever brother,” she says. “Spending three weeks together in Ireland and Scotland was just so joyful. And it was just so much fun to get to share the screen with him again.”
A YEAR OF REUNIONS
The movie is heartfelt, festive, and focused on a sibling relationship. “They find out this very interesting information about their family that takes them on an unexpected journey,” Chabert explains. And if you’re now feeling relieved that they’re starring in a sibling story, not a love story, you’re not alone.
“Every time I post about it, I get so much feedback. People are like, please tell me Bailey and Claudia aren't falling in love,” she says with a laugh. “I'm like, no, no, no, we are forever brother and sister. And dear friends in real life.”
Wolf echoes that sentiment, calling Chabert “one of the sweetest, kindest, and most generous people on Earth” in an email to SheKnows. “She will always be like a sister to me, but I am also so proud and inspired by all she has accomplished in her work, and working with her again was an absolute dream.”
A Merry Scottish Christmas isn’t the only reunion project that’s ticking the nostalgia box. Chabert practically broke the Internet when she was spotted in LA with fellow Mean Girls cast members Lindsay Lohan and Amanda Seyfried earlier this fall filming a then-secret project. Was it a Mean Girls sequel? A Pepsi commercial? Breathless headlines speculated on the reason for ‘the Plastics’ reunion — and whether or not fetch was happening. Of course, we now know the project was a series of Black Friday commercials for Walmart.
“Getting to have that experience and spend time with Lindsay and Amanda was so magical, it was like no time had passed. We reminisced so much about the movie and what it was like filming 20 years ago and caught up on where we are in our lives now. We're all mothers. We were sharing stories about parenthood and our kids and sharing pictures . . . it it was a really lovely full-circle moment.”
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“Getting to have that experience and spend time with Lindsay and Amanda was so magical, it was like no time had passed,” Chabert says. “We reminisced so much about the movie and what it was like filming 20 years ago and caught up on where we are in our lives now. We're all mothers. We were sharing stories about parenthood and our kids and sharing pictures . . . it was a really lovely full-circle moment.”
As for an actual Mean Girls sequel with the original cast? “I would absolutely love that,” Chabert says. “I don't know that there's talk of it, but I would love it.”
Reflecting on the reunions is giving Chabert a seasonally appropriate rush of gratitude. “It's really nice to take that time to look back,” she says, “and I'm so thankful that not only do I get to create these characters and be a part of these movies that I'm so proud of, but for me, it's about the relationships — and the enduring friendships that I've had because of these experiences.”
Over the years, her role with Crown has evolved; in 2019 she began starring in and executive producing the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ Crossword Mysteries series. And in 2022, after some of her fellow Hallmark stars, notably Candace Cameron Bure, defected to the newly formed Great American Family network, Chabert doubled down with Crown. As Deadline reported, she signed a two-year, multi-picture deal that will let her take on additional starring, story development, and executive producing roles. The latest example: Chabert is bringing unscripted programming to Hallmark Media next year with a new 10-episode series called Celebrations with Lacey Chabert, Deadline reported earlier this week. She’ll also be executive producing the show, which will surprise families who are making a positive impact in their communities with parties of a lifetime. Chabert will work with party planners to pull off these events in just three days.
Of the messy family breakup, if you will, and the resulting headlines, Chabert remains diplomatic. “I hesitate, just because I feel like it's tricky to say something that doesn't get taken out of context,” she says. “But I will say that I'm super happy where I am, and all that I've gotten to accomplish there, and all that we have planned for the future. So yeah, I'll leave it at that. And I have lots of friends in lots of places, and I wish nothing but the best for everybody.”
Chabert is also excited about another new role, as the designer of a loungewear and mommy-and-me apparel line with HSN called The Lacey Chabert Collection that debuted in 2022 and will be expanding into ready-to-wear in the coming year, adding dresses, denim, and jackets in the coming year.
“I've been an HSN customer for a long time,” she says. “I love the experience of watching these different vendors talk about their product and then getting it on your doorstep. And so when they came to me with the opportunity I was just thrilled.”
NEW ROLES
The whole process has been a learning experience — especially because she’s not merely rubber-stamping her involvement. “With anything I do workwise, I want to be as involved as I can,” she explains. “I just think that there's an accountability, especially [with] something that I'm putting my name on.”
Despite a lifetime of experience in front of the camera, Chabert “was the most nervous I've ever been” before her first HSN taping. “These shows are me standing up there, talking to the customer, and I'm not going to lie. I have to be as authentic as I can,” she says. “And so it's my responsibility to make sure I've done everything I can to make the best product I can. That's how I view it, whether it's a movie or a piece of clothing.”
As it turns out, she loved talking directly to customers and sharing more of who she is as a person with them. Still, Hallmark fans need not worry; as much as she’s enjoying flexing her entrepreneurial muscle, the small-screen queen has no intention of abandoning her roots.
“I've been acting professionally since I was 7 years old, and when I think back to being a kid, I loved telling stories, and I loved listening to a good story. And that's what I do now,” she says. “I've enjoyed the opportunity to bring these stories to life, and hopefully create characters that people go, ‘Oh, I've been there’ or ‘I've been at that crossroads in life.’ I try to bring as much of my own experience into it as possible so that people are invested in the story you're telling.”
Her deal with Crown and her roles in story development and producing have given her a welcome opportunity to have a stronger creative voice and have her opinion heard; directing might be on the horizon, too. But Chabert doesn’t imagine a time when she’s not in front of the camera — at least not now.
“I'm very open to wherever this career is going to lead me, and I have big dreams that have yet to come to fruition,” she says. “But I have realized, I never want to stop acting. I love being a part of that version of the story. And there are so many other types of stories I want to tell.”
Getting back to Christmas, Chabert is full of nostalgia for her childhood holidays in Mississippi and later New York (the family moved when she was 7.) “My parents were all about making the holidays as special as possible,” she says.
Chabert was the third of four kids, and on Christmas Eve, she and her siblings would all sleep in one bedroom, listening for signs of Santa. No one was allowed to go look at the Christmas tree until her parents were up, and she recalls the wonder of rounding the corner from the hallway and seeing the tree all lit up, with piles of presents underneath. Her mom would prepare hot cocoa and Christmas cookies; the kids would open those eagerly anticipated gifts. “It's just such a comforting feeling for me,” she says.
It’s little wonder that Chabert wants to replicate those holiday memories for her own daughter, Julia, age 7. “I feel like I have the chance to relive my childhood in creating some of those same traditions for her,” she says. “And to get to watch the magic of it all through her eyes is incredibly special.”
One favorite tradition she’s sharing with Julia is cooking, “because I remember baking with my great grandmother, my grandmother, my mom; being in the kitchen and making sweet potato pie and homemade coconut cake and pecan pralines. I’m from the South, so cooking was a huge part of my life growing up,” she says. “And there's something so comforting about making those same recipes.”
Along with the old, Chabert is creating new holiday traditions with her daughter, as well, like Elf On the Shelf — although she’s quick to point out that while her family’s elves “get up to a lot of really fun mischief,” they also sometimes oversleep and don’t move during the roughly 10 days they visit. That’s right: 10 days. “I would appreciate it if no one else would tell my daughter that sometimes the elves come for the entire month of December,” she says, laughing. “No, they don't. They come for approximately eight to 10 days.”
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
Truncating her elves’ visit is just one way Chabert keeps the magic of the season manageable. If you think — rightly — that there’s a lot of pressure on moms to make the holidays special, well, the Queen of Christmas feels it even more acutely. People expect her home to be a winter wonderland, and while it usually is, with both real and faux Christmas trees, color-coordinated ornaments, and maaaaybe some holiday movie-set swag on display (“I’ll never tell,” she says), Chabert admits there have been years when she was so busy traveling for work that she didn’t even decorate. “I know, right?” she laughs.
Still, she has let go of her quest for perfection. She’s planning to attempt making a homemade gingerbread house with Julia this year, but she’s also not above making do with a ready-made kit — and using a hot glue gun to keep it together. She’s learned to embrace the messiness of motherhood, give herself grace, and try to be as present in the moment as possible.
“You're trying to create this perfect memory, but to our kids, it doesn't matter if the pie was perfectly baked or the decorations look perfect or if everything was beautifully wrapped,” she says. “I don't think that's the thing that kids take away from it. It's the joy that they feel in being together, or getting to see the look on their face when they open that present that they were so excited about.”