“Stripping isn’t usually the very first thing we consider once we consider Christmas,” says Chad Michael Murray. Netflix, Murray, and his abs are hoping there’s some wiggle room in your Christmas expectations with the brand new film “The Merry Gents,” out Nov. 20 — and sure, it’s a little bit of a stripper Christmas film. The film follows a dancer (Britt Robertson) who will get lower from her firm within the massive metropolis and returns dwelling to her small city, solely to search out that her dad and mom’ native performing arts venue is prone to being closed. Thus begins her plan to save lots of the enterprise with the assistance of the hunky city carpenter and an novice all-male vacation dance present.
When Netflix reached out to Murray about “The Merry Gents,” one among their first questions was about his dance background.
“It’s not that I don’t dance — I do dance, at dwelling and at weddings,” Murray says from a press suite inside The Plaza Resort. However the dancing was precisely what drew him to do the film — principally, the truth that he wasn’t very skilled with it.
“I hadn’t been fearful of taking pictures one thing in a really very long time. I imply, there’s at all times nerves, however this was utterly out of my consolation zone,” he says. “It wasn’t simply an accent, a stroll, a chat, one thing that I might reside in. This was full and utter physique motion, a brand new ability that you just’re going to be taught in a really brief time period. And there’s a number of totally different types that we’re going by means of, from nation western to stomp and hip hop and jazz.”
Chad Michael Murray in “The Merry Gents.”
He promptly signed himself up for dance coaching six hours a day, plus common exercise coaching “as a result of [I’m] shirtless half the film.” Because it turned out, he fairly appreciated all of the lessons — hip-hop rising as a favourite.
“The one factor I by no means anticipated, the one byproduct of this was how a lot I’d fall in love with dance,” he says. “This was a few of the most enjoyable I’ve ever had making a film.”
Other than the attraction of a problem, Murray, who’s 43, appreciated the concept of engaged on an escapist film that made folks really feel good.
“The place I’m in my life proper now with three younger youngsters and within the state of the world, I simply really feel like these movies are good for folks. They need the departure. I grew to become an actor as a result of I needed to provide those who. I needed to entertain. I needed to convey pleasure and have that chance. And I’ve been blessed to have the ability to do it now for 25 years. Are you able to imagine it?” Murray says. “And the place I’m at present, I simply really feel just like the content material must be of a sure…don’t go too far. Your youngsters are going by means of college and the stress’s already going to be immense with youngsters saying issues as a result of your dad’s an actor. I don’t need to make it too tough on them.”
Chad Michael Murray
Lexie Moreland/WWD
“So for proper now, that is the proper content material for the place I’m. We’ll cross the bridge in relation to it in 5, 10 years from now once they’re a little bit bit older. However for me, that is the candy spot, having the ability to do that the place I acquired to check myself and push myself with the dance and with getting one thing on the market that I felt scared me,” he continues. “And I imagine that is going to convey quite a lot of pleasure.”
Subsequent August, Murray joins Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis in “Freakier Friday,” the sequel to their 2003 hit “Freaky Friday.” Murray has already wrapped work on the brand new movie, an expertise he calls a “surreal and full-circle second.”
“I actually began to sharpen my tooth on [the original] movie, and take probabilities. I used to be terrified. While you’re on the market in the course of a neighborhood and individuals are watching and also you’re simply singing ‘Hit Me Child One Extra Time’ as God awfully as you may in entrance of all people, it’s a second,” he says. “So it was bizarre. You stroll on set and to a sure diploma it felt like no time had handed. And but all of us had lives in between there. Youngsters, grandbabies, Academy Awards, and also you stroll into these locations and our producers and all people’s all there. And it simply crammed my coronary heart with such pleasure. And also you’re hugging it out with Jamie Lee and Lindsay and it blew my thoughts.”
Within the meantime, he’ll be spending his first winter again in Buffalo since he was a teen, producing the documentary “Simply One Earlier than I Die,” concerning the Buffalo Payments Mafia. He and his spouse, Sarah, have simply purchased a home 9 minutes from his brother and pop, and plan to be bicoastal now.
Whereas he worries his “blood has thinned” a bit from his a few years in California, the joy concerning the Payments will possible propel him by means of.
“While you’re born and raised in that metropolis, it’s simply, it’s a proper. You stroll out of the womb, you’re a Payments fan,” Murray says of the challenge, which is centered across the followers’ hope for a Tremendous Bowl win.
Chad Michael Murray
Lexie Moreland/WWD
“That will be epic for town. We hope to only proceed to convey gentle to a neighborhood that really loves and offers every part for this workforce and digs them out in snowstorms to make it possible for they will make it to the sport and would give the shirt off their again if it will assist in any manner,” Murray says. “It’s a concord neighborhood. I really like that about this metropolis. So we simply need to shine gentle on that.”
It additionally doesn’t harm that attending to spend the winter in Buffalo is rather more attuned to the Netflix Christmas spirit.
“I bear in mind the magic as a child. I imply, there’s nothing like snow on Christmas,” he says. “Do me a favor: All people put out nice vibes for a white Christmas.”
