“Stripping isn’t usually the very first thing we consider after 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 reduce from her firm within the huge metropolis and returns house to her small city, solely to seek out that her dad and mom’ native performing arts venue is vulnerable to being closed. Thus begins her plan to avoid wasting the enterprise with the assistance of the hunky city carpenter and an beginner all-male vacation dance present.
When Netflix reached out to Murray about “The Merry Gents,” certainly one of their first questions was about his dance background.
“It’s not that I don’t dance — I do dance, at house and at weddings,” Murray says from a press suite inside The Plaza Lodge. However the dancing was precisely what drew him to do the film — largely, the truth that he wasn’t very skilled with it.
“I hadn’t been fearful of capturing 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 may dwell in. This was full and utter physique motion, a brand new talent that you simply’re going to study in a really brief time frame. And there’s a number of totally different kinds that we’re going via, 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 slightly appreciated all of the courses — 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.”
Except for the attraction of a problem, Murray, who’s 43, appreciated the thought of engaged on an escapist film that made individuals 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 individuals. They need the departure. I turned an actor as a result of I wished to present folks that. I wished to entertain. I wished to carry 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 via faculty 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 wish to make it too troublesome on them.”
Chad Michael Murray
Lexie Moreland/WWD
“So for proper now, that is the right content material for the place I’m. We’ll cross the bridge with regards to it in 5, 10 years from now after they’re somewhat bit older. However for me, that is the candy spot, with the ability to do that the place I received 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 carry numerous 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 possibilities. I used to be terrified. If 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 young person, producing the documentary “Simply One Earlier than I Die,” in regards to 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 in regards to the Payments will doubtless propel him via.
“If 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 simply proceed to carry mild to a group that really loves and offers every thing for this crew and digs them out in snowstorms to ensure that they’ll make it to the sport and would give the shirt off their again if it might assist in any means,” Murray says. “It’s a concord group. I really like that about this metropolis. So we simply wish to shine mild on that.”
It additionally doesn’t harm that attending to spend the winter in Buffalo is way more attuned to the Netflix Christmas spirit.
“I keep 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.”