Love Actually’s Richard Curtis has only seen movie twice in 20 years after ‘ghastly’ experience

The words of Richard Curtis have become a Christmas Day staple for many homes over the past two decades thanks to his 2003 festive flick Love Actually. Now, screenwriter Richard is back with another Yuletide offering that’s based on his own trilogy of children’s books. Netflix’s new animation That Christmas follows the families of fictional town Wellington-on-Sea as they celebrate the holiday – and we see how a mistake by Father Christmas kicks off a series of unfortunate mishaps.

However, Richard admits that unlike the rest of the country, he doesn’t watch Love Actually annually – and has seen it just twice since it premiered in cinemas. “One time was ghastly – my girlfriend told me there was a sing-along version happening in an American cinema. All of us and the kids went along and it just wasn’t,” he says.

“There were six other people in the cinema – two of them were there for warmth, two of them were there for sex. They said it was going to be like Rocky Horror! The second time was with a live orchestra at Drury Lane and that was wonderful. I made a speech beforehand and said that my mother-in-law and daughter made cameos in the film and had never received applause. Surreally, 1,500 people all cheered when they came on screen. It was a very sweet moment.”

For his new film, Richard, 68, drew on his own family traditions when writing the film, particularly one scene in which the town’s residents embrace the cold for a chilly Christmas Day swim. “We’ve celebrated Christmas in Suffolk for the last 25 years,” says Richard, who is dad to Scarlett, 29, Jake, 27, Charlie, 23, and 20-year-old Spike with wife Emma Freud.

“In our village, Christmas Day ends with a swim. I know Simon [Otto, the director] was particularly keen on the oddity of a Christmas film set at the seaside, so I wanted that geography and also to write a film about kids. I’ve been a dad for 29 years – it’s the most interesting subject in the world to me.”

The film weaves together several stories – from twin girls Sam and Charlie Beccles being mixed up by Father Christmas to a group of parents who are stranded in a blizzard on their way back from a wedding. This leaves teenage Bernie in charge of Christmas Day as well as younger kids Nisha, Eve, Teddy and Scarlett.

“A lot of it is based on stuff in our lives,” Richard adds. “We have a communal Christmas lunch with friends, we don’t split up into our houses. We all get together. My brother has twin girls. And, of course, Santa is a close, personal friend.”

The writer drafted in a top cast for the film – including Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker, who voices Mrs Williams, and Succession’s Brian Cox, who plays Santa Claus. “We wanted Santa to be from the North, as if he were from Scotland, and so we had the idea of casting Brian,” Richard says. “And Jodie is such a wonderful, vulnerable actor.”

Killing Eve’s Fiona Shaw plays Ms Trapper – the local teacher who spends Christmas by herself. “She’s initially severe, but she has a very soft underbelly,” Fiona says. “She’s quite observant and lonely but keeps an eye on everybody.

“The point of the film is that isolation is not good and people should be in a community – and the events of the movie make people come together at the end and, by helping with a problem, their not-so-great Christmases turn into a very good one. I think that’s probably the story of many people’s Christmases.”

In That Christmas, Bernie rails against classic festive traditions – which Richard can relate to. “My kids hate the walk, they hate the sprouts,” he says. “We have a tradition in our family where we do a Christmas X Factor after lunch – the dads do a song and the mums do a song.”

Fiona’s Christmas is just as musical. “My mother plays the piano and my brother plays the double bass so we sing the whole time,” she says. In the film, viewers will spot a reference to Love Actually – when Bernie talks about the “old” Christmas film. Richard says, “They sprung that on me, by the way. I thought it was a reference to Miracle On 34th Street – grainy stuff with American men in bow ties. But when I watched it, they’d put in Love Actually and I thought, ‘I deserve that.’”

Director Simon adds, “It was a great moment when we showed that sequence to Richard – I studied his face so closely! Something we both have to accept is that some movies we worked on are very old films to kids today.”

That Christmas is available to stream on December 4 on Netflix.

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