Rom-com master Richard Curtis on Christmas, Love Actually and criticism: ‘You change with the times’

Richard Curtis knows his way around a Christmas movie. As That Christmas comes to Netflix, he is leaning into what he does best – exploring love and community – while gently updating the Curtis playbook for his first venture into animation.

Curtis was at the peak of his powers when his first seasonal hit Love Actually was released in November 2003. That Christmas film came off the back of a spectacular run of box office successes – Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary – and before that, TV greats Blackadder, Mr Bean and The Vicar of Dibley.

Love Actually showed us what a rock star actor Bill Nighy is, established teenager Keira Knightley as a grown-up A-list star, and gave us Hugh Grant as prime minister – which seems increasingly plausible, and maybe not altogether undesirable these days.

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It was classic Curtis. What it did well – bringing multiple story strands together, interrogating relationships, offering lightness of touch while packing an emotional punch – showcased Curtis the master storyteller. Here were nine stories of people navigating love old and new, unreciprocated or dying. Here was love in all its white, heterosexual, middle-class glory celebrated on the big screen.

Because the big issue with Love Actually was its narrow gaze. Curtis, to his credit, is open to criticism. He welcomes it, even. And, he says, with That Christmas, has responded to it.

“I’m very unsensitive – not insensitive, unsensitive – to criticism of my work,” he says.

“Every film is an opportunity to do things in a new and a different way. The times change and you do change with the times.

“The diversity in this film seems completely modern and reflective of the Britain we live in. So everything is an opportunity to start again, to do it properly.”

Director Simon Otto chips in: “We didn’t want to create a story set even five years in the past. If anything, we wanted to set it in the version of our world we see 10 years down the line.”

“Hmmm, maybe the van should have been called Chappell Roan instead of Beyoncé,” ponders Curtis. “We’ve missed our opportunity.”

The film is based on three unconnected kids’ books Curtis has written in recent years – That Christmas, Snow Day and The Empty Stocking, all illustrated by Rebecca Cobb. It blends the worlds and characters in ingenious ways to create an ensemble film.

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“The great joy of doing it as a movie is that I had to expand them, rather than when people write a novel and you have to reduce it for film,” says Curtis.

“It was a lovely challenge. I’ve always loved animated movies, but it’s a new way of working. Weirdly, everyone in animation is really nice.”

Curtis and Otto, whose previous work includes the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, are good company and have plenty in common. Not least, they both regularly buy the Big Issue from the same vendor. Curtis is such a long-standing supporter of Big Issue and his local vendor that he recently received an early Christmas present alongside his magazine.

“I always buy my Big Issue from him,” explains Curtis. “And the other day, he reached into his bag and pulled out this big jar of honey. He said, ‘I’ve been saving this for you.’ It was so sweet.”

Otto studied Curtis’s films in preparation for That Christmas. Because, while multi-stranded, ensemble films are a mainstay of live action movie making, they are rarely seen in animation.

“Animation is single story, fantastic world, big idea,” he explains. “And I want people to think That Christmas makes sense in the canon of Richard Curtis movies. I found his films are set in authentic places, that he writes from a place of knowledge…”

 “Some would call that a lack of imagination,” Curtis interjects.

“Love Actually is emotional storytelling, not so much plot,” continues Otto, who clearly did his homework. “It is like sketches, so you tell a story of a writer and his housekeeper in Portugal – his work gets blown into a lake, they both jump in. But how do you go from there to another story in a different place and build it up?

“I wanted to combine Richard’s universal, real world, slightly romanticised stories with the timelessness and appeal of animation.”

Curtis was less interested in examining his own back catalogue. “In a way, he was noticing the similarities and I was relishing the differences,” he says. “I was enjoying all the bits that weren’t like a Richard Curtis film.

“Simon could do a week of work, I’d come in and say, could we add this? And he’d say yes. Whereas the relationship between writer and director is tense when you’re shooting live action. If you say, I don’t like the way you framed that shot, they’ll say, ‘if you want to direct the movie, fucking direct it! We’ve got four more shots to film today.’”

In the film, Santa, played by Succession’s Brian Cox alongside Guz Khan as his only working reindeer, is trying to complete his rounds in trying circumstances. Mrs Williams (Jodie Whittaker) is a hardworking NHS nurse newly arrived in Wellington-on-Sea, juggling childcare and career post-divorce. Her son Danny starts school and develops a crush on Sam, one of the twin sisters highlighting Santa’s naughty vs nice dilemma. And we also learn the secret behind the scowl of strict teacher Ms Trapper (Fiona Shaw).

The set-up for a story that gently explores ways of reinventing or evolving Christmas begins with a progressive rewrite of a school nativity play. Then, when the kids are left home alone after their parents are stranded by the snow, they continue the revolution.

It’s out with traditions like watching a boring old Christmas movie and going for a walk, and in with new ideas (and lots of sweets).

“When I was young, Christmas lunch always came at the same time as Top Of The Pops was on,” recalls Curtis.

“That was always a dreadful conflict. Any smart kid would analyse Christmas and want to change it. We liked the idea that kids have that power to question everything.

“In the original Snow Day book, we looked at the little boy left on his own, but didn’t explore his family or the motivations of the teacher. But in That Christmas, Mrs Williams and Danny feels like a post-lockdown story. That’s one of the lovely things about working on a multi-character story, whereas if you take a punt on a romance, you’re stuck with two people and a couple of funny friends.

“When you live in a village like I do, you do think, how’s that person that you know is living on their own. How are they dealing with Christmas? And what about the person who’s had a death in the family or a divorce. We explore all that in the film.”

Not for the first time – and in a way that might appeal to children who recoil from on-screen peril – there are no baddies in That Christmas.

“I’m very bad at baddies,” Curtis concedes. “I started with Blackadder, where everyone was a baddie. But in a way, the problems of being nice seemed to me quintessentially British. In The Vicar of Dibley her problem is she’s nice.

“The only real baddie in this is the blizzard. It’s not even that one twin is naughty and the other is nice, it’s that one is anxious, and it turns out the other twin’s naughtiness is an expression of something else.

“It’s a funny thing to say, but we wanted the movie to be quite realistic – apart from Santa Claus…”

Otto reacts quickly. “Erm, we don’t have proof either way on that.”

Richard Curtis nods, smiles warmly, and gets back on-script. “No. The jury’s still out on the realism of Santa.”

That Christmas is available on Netflix.

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