If You’re A Fan Of ‘Love Actually,’ You Should Be Watching Hallmark’s ‘Holidazed’

Hallmark Channel has served as the home base for all things uplifting, merry, and radiant for the holiday season for the last 15 years with their Countdown to Christmas programming. And each year, they seem to top themselves with upwards of 40 brand-new, original films, a hearty line-up of the stars we’ve come to love on the network plus some cameos each year we weren’t expecting. But this year, they’ve raised the bar yet again. 

With the revamp and re-imagining of their streaming service that is now Hallmark +, the folks at Hallmark have a whole fresh vehicle in which to deliver us even more festive cheer. They are trying fresh things and this includes their first ever holiday-centric constrained series, Holidazed, which follows the lives of six families, all living in the same cul-de-sac, in the days leading up to Christmas. If Love Actually is on your annual watch list, then this is the show for you. 

Viewers get an inside look as each of these families, all seemingly very different, face similar situations, ones many of us will recognize from our own life experiences. Highs, lows, challenges, and how we overcome them, but the common thread is how these stories illustrate love in all different forms. To tell these stories, Hallmark has gathered a powerhouse ensemble cast featuring Erin Cahill, Ian Harding, Loretta Devine, John C. McGinley, and Virginia Madsen, to name a few. 

Southern Living spoke with Virginia native Erin Cahill and her on-screen son, 11-year-old Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez about how they both feel this project is “such a gift,” as Cahill put it. 

Cahill plays Nora Jacobs, a widowed mother and the town’s sheriff and Billingsley-Rodriguez plays Theo Jacobs, her son. While Nora balances her responsibilities and her own grief over the death of her husband, she also has clearly created a heated, and full life for her son despite their loss. Nora has consciously made joy a paramount of their lives and the mother/son bond between these characters is stunning. Even when Josh Hill (Ian Harding)  enters the picture as a second chance at love for Nora. 

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“It’s super easy to play Sebastian’s mom and create that bond because he’s such a great guy and everybody loves him.” She then spoke directly to her co-star saying “And you’re just so kind and generous and such a great actor. It was so easy.” Billingsly-Rodriguez replied to her with a hearty, “You’re just warm and loving and just amazing!”

“This brilliant boy would have these monologues and he would get notes. The directors would give him notes like ‘okay on this line, think about this and on this line think about that,’ and he would hit it every time. He’s amazing,” Cahill added. 

Holidazed tells the story of each of these families across eight episodes, which affords more room to let the stories breathe and develop. It gives the writers the ability to create more layers than we typically see in a 2-hour holiday movie. 

“I read the script. I literally laughed and cried and was like I have to tell this story. And then I hit the jackpot and got Sebastian and Ian and I was like this could not get any better. It’s so fresh. It’s so real. Our showrunners and writers, they really did such an amazing job of having such real funny laughter and also such moments of gravitas, I was just so impressed.”

Despite his juvenile age, Billingsley-Rodriguez already has over a dozen major credits to his name. He can also currently be seen on the massive screen in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, playing the son of 13 Going On 30’s Judy Greer. But as for playing Theo in this heartwarming series, well he considers himself “very lucky.” Adding that this was “one of my favorite movies to film, one hundred percent.”

The first two episodes of Holidazed are already streaming on Hallmark + and a fresh episode will release every Thursday for the next seven weeks.