When The Art of Christmas premieres on GAC Family tonight, husband and wife duo Darin Brooks and Kelly Kruger will be along for the ride.
They’ll be co-starring as the best friends of the lead characters, played by Brigette Kingsley and Joe Towne.
That sounds lovely, but the road to The Art of Christmas for Darin and Kelly was quite a wild ride.
I’d never had the pleasure of meeting Darin and Kelly when I jumped on the phone with them last month, but I had just watched lauded horror film, Barbarian.
I know, I know. It’s an odd thing to mention in an interview about a Christmas movie, but as I soon discovered, their adventure to make the movie came a little too close to a bona fide horror movie for anybody’s liking.
So how on earth did that happen?
To begin with, it was Kelly’s first project after both of her children. The pandemic hit after their first daughter, Everleigh, was born, and then she got pregnant with Gemma before she resumed work.
“To start, it was the first movie with two kids traveling to Canada, still breastfeeding, and that was the beginning of our journey,” Kelly said.
Darin chimed in. “Yeah, it was definitely a lot of firsts. It’s a lot. First time traveling with the kids, first time doing a movie, first time… Well, second time doing a movie together since we met on Blue Mountain State. That was the TV show we did back in 2009, 2010. And that’s where we met.”
He continued, “And first time kids getting sick. First time doing an Airbnb with them. First time getting a nanny.”
Kelly said, “We hadn’t had a nanny up until now. It was our first time with our now three-year-old, but she was two at the time. She hadn’t ever slept anywhere other than her crib. And we obviously didn’t have a crib for her. Yeah. So, we don’t even know where to start. But it was quite the bumpy road back to work.”
It does sound like a lot, but they were eager to work on the project, especially since Kelly had worked with both the director and producer before. Knowing she wasn’t ready to take a lead in a production, they thought The Art of Christmas role would be ideal for her.
Since her last experience with the team, for A Very Corgi Christmas, was so wonderful, and she loved the script, she then wondered if the role opposite her could work for Darin. They loved the idea, and the deal was made.
So far, so good! Well, except for all the previous firsts mentioned and the hard part, getting the family on the road and successfully ensconced in an Airbnb property.
Things began to go awry when they realized they’d be flying to Toronto during the Toronto International Film Festival. “Yeah, the city was sold out basically,” Kelly began. “And Darin is a planner, and he is very responsible, and he started looking at Airbnbs two weeks before, but I am very fly by the seat of my pants. Let’s just see what happens.
“And if the production’s not sending me stuff yet, then there’s nothing really to think about. And he kept showing me options for Airbnbs, and I was just like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll wait for them to send me.’ Because usually what they do is they send options, we pick what’s good for us and then we let them know, and they’ll book it for us, right?”
Darin, being unfamiliar with Toronto, was looking in downtown Toronto, hoping they would be close to family in the area who could help with the kids. Nothing was working out, but the studio began sending them options on Friday for a Sunday departure.
None of them seemed ideal, and Darin chided Kelly for failing to look at all of the what must have been marvelous options he’d discovered. They even exchanged an I told you so before settling on a spot just north of downtown.
That was when they hit another snag. Darin said, “Before that, last minute on Thursday or Friday, we were like, ‘Oh crap. Gemma doesn’t have a passport.'”
They discovered they could travel three hours south to San Diego to pick up the passport, so leaving their kids behind, their adventure before the adventure began.
They arrived at 10 am and discovered it would be hours before the passport was ready, and they’d be dealing with rush hour traffic, and a panic began to set in.
And then it began to rain, so any chance at spending time naturally, seeing the sights while they panicked like the young parents they are also fell by the wayside. They ultimately ate sushi in the car in the rain with Gemma, who was, both parents agreed, an angel, before they arrived home around 9. They still had to pack.
“By nature, I’m an over-packer,” Kelly admitted. “So, even when Darin and I would go to Vegas for the weekend, I pack for two weeks.”
Darin said, “She packs for a month for a weekend escape.”
I don’t have children, but I know what it’s like to want to be sure you have what you need. I sided with Kelly, who appreciated the gesture.
“You never know. Anything can happen. And we’ve had our luggage lost,” Kelly said. As a result, and for their children, they now have to carry the necessities on board. “We have to carry stuff.” We have kids now, so it’s like we have to think about all this stuff.
“We have to think about the way they sleep and their sound machines, and Gemma’s just a baby, so we need her blow-up bathtub. And Everleigh’s never slept in anything other than her crib, so we’re traveling with a blow-up toddler air mattress and a bassinet.”
“Fold-up bassinet,” Darin interjected. “It was everything. We’ve never traveled with kids before. So, we literally had 10 bags of stuff and just brought everything and the kitchen sink. And so Sunday rolls around.”
Allow me to interject. This conversation is exactly what you’d expect between people who are completely attuned to one another.
If you’ve ever seen When Harry Met Sally, imagine the scenes when the couples talk at the end. They finish each other’s sentences. They break in mid-sentence, and their significant other carries on with that information and finishes the thought.
Darin and Kelly are that couple. Every indication says they will make it to the very end of the relationship road — till death do they part. For now, their story continues.
They were quite excited to see the Airbnb they chose. “The perfect option,” according to Kelly, with a crib and high chair, wasn’t available, but what they landed on was a quaint four-bedroom house in Toronto, centrally located with a beautiful backyard.
“Quiet suburban neighborhood,” Darin said.
Are you beginning to understand why I compared this adventure to Barbarian? If you’ve seen the movie, you’re getting the picture.
Kelly said, “I even looked it up on Google Maps, and I was like, Oh, we could take them on nice walks. It’s a beautiful neighborhood, and the house looks adorable.”
The flight was perfection. “The kids were angels. They were so good,” Kelly said. “We couldn’t even believe it. The flight attendants both ways were like, ‘What do you give your kids?'” Darin continued, “‘Are your kids normal? What’s going on here?'”
Plainly put, Everleigh and Gemma made their parents proud, and those parents were the envy of all parents everywhere. As they got off the plane, “We almost had short of a business class applause for our kids,” Darin said.
That burst of pride was enough to hold them through their failure to retain a work permit when going through customs and little Everleigh getting quite hungry and antsy at all the new things the toddler was experiencing.
They were even feeling pretty good about the fact they didn’t get a nanny. “Okay, we’re going to figure it out. It’s going to work out. We’ll find somebody. It’s not the biggest deal,” they thought, even as family and friends who were going to be able to help suddenly had other obligations.
At the end of their travels, they pinned their hope on the lovely Airbnb awaiting them. There, everything else would come together. Or maybe not.
“Darin goes and opens the door,” Kelly said. “I’m still in the car with kids. I get them out. He’s doing everything. I walk up to this house, and I’m just in the walkway, and I’m like, ‘I just feel the creepiest vibes.’ I was like, ‘What is this house?’ It smells already outside like incense is masking a smell of something.”
“That was a Glade Plugin,” Darin said helpfully.
Kelly continued, “I couldn’t even describe the feeling. We walk up, and in my whole body, I was like, ‘This does not feel right.’ The lock to the front door was crooked. It was not on properly. We walk in, and it’s like, I mean, mold on the curtains.”
“Well, it smelled musty,” Darin said. “Musty,” Kelly agreed. “It smelled like nobody had actually been in the house for years,” Darin finished.
Kelly said, “And I start walking around. and I’m trying at first because I could tend to sometimes be a little bit more on the high-maintenance side when it comes to these things, so I try to just, at first, defer to Darin. I didn’t say anything at first.
“I was like, ‘All right, let’s just scope it out, see what it is. I’m not going to say anything yet.’ But I’m like, ‘I don’t know that I can stay here. This place is not what we saw in the photos.’ So, Everleigh starts running around, and she’s like, ‘This place is cool.'”
“She loved it because she doesn’t know any better. She’s like, ‘This is amazing. There’s stairs’,” Darin laughed. Kelly continued, “The stairs are completely steep, by the way. Not conducive for a toddler. They were steep and slippery. So, I was like, Let me walk into the kitchen and see at least the backyard.’ It was a selling point for me because at least she can run around.”
“Nope,” Darin said. “The grass was overgrown, two feet tall. Two feet high with weeds,” Kelly continued.
The grass is one thing, and Kelly was beginning to wonder when the photos for the Airbnb ad had been taken. Then she got to the kitchen. She told Darin, ‘there are dishes in the sink,’ she said, “as if someone had just left dishes in the sink!”
Darin understood how his wife felt. “Well, it was a clean glass on the clean side of the sink. But that was my problem. I was like, ‘Either somebody was thirsty or the cleaner or whatever got thirsty and forgot to put the cup back.’
“And either way I’m going, ‘These cups need to be back in the thing. This is just not okay.’ And as we inspected further, like Kelly said, there was mold on the curtains by the front door, which is, we can’t do that with kids.”
“There were also a few doors that were locked to the basement. I felt like people were in the house. All day we were like…” Kelly said as I interrupted her with the similarities to Barbarian. Thankfully, no, they didn’t stay there.
“No. I looked at Darin, and I said, I looked at him, and I was like, ‘Hey, I don’t feel safe with the kids staying here.’ That was my first thing I said. And he goes, ‘We can’t stay here. There’s no way. We cannot stay here.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, thank God. It’s not just me.'”
The beginning of their journey was carrying on far longer than they hoped, and the evening still had yet to be met without Uber service (TIFF, after all), but they’d had about enough, and as all parents know, sometimes something’s got to give.
In their instance, it was car seats for the kids. They could be stranded in no man’s land, or they could break the rules and get their kids to safety and the rest they so desperately needed.
They arrived at a hotel, which, of course, didn’t have a kitchen. Kelly had planned an Airbnb because she cooks all of her children’s meals. They were fighting with Airbnb, who were threatening no refund. But there’s good news. “Such a long story. It’s bedtime, and we’re painting the picture because the end result is actually pretty great,” she said, continuing her tale.
After a night at the hotel, they had people working on their behalf to find them a new place land. Darin was at the studio, and Kelly was packing and rushing around and hoping for the best when she finally heard from someone that another group had also booked a house unsuitable for them, and this one was perfect for Kelly, Darin, Everleigh, and Gemma.
Kelly said, “So, basically, she was like, ‘Listen, we are in quite a pickle, but it seems like this might be meant to be.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, we’ll have it cleaned perfectly for you. You can check in tonight.’
“She’s talking to me. She’s so nice. She said, ‘And by the way,’ she said, ‘if you need a nanny,’ she said, ‘we don’t live there anymore, but our nanny who raised our children, she’s amazing. She would be great, in case you need anything.'”
Darin and Kelly laughed, recalling the moment they believed they became best friends with a woman they had never met. When they finally arrived at the Airbnb, they discovered it was very inviting for children, too, with a bunkbed and tons of toys. “It was all perfect,” Darin said.
“It was just, could not be more perfect. We were like, “This was so meant to be. Now we see why everything happened the way it did. Everything’s working out. All great,” Kelly said. Until Everleigh got sick, and as happens in families, Darin got sick, too. That put a damper on their work schedules, but they were working through it, and they were, ultimately, better for it.
Darin pushed himself to go in on Monday, which was, apparently, a singing day. Kelly remembers, and with good reason. “That was the day I fell in love with you all over again,” she tells Darin on the call.
Kelly explained, “So, we get to set. We had a family trailer that we shared with the kids. And this was our day where Darin and I were going to be singing together, and it was going to be really fun.
“And I have to say, even though he wasn’t feeling well and we were on set, and Celeste, our nanny, was with the kids, and we were just the two of us on set, and we met on set, and it just reignited that spark for me.
“I was flirting with him, and it made me see him in a different light. Because we’ve been in mom and dad mode for so long that we haven’t really had that opportunity to remember where it all started.”
Darin agreed. “And we really haven’t really gone out or gone out on dates or anything like that because it was just COVID locked everything down. And we didn’t have a nanny back home. This was our first nanny in Toronto. So, we didn’t ever have any time without the kids.” “For three years,” Kelly added.
“And have fun and be with each other and then also, have fun and play on set,” Darin said.
“And when you’re on set and whoever your love interest is in a very professional way, you always find things about that to create chemistry,” Kelly said “So, you always have little crushes on costars, right?
“But this time, my costar’s my husband, and it was really cool to be like, ‘Oh wow, I have a crush on my husband again.’ Because you do. I feel like you forget. So, everything was very sweet while on set.”
That final sentence is an important part of their tale because the fun off-set continued with smells of raw sewage in the family trailer (something to do with someone not draining the septic tank), fumes making them sick, and all of their confidence in their parenting decisions going up in smoke.
Their trip continued to deliver challenge after challenge. Darin, a warm blood from Hawaii, had to ice skate on set, suffering from a cold. Their downstairs neighbors at the Airbnb didn’t appreciate the crying baby. The radiator broke free of the wall, sending water gushing into the house and likely down to those baby-cries-averse neighbors.
Darin, who was due to be skating with a cold, was instead playing plumber, searching for a water shutoff valve. It was a crazy story and one that goes a long way to show how the people you watch in movies and soap operas are in this crazy life with us all.
Kelly said, “Basically, those were the big hurdles, and ultimately, the experience itself was a movie in itself, all these bumps in the road, but really truly one of the best working experiences.
“Being able to know that we could do it as parents, be able to reconnect on set and make a really fun, feel-good, family Christmas movie that our kids can watch.”
“We will remember it forever,” Darin finished. “I don’t want it to sound like everything was too chaotic and crazy, but on set, everything was magical. It was great.”
Kelly agreed and shared how amazing and accommodating the production was during their ordeal, offering them whatever they needed. And you and I, dear readers, get the feeling that Darin and Kelly have a love for the ages.
Many of you have been watching their relationship blossom since they starred together on Blue Mountain State, where they met, and when Kelly recurred on Bold and the Beautiful.
“Our soap fans have been wanting us on screen together for so many years,” Kelly said. “So, I think it’s kind of cool to be able to play characters. It’s always sort of a wink at the audience for them. I think it makes it really fun for the fans.
“But for us, it’s cool because I mean, for me, I should say, I’m not speaking for you, Darin, but for me, it’s like anytime I jump into a role, and if there’s a love interest, it’s sort like this whole… The way we work, we both studied with Ivana Chubbuck, and we have a very similar technique on how we dive into a character.
“So, it freshens everything up all over again, and it’s a different way. So, how we fell in love on Blue Mountain or how we flirted on Blue Mountain State, I wouldn’t say we actually fell in love. Our characters fell in love on that show.”
Kelly continued, “It’s very different from how our characters meet in The Art of Christmas. So, it’s fun. It’s fresh. It’s exciting. I can’t say that I know any other couples… I feel like this is such an opportunity for us to be able to… It’s playing. It’s make-believe, but it’s real. So, it’s like the lines are weird. It’s fun for me.”
“Yeah. Of course. Ditto. I mean, I’d say the same thing. It’s for both of us. Yes,” Darin agreed.
There is a scene in The Art of Christmas that finds Kelly and Darin singing karaoke, which is something the couple enjoys. But Kelly didn’t really enjoy their on-screen display.
“When I do karaoke, I’m drunk,” Kelly said. Darin laughed, “And a couple of libations here and there help the voice just warm up and get a little better, I think, for both of us.
“But I’m sick, and we’re trying to coordinate it and figure it out, like who’s taking what part and who’s doing this. And I kind of, sorry, babe, threw her under the bus and was like, ‘Well, you start. You start the song, and then I’ll come in in the second bar and figure it out.”
“He was awful. He was awful,” Kelly said. “Let’s talk about this for a second. I want to let you know that I famously with myself have stage fright when it comes to singing. I could do anything in the world and not have any kind of nerves whatsoever. When it comes to singing, I have stage fright. I freeze up. I have a traumatic experience that happened in my childhood.
“Because I did use to sing when I was little. And ever since then, no matter what, if I sing in the shower, you might think I’m Whitney Houston. But when I get in front of people, I cannot sing, okay? I get nervous. And when we rehearsed it, we rehearsed it together that we were singing together.”
Darin said, “but you can’t do it together.”
Kelly said Darin threw her under the bus, and Darin heartily disagreed. She started singing, and he just wasn’t there. “It’s what we talked about. We talked about you taking the first couple of lines, and then I’m supposed to come in,” Darin said.
“You said the first couple of lines, but you didn’t come in until the chorus,” Kelly said, and Darin followed with, “And then you faced your fear and became Whitney Houston, and a beautiful butterfly emerged, and it was perfect.”
Kelly said, “He really was not nice.”
The couple agreed that if anyone could do it, their director could pull together even the worst shots to make magic. Once Kelly got on board, she apologized if she made it sound like things weren’t as wonderful as they really were, while Darin repeated, “It’s going to be amazing.”
Honestly, I told Kelly that her fans will love nothing more than to know she struggles on stage with karaoke, too. It gives us the courage to get up there and do it ourselves because if people we admire falter, even just a little, it gives us hope.
Darin agreed. “Well, that’s the thing too. I think that’s what we love about this whole story is that you know how a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, you’re actors,’ or, ‘You’re this.’ And we’re just like, ‘We’re just like you. We’re just people. We’re just chilling.’ You know what I mean?
“Whenever we meet fans, I love meeting fans because I’m just like, ‘Yeah, it’s just a job for us.’ And radiators do fall out of the wall for us. And Airbnbs do scare the crap out of us sometimes. And we do have to fight with Airbnb for a refund. It’s all a part of life. So, we’re all just normal.”
Kelly and Darin love being on social media and interacting with fans, showing them they’re real, relatable people. That’s why sharing this story is so important to them.
“I love that aspect of it,” Kelly said. “And that’s what I love about social media, is being able to connect with people and let them know that there’s so much false, I mean, people pretending that their lives are perfect when everybody goes through challenges.
“And so I think experiences like this are important to share because, like you said, if you’re not singing great, everybody who doesn’t sing great can feel like they can get up on stage confidently and still sing and have fun at karaoke.” “And it brought us closer together,” Darin said, to which Kelly responded, “Exactly.”
So, what would Kelly and Darin like for you to know about The Art of Christmas before tuning in? Kelly said, “This movie is such a sweet… Again, Christmas movies, I feel like, personally, the reason why I love doing this kind of content is because the world needs to feel good right now.
“And I just want to, especially as a mom, I personally just want to put out content and do characters and be a part of films and TV shows that just make people feel good. And that’s what this movie’s going to do. It’s going to make you feel good.
“It’s a sweet Christmas love story. It has kids. I mean, luckily I got, in my last Christmas movie, I got to work with kids and dogs. Andrew and Brigitte threw a corgi into this in one of my scenes. Because I usually say, ‘It has kids. It has dogs.’
“The dog’s not the star of the show, but it is really cute. And it’s a sweet love story. And really, the lesson in the movie is just about what’s really important in life. And because Brigitte’s character is really career-driven, she’s trying to really make it in the art world, and ultimately, she realizes what’s really important is being there for the children and the person that she’s truly falling in love with.
“And it’s a really, really sweet story. And Darin and my character are basically the cheerleaders to those guys throughout the story, and ultimately we find love as well.”
Darin agreed. “Yeah, we’re the two best friends of each character. So, the two best friends fall in love as well. And it comes full circle because, like we said, behind the scenes, we fell in love again and all that. So, it’s a fun little; the coincidence of it, the irony of it is behind the movie as well, which I think it’s fun. It’s going to be a really fun movie.”
As for their own Christmas, they’re trading one tradition, you could say, for another.
Kelly explained. “Well, I will say this. We have always had dogs, and we always treated them like children. So, every Christmas, we really made it like they were our children, and we would get them stockings and it would be really, really fun, and they would open their stockings.
And now that we have two real-life children, we are going to… I mean, my mom lives here now. We’re hoping Darin’s family comes in from Hawaii. My stepdad will be here. I just found out my stepsister’s going to be here. So, we are going to keep our same tradition that we’ve done for the last however long we’ve been together. Because we started our Christmas tradition 11 years ago, right?”
Darin replied, “Yeah,” before Kelly continued. “So, the same tradition except now… Even last year with the gifts, Everleigh was still pretty young. I mean, she got really excited over everything, but she didn’t understand as much as obviously she does.
“Now she gets excited if she wants something, and we tell her we’ll see if Santa will bring it. And if she’s not good, she gets coal because that’s what Darin’s mom said to him.”
“She did that to me one year,” Darin confirmed. “I wasn’t being good. Obviously, I was a little bit of a trouble child and stuff like that. And she’s like, ‘Fine, this year you’re not getting any presents. You’re getting coal.’ And she didn’t put anything in my stocking. She put this little tin can of coal, and it was like this little candy coal thing at my door.
“And I was like, ‘Are you serious? You’re really serious?’ She’s like, ‘You were bad.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And she’s like, ‘I’m kidding. The presents are in the back bathroom. Go get them.
“But it’s just fun. Now you have kids, and you’ve got all this stuff and all these traditions that you used to do and starting them over with your kids and those traditions along. It’s going to be really fun. We’re excited.”
“Yeah,” Kelly agreed. “We’re all going to have matching PJs this year. Last year, I was very pregnant with Gemma at Christmas time. I was due a couple of weeks later.
“So, this year, to have both kids participate and all be matching and cozy, and we do a really, really yummy Christmas breakfast, and we stay in PJs all day, and I think it’s going to be great.”
And how could their Christmas not be great? They’ve really got it going on as a couple and as a family.
So, all that’s left now is for you to tune into The Art of Christmas to see Kelly and Darin falling in love all over again before your very eyes.
If that’s not a Christmas gift for their old fans and new ones alike, I don’t know what is.
The Art of Christmas premieres tonight on GAC at 8/7c.
Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She’s a member of the Critic’s Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on Twitter and email her here at TV Fanatic.
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