That Christmas: Director Simon Otto On Bringing Richard Curtis’ Holiday Tale To Life [Interview]

‘Tis the season for food, family, and figuring out something everyone can agree to watch over the holidays. You can get your holiday stream on over at Netflix with the new animated feature That Christmas.

The family flick comes from writer Richard Curtis (Love, Actually), and follows interwoven tales of the residents of Wellington-on-Sea, a small English seaside town. Simon Otto makes his feature directorial debut with this one, but the animation veteran’s previous work includes huge hits like the How to Train Your Dragon series and Kung Fu Panda.

We sat down with Otto to dive into bringing That Christmas to life. Check out our full interview below for insight on the film’s animation and casting process, as well as a look at how the feature explores the most important themes of the holiday season.

THS: Let’s start with a question that’s either going to be very hard or very easy to answer. What do you think makes a good Christmas movie?

Simon Otto: It should make you laugh and feel something, I think first and foremost, it sets the mood for what’s to come. Whether you watch it early in December or Christmas Day, I think it should set the mood for wanting to be at the fireplace or the Christmas tree or whatever, wherever you celebrate your Christmas moment.

And then I love that Christmas movies are about family, love, loneliness. That they speak about the things that we think about in that period, what has changed over last year. A lot of Christmas themes are because of how vulnerable we are during that time, and how joyful we also are for actually having time to spend with your loved ones. 

THS: That’s a big theme in That Christmas as well. Not just the joys and the happiness of the holidays, but the way that sometimes can be a challenging time for people, too.  

Otto: Yeah, definitely. There is a line in the movie that Richard Curtis — the famed screenwriter, who has written some of the most famous lines in film history — he has a line in there that Santa, our narrator, says. Which is ‘Christmas is a bit like an emotional magnifying glass’. When you’re already sad [during the holidays], you’re sadder, and when you’re happy, you’re even happier. 

I think there’s truth there. I think there’s a vulnerability that we have. We have expectations, we have a desire to be joyful and celebrate and whatnot and be together with your loved ones, but it comes with so many expectations that inevitably the plans that we have for Christmas, they don’t turn out exactly the way we’re expecting.

Something unexpected seems to happen, and it’s those Christmases that are usually the most memorable. Which is why we call our movie That Christmas, because it’s ‘that Christmas’ when this blizzard came to town and turned the Christmas of these kids upside down.  

THS: That Christmas also covers Christmas traditions, and how we can mix those up. I loved the kids in the movie bemoaning their parents’ traditions and trying to make their own. Do you have any holiday traditions that you don’t enjoy that much, but you do every year anyway, just because they’re tradition?

Otto: I have to say I’ve been quite successful in actually nipping those in the bud. I’m married to a Japanese-American woman and the first Christmas – or this may have been Thanksgiving – we did the big turkey dinner with the sprouts and the greens. And I went okay, it’s nice. But Japanese people have literally the best food in the world. Like, why are we not doing a shabu or something? Wouldn’t that be much more fun? So we redirected some of our food traditions.

Analyzing Christmas traditions and what people do and what people like, is definitely something we talked about. Some Christmas traditions, like kissing under the mistletoe are on their way out, and new ones are coming up, like sitting in front of the television and watching Netflix, for example.

I like the idea of challenging traditions. It makes you think about the traditions that are there for a reason. And the single most important one, of course, sounds a bit corny, but it is true, is to just be together. The true moment of Christmas is when it’s all over, the Christmas gifts are unwrapped, and you’re just sitting there. You’re just looking at each other, having conversations about what happened and who loves who, and there’s this moment of truth where you just relax when all the expectations are behind you. To me, that’s when actual Christmas is happening. 

THS: And hopefully this year when everyone’s sitting down and hanging out, they’re also going to put on Netflix and check out That Christmas.

Otto: That would be a particular treat. That’s obviously what we set out to do, to give audiences something that they’ll turn on and laugh along and stay in it, because hopefully the movie grabs you in a way that’s a bit unexpected. Hopefully it’s a movie that you will want to rewatch when you finish it because you’ve experienced something that you didn’t see coming. That was our ambition as filmmakers — to take people on a ride that they want to do over and over.

THS: This movie actually adapts a series of children’s books written by Curtis. Did you know about the books before this film? And how did you choose what parts of the original stories to highlight in That Christmas?

Otto: I actually did not know about the books, because they’re quite local to the UK, at least at that time. Our first conversation was about a Christmas special based on the first book, The Empty Stocking, about twin girls that Santa mixes up on Christmas night. Very quickly, in the conversation with Richard Curtis, who did Love Actually and so many incredible romantic comedies, we realized that we could take these books and intertwine them into a Richard Curtis movie for a family audience.

I actually had a chance to collaborate with Richard Curtis and his co-writer Peter Suture on developing the script. Richard previously adapted War Horse and Bridget Jones, and he said in those kinds of experiences, you have to reduce those giant books to their essence and find the movie within the book by taking things out. But in our case, children’s books are quite small. So we had the opportunity to not only take the kernel of the idea of each book and intertwine them, but to add to it so that the character arcs are much, much deeper, much more dramatic.

THS: Do you have a favorite storyline or character that you were able to expand on in the film?

Otto: Yeah. I really connected with Danny’s story, the lonely boy who moved to this town from the city. He doesn’t know anyone. He’s a bit of an unseen outsider. 

In order to make this film, I moved to London for four years from LA, and became a bit of a tourist and outsider myself. But I also took my son out of his school here in LA and stuck him in an international school in London. So while I was making this film, he went through the experience of this little boy. Before we cast actors, I actually took him as the scratch actor of Danny. So there’s a lot of little emotional things in this film that I feel really related to.

And here’s a little tiny little fun fact. If you listen very closely, Danny at one point gets a phone call from this sort of absent dad who is in a different part of the country. And that’s me, that’s my voice. That was like, okay, I’m the bad dad, who feels a bit guilty, so let me be that villain.

THS: Speaking of voice actors, how did you go about assembling your cast — you know, for all the roles you weren’t personally playing?

Otto: I had some voices that I knew I was after right from the moment I read the first draft script. Jodie Whittaker [voice of Danny’s mom] has this vulnerable-sounding voice. She has a timber in her voice that just makes you feel for her. And she has this Northern accent which is quite warm and tender. 

Working with Richard also gave us access to so many great actors, like Bill Nighy and Rhys Darby. In our early conversations we came at casting from different angles. For him, it’s all about the ability to be believable in these performances. For me, it’s a completion of character design. I wanted to make sure that the sound of the voice completes what we had set out to do in character design. 

So when it came to Santa for example, our idea was that Santa should come from the North. So what if it was Stellan Skarsgård from Sweden? And then you go to, well what about Scotland? And from Scotland to Brian Cox, it’s a really short leap. The moment Brian Cox came up, we all went, ‘Oh my God, that’s brilliant’. He has an edge, which we wanted because to us Santa was a bit like master and commander who brings the ship to shore in the middle of a storm. But he can also be really sweet and caring. There’s an authority to his voice and a sweetness that we really loved.

THS: You have an amazing background in animation, including the How to Train Your Dragon movies, which are some of my favorites. Now you’re directing a full-length animated feature for the first time. What can you tell me about the animation in That Christmas, and why do you love animation as a storytelling medium?

Otto: I’ve been obsessed with animation ever since I was 10 years old and started drawing, copying the old Disney movies. So animation to me is so ingrained in my soul that I really can’t let go. What I loved about directing, of course, is you take a step even further back, seeing the movie as a whole and getting to experience directing actors and doing sound design, working with composers, areas that I didn’t have as much exposure to before.

But what I also loved about this was that it’s an ensemble cast. It’s a multi-threaded storyline with multiple protagonists, and that’s very unusual in animation. That’s not something you tend to do in animation because we’re all about single heroes in a fantastic world, on a fantastical journey of some sorts. And the fact that we could have a really grounded real world story with multiple storylines set in this town was really interesting to me.

I saw very quickly the parallels of things that interest me, because How to Train Your Dragon is about an ensemble cast. It’s about a multitude of characters that are all idiosyncratic and different. And that’s what I was really hunting for in this film. Believable performances that are both funny and emotional, where each character represents these different archetypes, if you will, that we can recognize in our personal lives.

That’s the thing that interests me the most. When you see a character like the twins, Charlie and Sam, and you immediately recognize their personalities. You’ve come across these personalities in your own life. And the caricature of that is what I love about animation.

THS: Now that you’ve put years of work into this movie and everyone’s going to get to see it for the holidays… What scene or moment are you most proud of in That Christmas?

Otto: Oh God, there’s so many amazing moments. I’ll give you two because I think they’re  describing the two polar ends of the film.

One is the scene where Danny thinks Christmas is now happening. Mom is here, we’re having Christmas breakfast, lunch. And she gets a phone call from the hospital that she has to go back to work, because she’s the only one who can reach it [in the storm]. The moment that ensues has so much reality and dilemma for both of the characters. I’m quite proud of how that played out and the depth of that scene.

And then the most magical moment on the other side is when all the kids finally realize that Christmas is not happening. We pull out of their little bedrooms, one by one, and fly up into the sky. And then Santa comes bursting through the clouds in this really sweeping musical moment composed by John Powell, who did the How to Train Your Dragon score. That is the most magical moment in the film. I think that does really encapsulate the film as a whole, and I can’t wait for everybody to see it.

That Christmas is now streaming on Netflix.

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‘That Christmas’ Offers Easy Holiday Charm [Review]