Happiest Season star Kristen Stewart on heartwarming queer Christmas movie

Kristen Stewart’s new film is a Christmas movie and a “beautiful love story” – and it’s perhaps the star’s most personal project to date.

When I visited the set of Happiest Season in February in a snowy Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, coronavirus felt like a distant threat; no one knew that a pandemic would bring filmmaking, and indeed life as we know it, to a grinding halt.

On this day, though, I was huddled in an unventilated room with a handful of other reporters buried behind monitors, lighting, cables and cameras as we asked questions in between takes of the stars of the Christmas movie.

Kristen Stewart seemed stand-offish as she faced questions from the press, allowing her co-star Mackenzie Davis to do most of the talking. But who could blame her? It was 11pm, there was at least another scene to film (just five minutes in the final product can take hours of “action”, “cut”, and “from the top”), and we were interrupting her at work.

Abby (Kristen Stewart) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) head home for the holidays in Happiest Season.

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Fast forward from that day, in the new pandemic world of social distancing and staying home, Stewart is upbeat and chatty alongside Davis in a follow-up interview via Zoom.

“I’ve been cooking a lot,” Stewart says, when asked what she’s been doing to keep busy in lockdown, enthusing about how isolation has granted her more time for personal reflection.

“One silver lining is that I would have never been able to give myself this gift of time to just slow down and not be distracted by exterior work and be completely indulgent,” she says.

It must be refreshing for someone who otherwise lives a very public life as a celebrity, I suggest.

“My job entails talking to a lot of people, so does Mackenzie’s. It has been nice to close the doors and be quiet,” she says.

Happiest Season will be among the last films to wrap in a pre-COVID era, and after the year we’ve had, the film is a welcome delight. It’s a heartwarming festive rom-com about Abby (Stewart) who wants to propose to girlfriend Harper (Davis) over Christmas, only to find out Harper’s conservative family don’t know she’s gay. Harper’s parents aren’t homophobic, Davis noted on set, they just hadn’t been exposed to her “truth” yet.

Director Clea DuVall (left) with her two leads.

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Harper promises to tell them after the festivities have wrapped, but for now, the couple must pretend to be platonic roommates. An exploration of being true to oneself ensues through sharply written dialogue, hilarity and touching honesty.

It’s a film director Clea DuVall always wished she’d been able to see herself. As a queer woman, she felt stories like hers were heavily under-represented on the screen and rarely cracked mainstream cinema.

“I love Christmas movies,” she told news.com.au back in February.

“I love how they become a part of our lives in a way that other movies just don’t. And I had never seen my experience represented, as a gay person and as someone who spent most of my holidays with other people’s families. I felt like it was a very rich space to play in.”

The significance of a Sony-backed, lesbian Christmas movie is not lost on Stewart, who in 2017 described herself, publicly for the first time, as “so gay” during her opening monologue for Saturday Night Live.

Happiest Season, a future queer Christmas classic.

“The movie is important to me on a different level … It’s not something I grew up with, so I feel really lucky to be a part of it,” she says, her excitement palpable at this point.

“It is a really beautiful love story – and a coming out story – about two women that doesn’t exist yet … I would have been so jealous, and also very excited, to see it coming together without me. But I f***ing belong here.”

Happiest Season is in cinemas from November 26

Originally published as Happiest Season star Kristen Stewart on heartwarming queer Christmas movie