A CALIFORNIA CHRISTMAS, now streaming on Netflix, is a holiday-themed romance starring GH’s Josh Swickard (Chase) and his wife, Lauren Swickard, who also wrote and produced it. “This is my wife’s brainchild,” Swickard begins. “During quarantine, Lauren and our friend Ali Afshar [who also stars] came up with this idea and Lauren just hit the ground running and cranked [a script] out in one or two weeks. I kind of co-produced, but it was mostly just her running with it and us shooting out this fun, feel-good Christmas movie.” The Swickards completed the film “in two or three weeks, working six-day weeks — and then we got back and were like, ‘How in the world did we just pull that off?!’ And then,” he beams, “to get the great news that it went to Netflix was just pie in the sky, couldn’t have asked for anything better. We’re just super-ecstatic about the whole situation. It’s a movie that’s coming at a time where you just need a feel-good movie. My wife just crushed it behind the screen and on the screen and I’m so proud of her. We’re on cloud nine about it. It’s such a fairy tale to us. We met on a film and we were filming this during our first anniversary, which was super-special. We just look at each other and laugh. We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop!” As the title implies, “It does take place in California near Christmastime,” Swickard reports. “This girl played by my wife, her family has a ranch, and you find out during the movie that it has special meaning to them. And when the kind of bigwig, money guy, hothead son of a family conglomerate comes in to buy the ranch, you know, it doesn’t go as planned [laughs]. He gets himself in some situations he didn’t really mean to and a story unfolds. It’s pretty cute and hopefully funny and lighthearted at a time when we could all really use that.” Check out the trailer here.
