Lindsay Lohan knows that we’ve been missing rom-coms — because she’s been missing them, too. “Film got really intense [over the last few years],” she tells Refinery29. “Everything we were watching was portraying everything that was happening in the world, and I feel like we need something different, something uplifting.” Which is exactly what Lohan and her co-star, Chord Overstreet of Glee fame, give us in Netflix’s Falling For Christmas — cheery with just the perfect side of cheesiness. You know, good old-fashioned romantic fun.
In the new holiday film, Lohan stars as Sierra Belmont, a newly-engaged hotel heiress who loses her memory after an unfortunate accident while on the ski slopes (let’s just say it includes a too-big engagement ring and an even bigger nod to Paris Hilton’s now-broken 2018 engagement to actor Chris Zylka). The upside to losing your memory? Being rescued by the hunky Jake (Overstreet), a local small resort owner who’s picking up the pieces of his business — and his heart — after the death of his wife, all while trying to raise his daughter. It’s what can be expected from any sort of romantic comedy hijinks, lingering looks under mistletoe and massive miscommunication ensue.
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As an OG in the rom-com genre (Hello, The Parent Trap and Just My Luck!), and lifelong fan of the genre (Lohan says she used to watch She’s All That on repeat to learn the prom dance-off), the actresses return to the genre is BIG after several years of being off the big screen. And this is only the beginning. Falling For Christmas is the first in a slate of three Netflix movies (two of which are rom-coms) Lohan is starring in and marks her official return to movies after almost a decade away (Lohan has starred in TV series like Sick Note and films like Among The Shadows in the interim). But this is like her bread and butter.
For Lohan, the decision to return to movies really started during the pandemic, when the actress was at home, watching her peers make films that she herself was enjoying, feeling almost like life was passing by. “The love of my life is making movies and bringing stories to life, characters to life, and sharing that with other people,” Lohan says. “So I got that itch and I was like, Okay, I'm ready.” When she got the script for Falling For Christmas, “it was just a really lovely, heartwarming holiday movie, rom-com,” she says. “And it was just perfect for me to come back with something like that.”
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At the heart of the film is a message around enjoying the simpler things and embracing the people and moments around you — rather than objects or material things. After Sierra loses her memory and any notion of who she actually is or just how wealthy she is, she embraces a more low-key way of life that was once so foreign to her, like making her bed, cooking breakfast for people she loves, and cleaning a toilet. While on the surface they may seem less-than-glam (OK, cleaning bathrooms is never fun), these are the moments that ultimately make up life and make it so incredible. And they should be embraced. It’s a message many people are relating to post-pandemic, Lohan included. “It definitely resonated with me from growing up,” she says, “being so in the Hollywood scene for a while and everything around being so important, and then just kind of switching my life to a very simple life. It really made sense to me, and the character arc of showing that to people, it's not about the things that you have, it's about the people that you share them with.”
It’s an essential message that Lohan hopes audiences latch on to, via a criminally overlooked and thankfully resurging genre. And one that’s more important than ever. “Rom-coms are around for people to escape from all of the stuff that goes on in daily life and relate to these characters in these movies that are funny and unforgiving, and you can just find something about all of them that you can relate to,” Lohan says. “And I think it's important that we have that laughter, especially in life right now.” With Lohan’s next rom-com, Irish Wish, set to be released in 2023, we’re fully ready for Lohan to take her rightful place as the rom-com Queen — because she was made for it.
Falling For Christmas is streaming on Netflix starting November 10.
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