“The Christmas Showdown” puts friendship over everything

For seven years, OWN Network has been delivering something special during the holiday season through its “Fixin’ For the Holidays” programming block. This annual tradition brings heartwarming stories centered on Black experiences, culture and community to screens across the nation. This year’s lineup includes The Christmas Showdown, a refreshing take on the holiday movie formula that puts female friendship at its center. The film stars Amber Stevens-West and Corbin Reid, who also serve as co-creators and producers.

You two went from being actresses to co-creating and producing The Christmas Showdown together. What made you decide to take that leap into producing?

Corbin Reid: It all happened by accident. Amber had already done a movie with this producer named Megan Ellstrom, who’s over at Fox. I happened to have Megan in my home shooting a Christmas movie. She was like, “I recognize this house. You know Amber Stevens-West?” And I was like, “Yeah.” She was like, “I would love to work with her again.” And I was like, “I want to do a Christmas movie.” Cut to a few days later, Amber and I were helping a friend decorate his new apartment and I told her that Megan was at my house. She was like, “What? I want to work with Megan again.” Then she’s texting Megan like, “I’m with Corbin. We want to do a Christmas movie.” I pitched Amber a random idea just off the top of my head and she was like, “That is genius.” We pitched it to Megan at lunch and she took it to all these places and OWN loved it. And here we are.

Amber Stevens-West: Yeah, it all just happened. But we’ve invested a lot of time in our relationships in this industry. I knew Megan well enough to feel comfortable to even just send that text. And she’s really the person who held our hands through this whole experience. Sitting around as an actor, waiting for someone to create something for you is pretty frustrating. So we were ready to put it into our own hands. We really enjoyed the process a lot. Like being a part of it from the very beginning, picking the writer to help us develop the script, all the way to location scouting, to finding the right music score in the end. Every single piece of it has been really fun.

Corbin Reid: We were ready for it. Amber, you’ve been in this business since you were a teenager. You have so many incredible relationships with people, not just with Megan, but just in general, that we pulled from. Relationships you have with talent like Loretta Devine, to make this movie happen. And I’ve spent like the last 10 years that I’ve been in Hollywood, whenever I have an acting job, I’ve asked to shadow. I’ve shadowed on almost every show I’ve been on. I’ve been in production meetings. I’ve been in tone meetings. I have also been writing for the past 10 years. I produced and directed and starred in my own short film that did the circuit. So the audacity was built on the back of experience. We both just brought our unique set of skills and value to the project as producers.

The film focuses on female friendship rather than the typical holiday romance formula. Why was it so important to put that relationship at the center of the story?

Amber Stevens-West: Well, it’s something different. We’re very familiar with the other formula and it works great and it’s a lot of fun. But in my own personal life, the hardest breakup I’ve ever had in my life was with a friend. I had plenty of boyfriends, but women, we can really invest in each other and our friendship. And I was really deep in this friendship. So when it fell apart, it broke me for years. I’m only now kind of able to let it go and not think about it all the time. 

So to tell a Christmas story that focused on friendship love and how they reconnected with each other and were able to acknowledge their mistakes, I think that’s relatable and something we hadn’t really seen before. And this movie’s funny. Like we were in competition mostly, most of the movie we’re fighting and stuff. But because there’s this deep love for each other underneath it all, that’s what makes it funny and not catty.

Corbin Reid: The audience was responding, people would walk up to us and be like, “Thank you so much. I feel seen.” And men are still a part of the story, they’re still love. But at the center of it, it’s really about this friendship. I personally do get tired of just seeing the big city woman goes to her hometown for the holidays, falls for the high school football star who she overlooked. We know, we get it. People don’t always have these perfect relationships or perfect families that they can cling to for the holidays. The love you get from a friendship is just as valuable and just as important. It doesn’t isolate anybody because everybody has friends.

Your characters are childhood best friends who become rivals. How much of your own personalities and friendship dynamics did you write into April and Chastity?

Corbin Reid: It’s funny because I feel like we both have the ability, either one of us could have played either one of these parts. My character April is very spontaneous and fun and those are also where some of her flaws lie. She gets so spontaneous that she drops the ball or she’s so excitable that she’s not completely organized and then something goes wrong. And then Chastity is very Type A and organized and an overachiever, which is great when you’re doing events, but sometimes then you lose the spontaneity. So there’s this yin and yang between these two characters. When we were circulating the script and people would read it, they’d be like, “We love this. Which one are you guys playing?” Like people didn’t know. There are elements of both of our personalities just because Amber and I are also such good friends.

Amber Stevens-West: There’s elements of both of our personalities in real life in both of these characters and really could have gone either way because I can be very clumsy and spontaneous and crazy and fun and wild, but I can also be very Type A and very eye on the prize kind of as well.

You both wrote and performed an original song in the film. What was that experience like?

Amber Stevens-West: We literally were like, “This movie’s not about music at all, but we’re going to sing an original song in it and we’re going to figure out how it makes sense.” Both of us are singers. Corbin did Broadway for years. She’s a trained singer and I sing, I’m not trained like her, but I love it. At one point in my life I thought I’d pursue music. With the writer, he kind of infused a little bit of music into the characters. 

By the end of the movie, it makes sense that we do this, but we were very excited about writing our own song. And I think it turned out so cute. It had been a long time since I had written anything. And she and I had never written together, but Corbin just came over one day and we’re like, “All right, what are your ideas? Where is this coming from? What’s the story that we’re trying to tell?”

Corbin Reid: We wrote the lyrics in like a day. We probably made some adjustments over a few days, but we wrote the heart of the song in a day at Amber’s house, in her backyard. There’s karaoke in the movie too, which is so funny because we both love karaoke and I have karaoke parties at my house. The writer was like, “What are your special skills?” And a lot of that stuff found its way into the movie, including my background in figure ice skating. There’s a little homage to my figure ice skating in the movie, which I was excited in concept, but then when I had to execute, I was terrified because I was like, “Wait, I haven’t done this since I was 10.” My dad was so excited though. He’s like, “Finally all that money I spent on your lessons is paying off.”

OWN has been creating original holiday movies for Black audiences for seven years now. What does it mean to be a part of that legacy?

Amber Stevens-West: A lot. I mean, representation matters. We’re really happy that we’re at a place where we can be authentically ourselves and we don’t have to explain anything about who we are. We just are and we’re complex characters and relatable characters. I think it’s a movie for everybody, but the Black community will absolutely see themselves in this. And I think that that is special and matters.

Corbin Reid: Especially in a time where people who look like us are being taken off, it’s really important to have a safe space. We are so lucky to have collaborators like OWN that focuses on Black female driven content and for them to have given us the opportunity to produce and co-create, that’s not something that just happens every day. So props to them for trusting us and for giving us that opportunity. I really do think that our contributions made this film the authentic, beautiful story about two Black female friends who are creating their own version of love for the holidays.

What advice would you give to friends who want to collaborate professionally?

Amber Stevens-West: You should like your friend first. Make sure you have a lot of trust with each other and you’re not afraid to speak up because there were moments where she and I had to make the decisions on stuff and where the direction of this thing was going. And we needed to be as honest as we could, especially starring ourselves. Make sure that you set the ground rules for what’s going to happen as friends and as collaborators and then the sky’s the limit.

Corbin Reid: I also think at the root of every healthy friendship is making sure that at the end of the day you just want to see the other person win. Luckily Amber and I really were aligned. But you just have to know that at the base of everything you want that other person to win, you want that other person to shine. And when you’re doing it together, that still has to be true. I think Hollywood has a very dirty reputation for being competitive and especially with women, you don’t see a ton of female friends co-producing together because it can be hard. But I think if that is what is underlying and it is for us, both in our friendship and in our working relationship, that’s probably why it was so easy.

Amber Stevens-West: I think that’s so dead on. There is no competing with one another. Neither one of us wants to be the star. We don’t need to be number one. And it’s because we respect each other’s careers and contributions and also, we’re each other’s cheerleaders.

The Christmas Showdown premieres December 6 on OWN at 9 p.m. EST and will be available to stream on Max the following day.