Love Wins, Hulu Wins This ‘Happiest Season’

There has never been a better time to make the yuletide gay than with the highly-anticipated release of the new holiday film Happiest Season streaming Wednesday on Hulu.

With an all-star cast including Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Dan Levy, Mary Steenburgen, Alison Brie, Victor Garber and Aubrey Plaza, Happiest Season is a modern romantic comedy that is breaking barriers with its compassionate storyline set around a young lesbian couple. When Harper (played by Davis) invites her girlfriend Abby (played by Stewart) to join her family’s Christmas celebration, Harper at the last minute reveals to Abby that she has not come out to her family yet and the two will have to play it off as just friends visiting for the holidays.

The story is co-written by the film’s dedicated director Clea DuVall and delightful co-star Mary Holland, a narrative inspired by some very personal experiences. “I’ve spent the majority of my holidays with other people’s families, so I’m very familiar with jumping into someone else’s family dynamic and the comedy that can come with that,” DuVall reveals to Forbes. “I’ve also gone home with people as ‘the friend’ and I have had people come home with me as ‘the friend’ and had unfortunately experienced a lot of the awkward comedy that comes out of that as well, so this really felt like a great way into the genre of the holiday romantic comedy.”

“This is a story about a queer couple and it is a story about coming out and what that experience is like. That’s something that Clea has personal experience in,” Holland adds. “I really saw my role in writing this with her to support the telling of that in any way I could. It was important for us to tell that story in as honest and joyful way as we could.”

Schitt’s Creek’s Dan Levy plays John in Happiest Season, Abby’s hilariously supportive best friend, a role he was enthusiastic to accept. “I knew I wanted to do it long before I sat with Clea,” says Levy. “I had been such a fan of hers for so long and to know that this story was being written by someone who has experienced it, really kind of helped authenticate all those moments that really needed that level of reality.”

Levy’s character embodies a great balance of playing a comic relief, while also having some of the film’s most sentimental dialogue opposite Stewart. “For me, it’s always been a dream to be a part of a rom-com and to play that best friend character. He has such a fresh perspective on life and his advice to Kristen’s character is so good that it just felt in a way like we were seeing a fresh and contemporary spin on the sort of classic best friend part. To know that people are going to get to see themselves reflected on-screen for the first time like this is truly an amazing thing to be a part of.”

Happiest Season was originally set to arrive in theaters this Thanksgiving week, as it was announced on the film’s official Instagram page back in June during Pride Month. However, due to the ongoing pandemic and a significant decline in moviegoing as a result, streaming service Hulu acquired the U.S. rights to the Sony Pictures film while keeping the original November 25 release date for what is now a Hulu original film. “I think Hulu is such a phenomenal home for it,” expresses Holland. “I am so excited that it is going to be accessible to people in their homes, safely where they can watch it with their loves ones and it’s the kind of movie that feels like a hug. It’s a joyful, celebratory holiday movie.”

When asked what she would say to someone struggling today with self-acceptance or choosing to come out to people in their immediate circles, DuVall has some comforting and relatable words to share. “Wherever you are on your journey, it’s okay. Be gentle to yourself and be loving to yourself and know you’re going to be okay. This is a movie that really has a lot of empathy for not just Abby and Harper but for all of its characters. We can make mistakes, we cannot get things right the first time, but we can bounce back from it and redeem ourselves. We still deserve to be loved at the end of it.”