For Mary Walsh, it took starring in a Christmas movie to finally make her...merry
'I found that I was always longing for my Christmas to be a totally different Christmas than it was'
When the holiday season rolls around, watching Christmas movies makes actress and comedian Mary Walsh feel like the Grinch. Growing up in Newfoundland, there were two movies that particularly intensified her lack of Christmas spirit — the 1951 classic Scrooge starring Alastair Sims and the iconic It's a Wonderful Life with James Stewart.
"I always felt really sad at Christmas because I always thought everybody else was having this really fabulous Christmas and only I was in this Christmas desert," Walsh explains.
That's why she decided it was time to make her own Christmas movie — one that wouldn't make audiences long for a holiday experience so far outside their own. So she reunited the hilarious "Fury" family from her award-winning CBC comedy series Hatching, Matching and Dispatching for the holiday film A Christmas Fury. In addition to creating and co-writing the film, Walsh is of course reprising her role as the family matriarch, Mamie Lou, with the film also starring some of Canada's funniest talent including Mark McKinney, Susan Kent, Shaun Majumder and Jonny Harris.
In this video, Walsh shares her thoughts on Christmas films and how making her own holiday comedy allowed her to finally let go of her holiday expectations.
A Christmas Fury airs Sunday, December 3 at 8 p.m. (8:30 NT) on CBC TV.