Newton-John In TV Debut
Olivia Newton-John’s first television acting project seems to have been tailor-made. Her role in “A Mom for Christmas,” airing Monday, Dec. 17, on NBC, involves many areas of her real life.
Newton-John plays a mannequin who comes to life after a motherless girl wishes she had a mother of her own for Christmas. The performer said she was comfortable with the story, the first television script she had ever been offered.
“It was sweet and it was about a mom, and I’m a mom. And it sounded like a program that my daughter could watch. And it had a bit of magic in it- some elements of Mary Poppins and Cinderella in it and it just appealed to me,” Newton-John said.
The singer/actress had a special Christmas wish of her own four years ago when she was pregnant with her soon-to-be-daughter.
“I wished for a healthy baby when I was pregnant, and Chloe was born in January, so that was my wish, and I got it,” Newton-John recalled.
Chloe accompanied her mother to the Cincinnati location where A Mom for Christmas was filmed in October.
Newton-John said her daughter liked the location because it was much different from the Malibu farmhouse they share with husband and father Matt Lattanzi.
“She’d come down for lunch and then she’d ride around the block or whatever. She loved it because it was a real neighbor hood with kids and flat streets, nothing like where we live, so she had a good time.”
The performer said she felt like she had two daughters on the set. Newton-John and 11-year-old Juliet Sorcey, who plays the wishful little girl, developed a fun rapport while filming.
“I felt like her mom by the time we finished with it. I was always telling her to eat her vegetables,” Newton-John said, chuckling. “She’s a really good little actress, Juliet, and I felt kind of motherly toward her.”
Although Newton-John has appeared in television specials and starred in Grease, the most successful movie musical in history, “A Mom for Christmas” is her first television acting role. In it she sings the background song for one scene, written by John Farrar, who has produced nearly all of her albums since she began her singing career in 1971.
Luckily for the movie actress, the transition from mannequin to person was not filmed” Newton-John said. “You never see that. They made a mannequin to look like me, and then the next time you see me is in person. So they don’t do a transition, that would have been hard,” she said coyly.
More from A Mom For Christmas.