Laughing All the Way

There’s one heck of an Office Christmas Party going on in the new movie with Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman and Olivia Munn.

’T is the season to be jolly—and for squabbles, stress and getting sauced. Enter the new movie Office Christmas Party, opening Dec. 9, which has all the holiday trimmings. There’s family tension, as brother Clay (played by T.J. Miller) and sister Carol (Jennifer Aniston) fight for control of their father’s company and, more importantly, his annual office Christmas party. There’s a “Scrooge”—Aniston’s character—who, as new CEO, slashes staff bonuses and takes a stand against after-hours fun in the workplace. And there’s romance—Jason Bateman’s Josh falls for his co-worker, Olivia Munn’s Tracey.

And of course, there’s a car chase. Wait, a car chase? “Yes,” says Aniston. “This movie has everything!” The film’s cast of seriously funny characters also includes Saturday Night Live standouts Kate McKinnon and Vanessa Bayer. The

‘ This office Christmas party is the craziest I’ve ever seen. They took everybody’s Christmas party stories and put them into one movie.’

—Olivia Munn

set, Bateman says, was very much like a real party.

“It was such a big cast and then you had 300 extras every day,” he says. “So there’d be little groups and you’d move from one to the other and each had its own sense of humor or different set of energy. Fortunately my character got to play with a lot of people. I just tried to keep a straight face the whole time.”

That was a problem shared by the entire cast, who point to McKinnon and Bayer as the “toughest” screen partners.

“Those girls are constantly doing improv and I don’t know what’s about to come out of their mouths,” says Aniston. “Try to get through a scene without laughing. I’m like, ‘Get it together, Aniston!’ ”

Munn had her own solution to a case of the giggles. “I would take a pen and stab myself in the hand under the table because Kate McKinnon was making me laugh so hard,” she says. “It was one of the funniest groups of people I’ve ever been in.”

Home for the Holidays

Complex and comical familial relationships are a common thread in the real lives of the film’s cast too, especially during the holidays.

For Aniston, spending time with family at Christmas was a long-distance, connect-the-dots commitment.

“My mom and I would go to Tavern on the Green [in New York City]. We’d treat ourselves to a Christmas Eve dinner there,” she says. “I’d wake up, spend Christmas with my mom and then I’d go with my dad to my stepmom’s in Jersey. Then I’d go to my grandmother’s in Pennsylvania and see all the Greeks. I traveled a lot of ground. And I looked forward to it. Especially when you got to the Greeks, because they’re so much fun. And I did get a nice little stash of goodies.” But presents from the family aren’t always so nice. “One of the worst gifts to get is anything you have to display in your home,” Munn says. “And you know who is mostly responsible for that kind of thing? My mother. When I got my first house, she would keep bringing stuff from her attic and placing it around my house. I’d put it away and then when she came it would be all this energy to find it and put it back out and be like, ‘Yep, I love it!’”

Making New Memories

Bateman and his wife, Amanda Anka, whom he married in 2001, have two daughters, and he’s happily making new holiday traditions with them—and putting his acting skills to the test in the process.

“We gave our now-9-year-old a bike,” he says. “This is four or five years ago at the peak of her excitement about how Santa comes down the chimney and eats the cookies and then he leaves the presents and goes back up. We thought we might blow this thing if the bike is next to the tree because she could say, ‘How does Santa get it down the chimney?’ So we put the bike outside on the woodpile, which is on the bottom of the exterior of the chimney—Santa obviously left it here because he couldn’t get it through. There was this whole embarrassing acting scene where I had to go out to get wood for the fire and only through that effort would I discover that there’s a bike outside.”

For Munn, creating new traditions with her boyfriend, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, means enjoying a new kind of family. Not only does that include Rodgers’ teammates and their wives, but also her four-legged family members, rescue pups Chance and Frankie. “My mom loves to knit, so she’s actually making them a Santa hat and a beard and little booties. They’re going to be our Christmas card mascots.”

Aniston says that while she loves receiving handmade gifts from friends, she and her husband, actor Justin Theroux, celebrate with quality time instead of material possessions.

“Let’s go and have a beautiful shared experience together and let that be our gift,” she says.

One experience Aniston has yet to enjoy: a real-life office Christmas party. In fact, she and Bateman have both missed out on the tradition, but Munn attended several before she arrived in Hollywood.

“The funny thing about office Christmas parties is if you turn on the lights, everybody is right where they work— like HR hangs out with HR, but now we have alcoholic beverages in our hands,” she says. “This office Christmas party is the craziest I’ve ever seen. They took everybody’s Christmas party stories and put them into one movie.”

With a car chase.