‘Modern Family’ star travels to North Pole
Stonestreet always thought he’d play Santa — just not this one
Eric Stonestreet wasn’t looking for a job when he sent a photo of his fiancee’s 11-year-old boys watching the TV series “The Santa Clauses” to a writer-producer friend who’d created the Disney+ show.
“I was saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got a couple of fans here in Kansas City, loving the show,’ ” Stonestreet says of his message to Jack Burditt, who’d worked with Stonestreet on the ABC sitcom “Modern Family.” “He wrote back saying,
‘If we get picked up for a second season, maybe you could come play.’ And that was kind of where we left it.”
“The Santa Clauses” debuted in 2022 as a continuation of the movie franchise in which actor Tim Allen plays Scott Calvin, an ordinary man who, after accidentally causing the death of Santa Claus, learns he must now take over as Santa.
And when it got renewed, Burditt reached out as he’d promised, Stonestreet says.
“He’s like, ‘Hear me out,’ and started explaining it,” Stonestreet says.
“I’d always thought Santa would be something I’d get to play at some point.”
But not this particular Santa. The character named Magnus Antas was a Santa of an entirely different order.
“He said, ‘You’re this 14th-century, you know, medieval Santa,’ ” Stonestreet continues.
“I didn’t know at first, but then he started talking to me, and just the opportunity to put the suit on and kind of create some of the Santa lore for the show, it all just made too much sense.
“Going from my couch in Kansas City to the North Pole was quite a treat.”
Here’s the other thing Stonestreet didn’t know about the Santa he was to play: Magnus Antas is “the Mad Santa.” In order to protect the world from him after he lost his way, Magnus Antas had been turned into a nutcracker.
As the second season begins, the nutcracker is part of the Christmas museum at Santapolis, a struggling theme park run by Kris Moreno, played by the comedian-actor Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias. When Moreno accidentally breaks the spell on the nutcracker, Magnus Antas is freed and, well, it ain’t good for Christmas.
Stonestreet, perhaps not surprisingly, argues that the Mad Santa isn’t really a bad Santa. He’s just misunderstood.
“Magnus Antas is only a bad guy because he was wronged in his mind,” he says. “He used to be great. He tells his gnomes that: ‘You said I was the best Santa ever. You said it.’
“So at some point, I was the great Santa that we all know and love. And then something changed in my heart and brought me over to the dark side. I started to change how Christmas was, and I was exiled into this nutcracker.”
And who says Magnus Antas can’t get his good Santa groove back? Stonestreet says the character has a nice redemption arc over the season’s six episodes, all of which are now streaming.
“I still have the good heart of Santa Claus in me,” he says. “So for me, it was fun to get the opportunity to play the duality of that.
“You know, I said from the beginning, I wanted my character to be someone, if a 7-year-old or 8-yearold saw at Disneyland, that they would reluctantly line up to meet. Meaning, they knew I was scary and intimidating, fun, funny, lovable.”
There’s a long, long history of Santa Claus in movies and television. For Stonestreet, his favorites include a pair of classics, old and new.
“Well, it all starts off with watching the (stop-motion animation) shows when I was a kid they were on TV on Christmas Eve,” he says, pointing to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in which actor-singer Burl Ives played narrator Snowman Sam and Canadian actor Stan Francis voiced Santa Claus.
“I love Ed Asner in ‘Elf,’ ” Stonestreet continued. “I love his suits, and I love everything about him. He’s also a Kansas City native, and I was so happy that
I got to work with Ed on ‘Modern Family’ before he passed away. He’s way up there.”
And, of course, he’s a big fan of Tim Allen as Scott Calvin-turned-Santa Claus in the franchise of which Stonestreet now is part.
“For me, it’s similar to my experience in 2009, when all of a sudden I’m on a soundstage with Al Bundy — Ed O’Neill — who I’ve admired and watched work for years,” he says of working with the “Married ... With Children” star on “Modern Family.” “And I’m sharing space with him, eye to eye, in a scene.
“I had that moment with (Tim Allen) where we were at craft service, having pork chops for lunch, and then a
few hours later, he’s Scott Calvin in the North Pole and I’m Magnus Antas. It was great working with him. He’s the OG, so I just loved sharing space and loved being a part of this world that he has created.”
Stonestreet divides his time between Los Angeles and Kansas City, his hometown, where he lives with his fiancee and her twin sons.
But his future stepsons had a blasé reaction to his arrival on “The Santa Clauses,” Stonestreet says.
“Because they live with me, they’re not that impressed with me, which is a learning curve for me to realize that every parent feels that way,” he says.
“It’s like, ‘OK, I’m sitting in your living room, and I’m also on the TV screen right now. I need a little bit more
of a reaction.’ ”
At least their friends are impressed, he says, laughing. In truth, they also were when the news first broke, and lately, they seem to be warming to him as Magnus Antas.
“I did get one comment out of them (recently), which was at the end of the episode,” Stonestreet says. “He was like, ‘You’re pretty funny.’ Yeah, I know!”