Making merry
Jones Family Christmas, Heather Mitchell plays Heather, a mum whose perfect Christmas comes under threat from a bushfire. She tells about making the film and shares her family’s festive favourites
Siobhan Duck
IT wasn’t too much of a stretch for Heather Mitchell to play mother to Ella Scott Lynch, Nicholas Denton and Max McKenna in her new film, Jones Family Christmas.
Close friends with their real-life parents, Mitchell knows all three of the actors who play her children in the movie; laughing that she even rocked them in her arms when they were babies.
“I have known all of them since they were little,” she smiles fondly.
“We haven’t had close relationships, but it was beautiful to work with them and we immediately felt comfortable together.”
Mitchell plays the Jones family matriarch Heather, who is delighted to have her children and grandson all under one roof for the holidays. She is determined to make it the perfect Christmas despite simmering tensions within the group of holidaymakers.
It will be a familiar story for a lot of viewers given most family gatherings – even the happy ones – inevitably come with some sort of baggage.
Asked if she’s ever experienced an awkward family Christmas herself, a bemused Mitchell says knowingly (and with tact): “Oh yes. There’s been awkwardness.
“But we don’t come from a family of screamers and shouters either. There’s never been a situation of raised voices or aggression but there have been misunderstandings.
“It’s the little things that can go quite deep for some people. And then there’s that process of apology in the days after Christmas where there’s lots of phone calls to sound out other members of the family about their behaviour, asking: ‘Did I do the wrong thing here?’”
There won’t be too much drama on the menu for Mitchell’s Christmas lunch this year. She’s planning on having a “quiet Christmas” with her husband and two sons and any friends who find themselves at a loose end.
And while she’s “not really a Christmas movie person” there is one exception to that rule. She’s a sucker for the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life starring James Stewart.
“It’s a film I love from my childhood,” she says.
“But I don’t think the boys have seen it since they were little. So, I said to my husband Martin, seeing we are having Christmas here, let’s get the sheet out and project it up [on the big screen] on Christmas Eve. We will have some friends over too to watch it.
“It’s such a life-affirming film.”
While Christmas movies do big business in America, with Hallmark churning out cheesy rom-coms every year and stars like Eddie Murphy, Tim Allen and Will Ferrell making festive-themed comedies for families to enjoy, Australia has tended to shy away from this cinematic tradition.
Now, with Binge commissioning How to Make Gravy – based on the classic Paul Kelly song – and Stan adding a new festive film to its slate each year, the (yule) tide appears to be turning.
“I had no idea that there was this interest [in Christmas movies],” she says.
“But I was looking at Instagram when they posted the trailer and there were so many people saying:
‘At last an Australian one!
It’s not American. Or British. Or European. It’s ours!’”
Much like the classic movie The Castle, Jones Family Christmas uses warm humour to poke fun at Australian culture whilst also spotlighting some more serious issues regarding mental health, immigration and climate change.
Set in rural Australia at the height of summer, the threat of bushfire hangs over the planned family gathering just as it does for so many people at this time of year.
It’s because the 2019 Black Summer bushfires are still so fresh in people’s minds – and with bushfires a continuing summer threat around the country – that the production was very mindful of handling that element of the story with sensitivity.
“We would not want to ever belittle it or make fun of it in any way,” she says. “The only comment we are making about it is it’s a real threat in Australia that affects people’s lives enormously and quite devastatingly.
“So, while it’s not what it is about, the film uses the fires to show that when there is an external calamity like that, it brings people together. Not just families but the wider community as well.”
Although it’s set at Christmas time, the movie was actually shot in the middle of winter.
“So, it was freezing cold, and we had to suck ice blocks before speaking on film so you wouldn’t see all the frost [from our breath against the cold air],” she laughs.
“And we are all wearing summer clothes, but underneath my beige cotton pants I was wearing two sets of thermals.
“We were very well looked after though. And there were always jackets and hot water bottles and heat packs at the ready.”
Jones Family Christmas is just one of the many projects that Mitchell has on the go. Now 64, the Logie winner has never been busier. This year also saw Mitchell star in the second season of Love Me (she’s still hopeful there will be a third instalment of the Binge drama), appear on Australian Story and the travel series Luxury Escapes and release her autobiography, Everything and Nothing. She’s now filming the new Channel 10 drama Fake with Asher Keddie and gearing up for a national tour of RBG, her one-woman play about Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
“Ten years ago, when I was still in my 50s, I would be cast as The Mother or The Grandmother or The Neighbour,” she recalls.
“They were the titles. These characters rarely had names and their dialogue was usually in service to a male character.
“That was pretty much most of the things that I was considered for. And so, thank goodness things have changed.
“And we are not only writing more interesting roles, but we are addressing difficulties and wonderful opportunities that older people face.
“Because all old age is, is that you’ve been alive longer. That’s all it is. It’s not about going downhill.
“I don’t see it as a negative at all.”