Holiday specials
Cable channels looking to add diversity to genre
Cable television channels looking to add diversity to their lineups./
In one scene from the Lifetime TV movie, “A Sugar & Spice Holiday,” a co-worker says to Suzy, an Asian American architect in Los Angeles: “I didn’t know if Christmas was a big deal where you’re from.”
Retorts Suzy: “I’m from Maine.”
A lot of viewers of a cozy Christmas film might just shrug off the insinuation that Suzy is somehow not American. But for an Asian audience, that brief exchange is a knowing reminder that microaggressions don’t take a holiday. They especially haven’t in the wake of the pandemic, which has triggered antiAsian racism and terms like “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.”
“I think it’s great timing for us for this movie to be coming out now during the pandemic, with the perception of the Asian culture and the ‘flu’ and all,” Canadian actor Jacky Lai, who plays Suzy, told The Associated Press. “I really do hope that this (movie) — with our faces — is able to hopefully be welcomed by people into their homes and see us as just your American/canadian friends.”
“A Sugar & Spice Holiday,” premiering Sunday, may be the first feel-good TV Christmas flick to feature a mostly Asian ensemble. It’s one of several projects where cable channels are demonstrating a desire for inclusion this yuletide season. The shift comes a year after the Hallmark Channel dropped an ad that included a samesex couple. The fallout pointed to an overall diversity problem in the genre with not just the LGBTQ community, but communities of color. Recent months of racial unrest only added to the conversation within the entertainment industry about representation.
Tia Maggini, vice president of Lifetime Original Movies, says it was a coincidence that screenwriter Eirene Donohue, who is Asian American and had worked with the network before, came to them with the story pitch.
“It was exciting to be presented with this particular point of view that has been long overdue for the Christmas movie genre,” Maggini said in a statement. Most important: The movie itself was actually funny and “full of Christmas heart.”
Indeed, the rom-com has all the warm, familiar holiday movie tropes. Suzy returns to the small town where she grew up for Christmas, is persuaded to revive her baking skills for a local gingerbread house competition and is assisted by her former high school crush (Tony Giroux).
Her father is played by veteran actor Tzi Ma. Despite a year filled with high-profile film roles in “The Farewell” and “Mulan,” Ma didn’t hesitate to join a Lifetime movie.
“It was the first time a Chinese American family was featured on a Christmas story,” Ma said in an email. “Lifetime has a tremendous Asian American following. It’s a way to say thank you to them.”
In Hollywood, it can often feel like studios only cast Asians in narratives where there’s some kind of hardship or East-meetsWest struggle. And with TV holiday movies, they’re almost nonexistent. Meanwhile, there are white actors who have made dozens of them. Like any other group, Giroux says, Asians deserve to see themselves in lighthearted fare.
“I think it’s so important to have all sorts of stories with any culture — for them to have exposure to the stories of struggle but it’s such a delight to see something lighter, to see aspects of culture that aren’t surrounded with times of difficulty,” Giroux says.