EXCLUSIVE: JK Simmons and Bonnie Hunt Talk Playing Santa and Mrs. Claus in ‘Red One’
Amazon MGM Studios has released their brand new Holiday pic, Red One, and we got the chance to hear from the movie’s Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, JK Simmons and Bonnie Hunt. During our chat with the duo, the two talked bringing to life their own version of the iconic couple and some of their Christmas traditions and memories.
On bringing to life their own version of Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus:
Hunt: “I think that they’re a team.”
Simmons: “Team. Teamwork.”
Hunt: “They have action, humor, pathos in a story that has an underlying theme of goodness can prevail and lead to better things. It’s a no-brainer to say, ‘Absolutely, yes, I want to be involved.'”
Simmons: “Yeah. Yes.”
On their Christmas traditions and memories:
Simmons: “I have an older sister, two years older, she was probably six and I was four, and my little brother was a baby, and of course on Christmas morning we’re up like before the crack of dawn, bothering our parents and getting them out of bed, and they dragged their butts out of bed. But I think that was the Christmas that my mom just said, ‘Go make some oatmeal.’ And my sister, she’s the oldest, she’s the female, so she’s the assistant mom, so every Christmas from then on, my sister and I would get up, we would make the oatmeal, and after we eat the oatmeal, then we’re allowed to open the stockings from Santa. Then we wait for mom and dad to wake up to open all the rest of the presents. So it taught us a real kind of self-sufficiency and it was a real sort of gave my sister especially a sense of responsibility.
Hunt: “Togetherness, being with family. I have three brothers and three sisters, and it was always a busy day in the Hunt household. Well, any day was. But Christmas was always a really special day. It was like the one day that my dad was actually home from work, maybe for a few hours. Somebody would call him because something broke in their house and he’d be there to fix it. He was an incredibly talented craftsman, handyman, electrician. And now when we’re all together, I always say, it’s always fun until you hear the phrase, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?”‘ It’s the other family tradition of, ‘Uh-oh, uh-oh, walking on eggshells.’ So yeah, that’s our family tradition.”
Their characters were the best part of the movie. I would love to see a movie with these two as the leads because there wasn’t enough of them in the movie.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.