From Starring With His Husband to Sharing a Birthday With Fran Drescher, Ben Lewis Sets Up THE CHRISTMAS SETUP

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede There’s a lot going on in THE CHRISTMAS SETUP, well beyond the festive romantic matchmaking. Debuting Friday, Dec. 18 at 8 p.m. ET on CTV Drama Channel, THE CHRISTMAS SETUP is Lifetime’s first-ever LGBTQ+ holiday film. Adding to the mix is the fact that the two leads – Canadian Ben Lewis, and Blake Lee – are married in real life. Still more: playing the mother of Lewis’ character is none other than THE NANNY herself, Fran Drescher. And while it’s set in Milwaukee, it was filmed in the perpetually Christmas-y town of Almonte, Ont., near Ottawa. Putting all those elements together, how could THE CHRISTMAS SETUP not become an instant Christmas classic? “It certainly sounds appealing – especially since you’re already billing it as a classic,” Lewis said. “I like where your head’s at.” THE CHRISTMAS SETUP follows New York lawyer Hugo (Lewis) who returns home to Milwaukee with his best friend Madelyn (Ellen Wong) to spend the holidays with his mother Kate (Drescher). Unbeknownst to Hugo, his mom has arranged for him to run into his secret crush from high school, Patrick (Lee), and the romance begins. Lewis said he has come to appreciate the groundbreaking aspect of THE CHRISTMAS SETUP more and more in recent months, as the debut date has approached. “When we initially got the offer, I think I was sort of blissfully ignorant about the, you know … certainly I’m not ignorant about the greater conversation about representation, but in this genre specifically, I wasn’t particularly,” said Lewis, who is from Toronto. “I wasn’t really thinking about the greater social implications of it, which I think was good, because I didn’t feel a ton of pressure, other than it being my first lead role carrying a movie. But once the movie was announced, people started reaching out, particularly within our peer group but also just online, so many queer people saying that they grew up watching these movies, and how much this type of representation means to them.” Personally groundbreaking for Lewis and Lee was working together for the first time, apart from helping each other with audition tapes at home. “It’s funny, because often when we do that, tensions can run very high, and more often than not it turns into a massive fight,” Lewis said with a chuckle. “So we were a little bit nervous. You don’t necessarily know what it’s going to be like, taking your home life and sort of putting that on a set. But we were very pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed the experience.” That said, Lewis’ character certainly gets placed in many more embarrassing situations than Lee’s character. “They originally told us, ‘Ben, we have you in mind for Hugo, and Blake, we have you in mind for Patrick, but if you read the script and you feel we got it wrong, you can swap’ – which was crazy,” Lewis recalled. “But we both naturally gravitated towards the characters they intended. I think we’re both fairly funny people, but Blake has done more comedy in his career, so it was fun for me to play the goofy, neurotic one, and really get put through the wringer like that.” Finally, Lewis was asked what it was like to have Drescher playing his mom. “She and I actually share the same birthday – you know how everybody has that one celebrity that you know you share a birthday with? For me, she has been that my entire life,” said Lewis, whose shared birthday with Drescher fell during the filming of THE CHRISTMAS SETUP. “The mother-son chemistry we had was sort of effortless, and maybe that had something to do with it. Fran was the only person from the core cast that Blake and I didn’t know beforehand, but if you grew up watching THE NANNY – which I think most women and gay men of my generation did – you feel like you know her, because she’s so genuine. And she’s also a longtime ally and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. She’s everything you want her to be, and more.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv