That Christmas – An interview with Richard Curtis, Nicole P. Hearon and Simon Otto
Landing like a sleigh full of gifts with a thump onto your Netflix algorithm is That Christmas. The festive feature film from Locksmith Animation, the British CG studio behind Ron’s Gone Wrong.
This film marks the directorial debut of Simon Otto, previously head of character animation at DreamWorks Animation and sees the original premise taken from Richard Curtis’s trilogy of books woven into an animated adventure in time for the holiday season.
L-R, Richard Curtis (Writer), Simon Otto (Director), Nicole P. Hearon (Producer)
Curtis and Christmas have become synonymous with one another with thanks to his live action rom com offerings such as Love Actually but through Locksmith this film marks his entrance into the animated feature world. The premise of the film fits the modus operandi of Curtis as a star studded cast of national treasures and comedy legends come together to deliver interweaving tales all set in the fictional Suffolk town of Wellington-on-Sea. Certain to indulge the seasonal senses of those warmed by the cozy familiarity of a comedy-drama Christmassy tales with more than enough animated excellence on display, you can read the full Skwigly review of the film here and catch That Christmas for yourself on Netflix now.
We caught up with Writer Richard Curtis, Producer Nicole P. Hearon and Director Simon Otto to find out more about the film.
You’re all from different backgrounds so I’ll start by asking what Christmas means to you all
Nicole P. Hearon – Well, it’s family. It’s about being together. I mean, that’s me, my biggest memories of opening the presents and just being together Christmas morning, running down the stairs into the living room, and then having your parents watch proudly as you see what Santa had chosen for us.
Simon Otto – Well, I’m from Switzerland, so Christmas works a little bit different in Switzerland, for me, it was anticipation. We would celebrate in Christmas Eve, looking out the window and see if it snowed overnight, because I came up from mountains my entire childhood was a White Christmas! I would go skiing first and then ski home, see the tree decorated and see how many gifts were under the under the tree that I get to open that night. So we had a 12 hour advantage over the British and the American kids!
Richard Curtis – Well, actually, we were a traveling family, lived in lots of countries, so it was very much about my small family. But Christmas for the last 25 years has become about lots of families. We celebrate it up in Suffolk, and there are about five families who live in the same little village, which is very much what this film is about, not only my family, but see what’s happening with all the others, and then trying to think of a good excuse not to do the Christmas morning swim, which everyone else in the village does!
The film is based on the books by yourself and Rebecca Cobb – was the intention to eventually turn them into an animated feature?
RC – No, but it’s such a joy to move them all together. It’s like when we started Mr. Bean, it was originally three stage sketches that Rowan and I did it with three different characters. And then when we thought we were going to adapt them for TV, we thought, let’s make it the same guy in each of the situations, and that’s what’s happened here. There were three different worlds, and we just said, let’s shove them all in the same town.
That Christmas. (L to R) Mrs McNutt, Mr McNutt, Mrs Mulji, Mr Forrest, Mrs Forrest, in That Christmas. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Did adapting the short stories to feature offer additional challenges?
RC – I think we realised pretty quickly that all the stories needed to be doubled and made so they were all one incident, without looking much at the past and future the characters. I’ve done adaptations before, and actually, all you’re doing is shrinking. You take a 400 page book and you’re trying to squeeze it into 120 minute film. But in this case, it was all about expanding and interweaving the universes. So that made it a lot of fun to think through every character and what their extra story might be.
Simon, as head of character at DreamWorks, you get the ideal opportunity as director to play with the characters. The Twins present an amazing chance to take the same designs and rigs and have fun with them.
SO – I’m a strong believer in the power of performance. It’s reflected in the way people hold themselves, walk, or gesture. One of my favourite things to do is sit in a train station and observe people going about their day, assigning personalities to them in my mind. Sometimes, I’ll sit with friends—like my niece—or others I love sharing this with, and we’ll throw dialogue at these passersby, imagining what might be going through their heads. It’s hilarious because it reveals how we interpret someone’s appearance, their body shape, and especially their movements and mannerisms.
Finding those idiosyncrasies in a broader context is fascinating. For instance, if you’re working with just two characters, it’s easier to distinguish them. But with a group of five kids, it becomes more complex. We had so much fun exploring that. From the outset, what drew me to Richard’s films is his love for action and his multi-threaded storytelling, where various characters intersect. His ability to craft sketch comedy blends seamlessly with the opportunity to create a rich palette of characters, which was immediately appealing to me.
I was drawn to the fact that this story doesn’t rely on a big, fantastical idea or a traditional villain. The blizzard itself is the antagonist. While some characters are initially ambiguous, their layers unfold as the story progresses. It’s unusual for animation, and that uniqueness is what excited me. I always root for animated films that take risks, offering something fresh and different. I hope audiences who watch our film will feel the same spark I did while creating it.
That Christmas. Santa in That Christmas. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Nicole, with a background working on Frozen you’re not stranger to putting snow in a film! In terms of technological advances in animation, would you read a huge blizzard in the script as a challenge?
NH – It’s a challenge that I want to accept. As soon as we get a script we sat with Visual Effect Supervisor Doug Eichler to look where the snow is, and then we immediately get together our tech team and figure out the most efficient way to do that. I remember the tech team created a box of snow so when we never would have falling snow, you’d have a box of snow around the camera. And that technology was created before we started production, so that when we could hit the ground running, when we go, okay, falling snow, and it wasn’t a big deal. So a lot of it is just in the planning of it, putting our heads together, and then also working with Simon in terms of snow interaction with feet. There’s some we’d have to pick and choose, what shots we’d have that in, but that was a conversation among us, what are the most important shots to see that in? It’s a constant collaboration.
SO – It was also an opportunity. We didn’t know how much emotion was connected to just falling snow. You think, ‘Okay, well, there’s a shot, and there’s falling snow’ and all of a sudden, you change the way the snow falls, and you add a bit of atmosphere. It was playful and seductive at one point, all of a sudden it was threatening, and that was a huge opportunity. From the first Frozen film to today, like there’s a lot more that is straight out of the box, so I think that’s why we survived it.
Coming from live-action, these conversations must just boggle the mind Richard?
RC – Yeah I was just thinking that! And I was thinking how, in the way the snow is almost like a second score, isn’t it? It’s a visual score, so that all the way through, you can try and work out, as it were, the music. Has the snow music gone scary?
The great thing is, I trust everybody, I don’t understand most of it, but almost everything has been a good revelation. We were focusing so much at the start with such simple drawings and on the story and the jokes and the dialog all the time. And it’s so wonderful to think there’s another group of people who’ve got this huge gift they’re going to give you, which is, the snow and the design, and particularly for me, the final stage. I hadn’t realised the emotional delicacy, in a way, of the characterisation and how much that was going to move on in the last 25%.
I thought, well, there are the sketches, and then there’s the horrible stage when they all turn into sort of Minecraft, and then the last, I didn’t realise is that the gap between the first proper animation and the finished product was so large, it was almost like you’ve got your performance from an actor, and then you can just make it twice as intense. Just by the way that the characters can express four emotions in two seconds. You know that the finished shot suddenly has shock, relief, panic, but all done in seconds was so exciting to me.
That Christmas. Bill in That Christmas. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Being able to control the talent or creating Wellington-on-Sea rather than going to Suffolk and asking the council to close streets must have it’s benefits.
SO – We visited Suffolk multiple times since it wasn’t far, bringing the art team along to deeply study it. We aimed to distill the town’s essence—what makes it both recognisable and authentic, yet slightly caricatured. The goal was to create a storybook feel, a place you’d want to visit and linger in, without it becoming overly picturesque. Suffolk’s natural beauty made this easier, but we wanted it to feel like a real town where real people live simple, meaningful lives. Unlike animation’s usual fantastical worlds, we focused on capturing a sense of authenticity that evokes emotion—a task that was both challenging and rewarding.
Animation offers limitless possibilities, would you consider using it to finally silence the people wanting more from your back catalogue of film or TV Richard? Would you bring back an animated Vicar of Dibley or Blackadder?
RC – I might have given a different answer 20 years ago, but it’s takes quite a long time to do animation, and I’m getting quite old. I mean, strangely, we did do it on Mr. Bean. Mr. Bean was a very interesting thing where there’s kind of a limit how much we can do when we turn that into an animated show, where we’ve been able to do so many of them. That’s a very sweet idea – can I do a sequel to one of my movies, at last, without having to work with Hugh Grant! (laughs) Because that’s the main thing stopping me. I don’t know, I’ll have to put my mind to that.
SO – An animated Vicar of Dibley, I’m in! You all heard him right? He said he’s going to do it, are we going to do an animated sequel to the Vicar of Dibley?
Who needs journalists when you’ve got Simon Otto pushing your buttons! The cast bring so much to the movie, was it an easy process to cast them?
SO – When you approach a big-name actor and mention it’s an animated Richard Curtis movie, there’s an instant willingness to listen. The rare times we couldn’t secure someone were mostly due to scheduling conflicts.
RC – We used Rachel Frack, who is my favourite casting person, who did the Office – one of the great triumphs of casting. She’s brilliant with quirky British talent, and casting, for me, is 65% of making a live-action movie. Here, the process was different but similar: the actors didn’t need to look the part, just capture the essence. Since you can’t really audition for animation, we compiled “voice maps” of actors we admired. Listening to their voices without their faces often surprised us—someone with a gentle face might have a harsh or monotonous voice. At least we didn’t have to make those judgments in front of them!
SO -That’s true. I see voice casting as the final step of character design, while Richard focuses on the essence of performance. We’d test voices against the character drawings, where the timbre of a voice conveys so much. I cared less about accents or initial performance details because you only really know an actor’s range once they’re in the booth. We aimed high, bringing in talents like Bill Nighy, Brian Cox, Jodie Whittaker, and Fiona Shaw, who reliably deliver greatness. The key question was whether their voice completed the character’s essence. Many great actors don’t naturally fit a caricatured style, so their voices might not fully embody the character until combined with the animation.
That Christmas from Locksmith Animation is streaming on Netflix now. You can hear the full interview on an upcoming Skwigly Animation Podcast.