Over the course of her four decades in the entertainment industry, Candace Cameron Bure has gone from charming Full House child star to Christmas movie queen. Now, Bure is not only starring in two new Great American Family Christmas movies, A Christmas Less Traveled (which premiered on November 16) and Home Sweet Christmas (premiering December 1), she’s also the network’s Chief Creative Officer and will be a key part of their Christmas Festival taking place at the Northwell Park at UBS Arena in New York from November 22 to December 29.
Bure is certainly keeping busy this holiday season, and she took the time to tell First for Women all about her latest holiday movies, taking on creative roles behind the scenes, why she still loves Full House so much and more.
First for Women: What is Great American Family’s Christmas Festival going to be like?
Candace Cameron Bure: I’m so pumped for the Christmas Festival. It’s something that we’ve been developing for several years. It’s a five-week experience, and it’s unlike some of the conventions that are out there, which are all about celebrity meet and greets with autographs and photos.
This is an experience where you can bring your family and it’s all outdoors. You can ice skate and craft and take pictures with Santa Claus, and we’re going to have “carol-oke,” with Christmas songs and nightly tree-lighting ceremonies. We’ll be premiering our original movies, and different actors will be there depending on which weekend you come. You’ll have the option to meet us and participate in Q&As and have a great time.
It’s an evolution of the Christmas movie to give people this experience of feeling like they’re in this little town with all the fun things that we love watching in those movies.
FFW: In addition to acting, you also serve as Great American Family’s Chief Creative Officer. What does this role entail?
CCB: As Chief Creative Officer, I’m looking at the state of the network in general and developing our content and all of the films that will be on both the channel and our streaming platform, Great American Pure Flix. I look at the overall branding and what we want our audience to feel and experience when they watch our movies.
I develop things along with the network from the ground up. We’ve really created the tone of the network and we listen to our audience. We’ve invited audience feedback since we started, and we love hearing it and developing content that’s really in line with our vision alongside our audience. I have a big creative role in getting to oversee all aspects and make sure that there’s consistency, and I absolutely love that part of my job.
I’ve been in this business for over 40 years and I’ve been producing television for more than 10 years, so I have a lot of experience and I’ve done my jobs pretty well. That was a big draw of coming over to Great American Family, to have that opportunity to help develop the network. I still love acting, but I think the entrepreneurial side of me is so much more than what I’ve been as an actor, so it was a natural evolution for me, being in this business for so long.
FFW: What was the process of bringing your two latest Christmas movies to the screen like?
CCB: Because I produce them, I’m there at every step. I actually found the script for A Christmas Less Traveled. It was written by two wonderful women, Masey McLain and Taylor Kalupa. At the network, we’re searching for stories that are incredibly heartfelt and for the family, and also have moments of faith. I have a great relationship with those writers and read that script and knew that it was going to be my next Christmas movie.
We went into development and since I’m both part of the network and a producer on the films, it actually streamlines the process a lot. At the network alongside my other great colleagues, our decisions are pretty easily made, because I know what I’m looking for within the film. I think a lot of Christmas movies get a bad rap that everything’s filmed in summertime and all the snow is fake in every movie, but that was all real snow in A Christmas Less Traveled, and we did film it in the winter. It was wonderful.
For Home Sweet Christmas, Cameron Mathison and I wanted to do a Christmas movie together for so long, and we finally found a script that I thought would be really cute. We play two childhood friends who have known each other forever, and that felt natural because Cameron and I have known each other for a really long time and it’s a very sweet story. It’s more true to a traditional rom-com Christmas movie, whereas A Christmas Less Traveled has a little bit more of a faith thread throughout it.
FFW: People love Christmas movies for their escapism. Is that something you relate to, as someone who has worked on so many of them?
CCB: When you watch these movies you know they’re going to have a happy ending and the two people are going to fall in love, and you get to go on a journey with them. It takes you out of the day-to-day and you get to relax and settle into these stories. I think that’s very much the reason why people love watching these movies.
There’s been legitimate research that shows people are happier when it’s Christmastime, and that’s why people put their decorations up earlier and earlier. Looking at decorations and Christmas trees makes people happy. People want to feel happy and these Christmas movies do exactly that. You don’t have to think about them too hard. It’s not The Matrix. You know what you’re going to get and you get to enjoy it throughout.
FFW: You’re also beloved for playing D.J. Tanner on Full House. What was it like being on the show as a teenager and then reprising your role decades later for Fuller House?
CCB: It was such a gift to be able to do that. Full House and Fuller House are truly my favorite work that I’ve done in my life. As a child actor, it was so significant for me to be on the show and create these incredible relationships and play this character that has literally lived on for so many years. Full House has never been off the air in almost 40 years. It’s always been playing in one place or another, and now we have different generations of kids that have grown up with the show.
With Fuller House, to be able to come back and play D.J. as an adult and see where she is today and work with everyone on the show was beautiful. We really are a family, and it’s so special to me. The love that you see onscreen in both of the shows is the real love that we have for one another in real life.
FFW: Do you feel nostalgia for the Full House era of the ’80s and ’90s?
CCB: I appreciate the fact that all the fashion has come back around, but now I’m at the age where I walk into a store and I’m like, “I’m not wearing that because I wore that when I was 18.” I’ve been there, done that. I don’t know that I want to ever wear ’90s fashion again, but I love seeing the younger generation wear those styles and do it in a more current way. I think it’s very cool. As a true girl of the ’80s and ’90s, I still love all things from the era. I’ve always shared my love of New Kids on the Block, and I still go to their concerts every single year.
FFW: Do you have a favorite Christmas movie that you’ve starred in?
CCB: I have to go back and count how many Christmas movies I’ve been in. I think I’m at like 15 or 16, maybe 17 Christmas movies, but I’ve done over 50 television movies in my career, which is mind-blowing to me. There actually aren’t as many Christmas movies as I would think relative to the amount of TV movies that I’ve done, but a lot of them are special. They’re like my children, and I love them all equally, but in different ways.
I have to say one of my favorites was A Shoe Addict’s Christmas with Jean Smart. She’s such an icon. Her career has been so enormous, and now she’s on Hacks winning Emmy awards. The fact that I got this little pocket where Jean Smart was willing to do a Christmas movie with me was very special, and she was so good in it.
FFW: As the “Queen of Christmas Movies,” how do you keep the holiday movie genre feeling fresh year after year?
CCB: I’m always looking to do a story that I haven’t done before, and there has to be some sort of character experience that I haven’t already gone through. I’m 48 years old now, and I started these Christmas movies in my early 30s. I’m looking for stories to go along with my age. I’m not the young 30-something, and I want to find the roles where I’m a mom, I’ve been married or I’m currently married. I want to find the romance in different places within the seasons and ages of my life and the lives of my characters.
