Liza Lapira has officially spoken out about her new role in Must Love Christmas, a new holiday movie coming soon to CBS. Lapira stars alongside Neal Bledsoe and Nathan Witte in a classic story about a girl that’s stranded during the holidays and trapped in a love triangle between two charming men, each equally desperate for her affection.
Must Love Christmas stars Liza Lapira as Natalie, a romance writer who’s best known for her Christmas-themed stories, but seems to have hit a wall in her creative process. When Natalie travels to the small town of Cranberry Falls, she unexpectedly runs into her childhood best friend Caleb (Nathan Witte) and makes a new acquaintance in the form of Nick (Neal Bledsoe), a reporter trying to interview Natalie and save his magazine. After Natalie is trapped in Cranberry Falls by harsh snowfall, a love triangle begins to form between her and the two men, just like something out of Natalie’s novels.
Liza Lapira Speaks on Diversity and Holiday Movies
Regarding her role, Liza Lapira – who is Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese by blood – has said that she’s excited about her role because she’s a “huge fan of the genre” and now “I not only get to be in it but I’m playing the lead” but also that the level of diversity she brings to the film is “not something [she] saw growing up.”
Along with bringing a new kind of diversity into the holidays, playing the lead in Must Love Christmas also gives Liza Lapira an opportunity to play a role that’s entirely unlike her role as Mel Bayani, a U.S. Air Force sniper-turned-bartender in the CBS reboot of The Equalizer, where Lapira stars alongside Queen Latifah and Tory Kittles.
“I love that this character is so different from Mel,” Lapira admitted. “When the movie starts, Natalie is at a low point in her life. It’s been years since a journalist humiliated her with a takedown story, and she’s now a recluse. So by the end of the movie, in addition to the romance, there’s this coming-of-age story in how much she’s grown from her experiences and friendships along the way.”
Must Love Christmas on CBS hails from writer Mark Amato, whose other projects include A Christmas Proposal (2021), A Christmas Miracle (2019), and Christmas at Grand Valley (2018). The CBS TV movie will be released on December 11th.
