David Harbour takes on role of drunk Santa in Violent Night
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Actor David Harbour at the premiere of Violent Night in Hollywood, California, on Nov 29.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
UNITED STATES – David Harbour is not the first actor most would cast as Santa Claus. Maybe it is because he prefers to roll in the muck with his characters – police chief Jim Hopper in Stranger Things (2016 to present) Black Widow (2021)
But, to director Tommy Wirkola, Harbour was perfect.
For Violent Night, his new holiday gore-fest, Wirkola needed an actor with presence and chops: the ability to play Santa as a drunk depressive who has lost faith in humanity, Christmas and himself, but whose goodness still radiates.
“In our first meeting, somebody brought up his name and it was one of those moments where we just looked at each other,” Wirkola said in a video call from Los Angeles. “It was almost too obvious; it’s such a good idea.”
Violent Night puts Santa in the right place at the wrong time, a Christmas Eve heist at a billionaire’s mansion.
He would happily fly back up the chimney, were it not for seven-year-old Trudy (Leah Brady), who has pleaded for help over the walkie-talkie her parents told her was a direct line to Santa. So, he digs deep into himself and his sack of toys to summon the courage and the weaponry to save her.
“I’m pretty sure it’s intimidating to some extent for an actor to do the role of Santa Claus,” Wirkola said. “So many actors have done it before, in so many movies. So, how can we make it stand out?”
As Harbour and Wirkola fleshed out their Santa, they decided he could not be comical or the movie would not work. So Harbour played him straight.
Wirkola said: “It’s just inherently funny when people treat him as if he’s in on the joke, like, ‘oh hello, Santa’, and he’s completely deadpan because he is Santa.”
Because the dynamic between Trudy and Santa needed to be respectful – and never condescending or cloying – Harbour watched the 1947 version of Miracle On 34th Street on his iPhone at night, recording scenes with the Santa and the child characters to discuss the next day as he and Wirkola developed the script.
“That was the real movie I thought about all the time on set,” he said by video from Budapest, Hungary, where he was shooting the upcoming film Gran Turismo.
Harbour’s Santa was visually modelled on an old-school Coca-Cola advertising fantasy, with a curlicue beard and rosy cheeks. But that Santa would not drink himself horizontal or power-vomit on a woman. Nor would he display a Viking’s ferocity.
This Santa was a warrior, which meant that Harbour had to become one too.
But, as more of Santa’s origin story was revealed through action sequences, the question became what to show and when.
“David was adamant that he didn’t want him to be too good too quickly, or too cool too quickly, and say too many cool lines too fast,” Wirkola said. “In the first couple of fights, he’s stumbling around and barely surviving. David didn’t want him to feel superhuman in any way.”
Still, Harbour sometimes felt that the role required feats of imagination that more dramatic roles – where the depth and complexity is written into the script – did not.
“It was a lot of digging in and trying to create a character and an arc that would be meaningful,” the actor said.
“The funny thing is, we might look down on work that happens in a soap opera or an action movie as being not artistic. But when I see somebody do something impressive in a soap opera, I’m always like, ‘You must have worked really hard on that.’
“And, yeah, I worked really hard.” NYTIMES
