Tim Allen is making his return to the North Pole in Disney+’s series, The Santa Clauses — and he’s not the only one! Elizabeth Mitchell, who played Mrs. Claus in The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3, is also returning to the franchise along with some fan-favorites such as Charlie Calvin (Eric Lloyd) and Bernard the Elf (David Krumholtz)! J-14 sat down with Tim and Elizabeth, where the fictional Clauses revealed their very different reactions upon hearing about the Disney+ series.
Tim and Elizabeth on Reprising ‘The Santa Clause’ Characters
After J-14 asked Tim if he was originally excited to reprise his 1994 The Santa Clause role in The Santa Clauses, he said his feelings were more along the lines of “This again?”
“Those exact words,” he said of the phrase. “My wife kept saying, ‘Are you sure you want to do this again because you were kind of cranky the last time?’ I wasn’t very excited about it. I didn’t think it was going to happen.”
However, the Home Improvement actor said it wasn’t until writer Jack Burditt came along and wrote a draft (and another) that he felt satisfied to move along with the project. “That teed up enough that it would be it. For me, I thought of it as a movie and that was the first act — and it got better and better.” Following the many rewrites, it soon became clear that The Santa Clauses would be better worked as a series than a movie — while still serving as the fourth installment of the franchise.
“They started asking me questions,” Tim said of his involvement, explaining that he wanted “deeper questions answered,” like what Christmas actually means to the Clauses. “Or at least let’s make sure we understand the system of Christmas and what Christmas means. The religious part of it is also the spiritual part of it — and once they [the writers] started getting that, on top of it being a funny family movie, come on. I mean, I said, ‘All right, I’ll do it.’”
When it came to Elizabeth — who has been playing Mrs. Claus since 2002 — she explained that she has never said the phrase ‘this again’ “in my life.”
“I probably should, but I’m more the dork in the corner going, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this again.,'” she laughed. “I was excited. It was a real surprise. It kind of came out of the blue, it felt like. I didn’t even know that anyone was thinking about it, so it was a surprise. Then, the surprise turned into joy.”
“I did have that moment of, ‘Gosh, I wonder if I’m going to remember how to play her,'” Elizabeth said of her character Mrs. Claus, “but she was just waiting. I swear I walked on the set and there she was. So it was beautiful. It was a gift.”
Scroll through our gallery to uncover all of the OG characters from The Santa Clause franchise who are making a return in The Santa Clauses!
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