Hallmark just premiered its first ever lesbian holiday rom-com

One year after the Hallmark Channel premiered The Holiday Sitter, its first-ever holiday rom-com centered on a gay couple, the network has debuted another first: a festive flick about lesbian love.

On Sunday night, Friends & Family Christmas premiered as part of Hallmark Channel’s 2023 “Countdown to Christmas” programming. The made-for-TV movie stars out actors Humberly González and Ali Liebert as a pair of big city work-aholics (pretty much the description of the lead of every Hallmark holiday rom-com) who are set up on a blind date by their families. After agreeing to pretend to date to get their loved ones off their backs, the two ladies actually fall in love for real against the backdrop of a snowy, mistletoe strewn winter wonderland.

Related:

Hallmark’s first-ever gay Christmas movie will break your sugarplum-addled brain

“Young love is tough. Old love’s not much better.” Touché, Hallmark Channel!

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Friends & Family Christmas is Hallmark’s latest effort to include more LGBTQ+ representation in its mega-popular holiday content, following controversy over the lack of queer characters in its seasonal offerings. In 2019, LGBTQ Nation published an essay urging networks like Hallmark Channel and Lifetime to include more diversity in their holiday programming, leading one conservative website to concoct a dubious petition opposing LGBTQ+ inclusion in made-for-TV Christmas movies.

The following summer, Hallmark’s parent company Crown Media Family Networks announced that it would include movies featuring LGBTQ+ characters in its 2020 holiday lineup and premiered The Holiday Sitter (starring out actor Jonathan Bennett and directed by Liebert) last year. In an interview with The Wrap earlier this month, Hallmark’s vice president of programming, Lisa Hamilton Daly, promised more LGBTQ+-centric holiday movies in 2024.

Last week, Liebert, who is also a producer on Friends & Family Christmas, told TV Guide that she especially appreciated that even the film’s title might help expand the “vision of what a traditional family can mean.”

González, meanwhile, said that she was concerned with how the film might treat a same-sex relationship. “Are we going to make it about the struggle? Is it about us struggling because we’re queer?” she said. “When I saw that [the characters’] issues are just issues that come from the story itself, not because of who they are, I was very happy about that.”

“I love that it’s a fun story with trials and tribulations, and it has nothing to do with their suffering as queer people,” she added.

“Part of the reason people love Christmas movies and Hallmark movies is because they are aspirational, right? They make us feel good. They make us feel warm and hopeful,” Liebert explained. “And I think Amelia and Daniella are also humans who deserve all the same things as anyone else. The fact that both of these characters have families rooting for them and their sexuality is really not an issue is so beautiful.”