NGTV Chats with Ashley Williams

NGTV had the chance to participate in a conference call with the adorable Ashley Williams this week, in support of her ABC Family movie Snow 2: Brain Freeze. My recording software was not working and I’m kicking myself for not having audio to share with our readers. Ashley is just delightful and her giggle is infectious, so the interview was a lot of fun.

Snow 2: Brain Freeze is a sequel to the 2004 telefilm, Snow, also starring Ashley Williams along with Tom Cavanaugh. In this sequel, Nick Snowden (Tom Cavanagh) gets hit on the head and forgets that he’s Santa days before Christmas. As his wife (Ashley Williams) tries to help him remember, she asks for assistance from her ex-boyfriend, who only pretends to help her.

We asked Ashley what was different about her character this time, since the first movie was more about Tom’s character, Nick, learning the ropes of being Santa Claus.

“Well, I think the kind of cool thing about this sequel is that it’s a complete reversal of roles from the first movie. In the first movie, Nick is the one that knows all of the magical secrets and he’s trying to get Sandy to believe in magic. And this time around, it’s the complete opposite, because Nick has no memory of the magic of Santa Claus and his legacy. So I’m trying to convince him of the magic this time and I think that’s a really fun twist.”

What brought Ashley back for the sequel? Well, Tom Cavanaugh for one thing:

“You know what, I got to be honest, I love to work, and I love Canada, and I did a movie called Montana Sky a couple of years ago, a movie of the week for Lifetime, and the same crew was put on Snow 2. I was really excited to work with Tom Cavanaugh again. He’s really probably my most favorite actor I’ve ever worked with in terms of fun and playfulness, creativity and stuff. There was no, I mean I read the script as a formality to make sure that I understood it and there wasn’t any nudity or anything. But I was basically in as soon as I heard there was a sequel I was over the moon excited to participate.

The movies resonate for Ashley on another level as well:

“I have a real passion for kids, for like the childhood medium. I love children’s stories. My dad is a writer and has been telling me stories since I was born. So I love the demographic being towards children. That’s something that’s really important to me. One of the things that really inspires me about the Snow movies are that it’s a re-invention of an old fairy tale or an old tradition, and that’s really exciting to me. It’s starting to get specific about exactly what it’s like in Santa Claus’s house. Does he drink coffee in the morning? How many pairs of socks does he have to wear when it’s really cold? Specifics like that I think really bring a legend to life and I think allow kids to continue to get more creative when it comes to magic. And that to me is what story telling is all about.”

What was it like filming Snow 2? COLD! But also a ton of fun.

“Okay, a typical day, wake up about 4:40, brush my teeth really quickly, throw on clothes; a car picking me up at 5:00 taking me to the set, which is usually about an hour away; arrive on set at 6:00; hair and makeup until about 7:30; hitting the set at 7:30 and doing a rehearsal of the first scene, which usually was like 20 minutes probably, which was outside most of time and really cold.

“So at this point I’ve got like 18 huge coats on and we do a rehearsal and then I run back and I change clothes and I put those what I call hot pockets all over my body. Those little things that you put in your pocket when you go skiing and stuff. I would put those in my shoes and I would strap them around my legs and in my underwear and in my bra and on the back of my neck and in my pockets and everywhere so that I could stay warm. And that was like a little process, it took a little while.

“And basically it’s a day of, bear in mind, it’s like negative 45, like 45 degrees below zero. I put my mitten hands over my face before every take and exhale so that I would be warm and then they would say, “Sound speed,” they would say, “Rolling,” they would say, “Action,” and I would like open my fingers so that my eye showed and I’d be like, “Are you sure?” Because the problem is as soon as I would take my hands away and start the scene, I had like a minute and a half before my face stopped working. And it’s basically that balance throughout the day of like figuring out like how long that my cheeks are going to be exposed to the elements.

“It was really hard, but I got to say, I’ve never laughed so hard. It was a set full of laughter and togetherness and community and if I’ve got an extra coat, I put it over your shoulders if I don’t need to be outside and I run inside the van, and it was a lot of like sitting in the van waiting for the last possible second.

“I had people from the crew coming into my trailer and warming up their hands under the hot water, which allowed this sort of togetherness and the survival mode which had a levity, and it’s very possible that it could have been a set which had no levity when it came to that. People weren’t angry, people were laughing, and that was awesome. It was a blast. It was an absolute blast. I loved it.”

It sounds like a lot of laughter went into the making of Snow 2. Ashley shared a funny moment from filming with us:

“One time I was supposed to come out of this magic mirror with Tom, and we arrive and we were trying to do this thing where we slid across the floor and like we jumped out of the mirror and we slid across the floor as if doing like an amazing, fantastical entrance onto a stage. And it was slippery and I didn’t know it and I totally fell.

So what ended up happening was we came out, we arrived, and we were like “Hey,” and then I kept sliding and basically fell back on my butt and he picked me up right away. But I made them play it for me afterwards and play back over and over and over again and then in slow motion. That was amazing.”

Be sure to tune in to Snow 2: Brain Freeze at 8/7c on Sunday, December 14 on ABC Family. See more photos in the Gallery.