Exclusive Interview
What’s the Sexiest Scene of ‘Carpenter Christmas Romance’? Sasha Pieterse & Mitchell Slaggert Weigh In
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for A Carpenter Christmas Romance.]
There’s nothing wrong with a little heat in a holiday movie! Sparks were flying (literally) in Lifetime’s latest holiday film, A Carpenter Christmas Romance. A romantasy writer, Andrea (Sasha Pieterse), and a carpenter, Seth (Mitchell Slaggert), reconnect when she returns home to finish her novel.
As Andrea and Seth continue to bond, they find themselves in very close proximity. Their sexual tension boils over to a sex scene after getting caught in the rain. Swooon spoke with the film’s stars about the moment that made them swoon the most.
“I was shocked when I read it,” Pieterse admitted. “The first draft that I read, in general, there was so much sexual tension in this script. I was like, are we sure that this is a Christmas movie?”
There are many moments, including the sex scene, that turn up the heat. When Swooon brought up the sanding scene, where Andrea and Seth sand down a chair very closely, as the movie’s sexiest moment, the stars had their own opinion.
Lifetime
“What’s funny is a lot of people have said that one,” Pieterse said about the sanding scene. “Maybe it was just because there’s more involved in it.” She later added, “Every woman that I have talked to that has seen this movie loves the sanding scene. ”
For Pieterse, the sexiest moment of A Carpenter Christmas Romance was Andrea and Seth’s first time. “Mainly because it was the wet shirt,” she quipped. Slaggert had his own scene to share. “I was gonna say around the similar part when we’re under the blanket and just being all cute,” he said.
A Carpenter Christmas Romance dabbled in the beloved romanced tropes (forced proximity, slow burn, second chance, etc.), but Pieterse is grateful the movie didn’t end up with Andrea being forced to give up something for love.
“I will say, what I actually do really appreciate about this movie is there’s that stereotype of the big city girl leaves her career to go back to her hometown and kind of gives her career up, and we don’t have that here,” she stressed. “I think that’s also really nice, that she can write from anywhere. She’s still keeping that part of her. She’s not really sacrificing anything. It’s like an addition versus the trade.”
The movie was written and executive produced by Sarah Drew, whom Slaggert called an “Energizer bunny.” Pieterse revealed Drew’s name was “one of the reasons why I wanted to do the project. I’d never done a Christmas movie before, and when I saw her name, it made me really excited. She’s got a way with writing that I think is great because when an actor is writing something, they also say it out loud. They know what it’s going to sound like when it’s actually said out loud versus just kind of written on paper. Sometimes, those don’t match. She brought this layer of communication that I don’t think you see on Christmas movies often. I feel like it was just a little bit deeper than just a normal cookie cutter Christmas movie, so that was awesome.”
A Carpenter Christmas Romance marks the first time Pieterse and Slaggert starred in a holiday movie. Let’s make a sequel their second!
