Exclusive Interview
‘Finding Mr. Christmas’ Week 6 Hunk on His Elimination: ‘Odds Were Stacked Against Me’
What To Know
- The sixth eliminated hopeful came in with less experience but more intel on one of his competitors.
- Edible props wound up stealing the scene in his acting challenge with guest Ashley Williams.
- The latest hunk to go home gave Swooon the behind-the-scenes details of his elimination.
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Finding Mr. Christmas Season 2 Episode 6, “The Holi-Date.”]
Imagine if we were all as lucky as Finding Mr. Christmas, having to shoot down hot guys every week. The dream!
And the December 1 episode of the network’s star search for their next Small Town Guy Falls For Big City Exec Over the Holidays, the Jonathan Bennett-created competition cut loose easily one of the hottest men to devour a plate of grapes, like a snack eating snacks.
“I had no idea, truthfully, in that moment that I consumed that many grapes!” laughs Davey Fisher, the chiseled fitfluencer from Santa Monica, California, who cut short the lives of countless future raisins during his acting challenge with guest Ashley Williams. Set at a table on a hillside, the two were tasked with a mid-date scene peppered with back-and-forth banter and flirty comparisons to Christmas cookies. Between them, an innocent fruit plate is just trying to exist.
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“I remember having a couple as a way to make use of the props,” he tells Swooon of his onscreen grape bender. “I thought, oh, I’ll make it more casual because conversations automatically become more casual around food, right? So maybe it was a comfortability thing that I just took too far.”
But hey, A for effort. After all, the Reacher-caliber Fisher was one of this season’s few hopefuls vying for a lead role in a Hallmark Christmas movie without an extensive acting background. What he did have, however, was a plan of attack: Stay under the radar early on. Watch and learn.
“I felt like the odds were stacked against me in a way from the second I showed up. Once I found out the background of all the guys, I was like, ‘Wait, what did I get myself into here?’ I guess I expected naively that they would maybe be less polished or have somewhat less experience,” admits the model and personal coach. “But in the end, it worked out for me because it made me better. I felt like I really had to be diligent in every challenge I had to be on top of my game. ”
Keeping his eyes on the prize (which included wins for both his airborne photo shoot and highly appreciated shirtless talent-show workout routine) was made trickier by the fact that Fisher was also in the thick of new-dad sleep deprivation.
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“There was a lot happening all at once,” he says, flashing a nuclear-powered smile about the baby boy his wife delivered only eight weeks before production started at the House of Hallmark Hunks outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. “But my wife was the one who encouraged me to get out the door and do it. She’s a huge Hallmark fan. We’ve seen a ton of Hallmark movies over the years, and this was my chance to kind of skip the line in Hollywood, so to speak. You don’t get a chance to just audition for these roles by walking in off the street. It’s not really how the industry works. So I thought, well, I’m a newbie, but this is probably the best opportunity I get to learn first-hand on a movie set.”
And while Fisher confesses that he “had no idea what blocking was and a lot of the filmmaking terminology was foreign to me,” he did at least know one of his fellow contestants. “Gabe and I met, pretty predictably, on a modeling job, and we just became fast friends. We had a lot in common because I like to goof around. Levity is like a second language to me, so it was an easy exchange between us that got us thick as thieves right off the bat.”
Hallmark Media / Kim Nunneley
It’s also why Fisher was just as heartbroken over his buddy’s elimination in Episode 4 as he was his own. “Gabe is one of the main reasons I made the final decision to go on the show. He was a big reason for me being there. So seeing him on the chopping block a couple of times was being up there myself, I would probably have been more comfortable getting eliminated before him because I knew how bad he wanted it.”
“But as I said to the judges when I got eliminated, I felt like it was the right decision,” Fisher continues. “There will always be those regrets, like the ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda,’ because I have a hard time in the aftermath, looking back, feeling satisfied with how I did, just because I’ve always been that way. I kind of have a tendency to nitpick myself. But overall, it was an amazing experience, and it doesn’t take away from what I was able to gain from the whole thing.”
Key among those gains, he notes, is the wildly Hallmark feeling of a true connection with his castmates. “I really had no expectations for lasting relationships because I knew the essence of the show was competition-based, and we’re all here for a reason ultimately…and the reason wasn’t to make friends,” says the shredded smokeshow. “But developing all those relationships was the big takeaway. I think everybody was able to let their guard down in a way that took me by surprise. And it will be lasting friendships, hopefully forever. We all regularly keep in touch, and we all encourage each other, too, with auditions. I have a big one coming up, and the guys are super supportive. It’s really cool.”
Finding Mr. Christmas, Season 2, Mondays, 8/7c, Hallmark Channel
