Once a weekly staple, made-for-TV movies are rarely created for the big TV networks these days unless management can be pretty confident that they will be ratings winners. Such is the case with NBC’s upcoming Dolly Parton’s Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love . It has everything one would want for a holiday movie: family, music, faith, and a story set around Christmas. And NBC is smartly airing it early in the season so that it can possibly run again if the ratings are good. The original film earned a 2.45 rating in adults 18-49 and 15.9 million viewers overall.
Alyvia Alyn Lind as Dolly Parton. [Image by: Annette Brown/NBC]
“It’s no secret that everyone loves Dolly Parton and the response to our first movie was overwhelming, both in terms of the size of the audience and outpouring of love for a film with family values and faith,” said Robert Greenblatt, Chairman, NBC Entertainment. “So it felt like a no-brainer to bring this talented cast back together and tell another compelling holiday story culled from Dolly’s own life growing up in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Her spirit and belief in God — and her music — will infuse this movie with the true spirit of Dolly Parton.”
Based on last year’s Coat of Many Colors , the story is a continuation of Dolly Parton’s upbringing and close-knit family, and it stars the original cast of the first film. Many Colors of Christmas was written by Pamela K. Long and was directed by Stephen Herek who directed the original film as well. The sequel is only the second of a four-movie deal with NBC.
“I think we need more family things ,” Dolly told People . “I think people are missing shows like Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons , that sort of thing. And obviously they were, because we got a really good rating [on the first film], and we’re hoping this one does as well, and maybe better.”
Ricky Schroder as Robert Lee Parton, Jennifer Nettles as Avie Lee Parton. [Image by: Quantrell Colbert/NBC]
Ricky Schroder plays Parton’s father Robert Lee who strives to raise enough money to surprise his wife Avie (Jennifer Nettles) with a real wedding ring, and a young Dolly (Alyvia Alyn Lind) finds someone who appreciates the girl’s voice and sees Dolly’s potential for a life outside of rural Tennessee. Gerald McRaney also stars as Rev. Jake Owens.
“This one is centered around a gift of the magi, somewhat that she and her brothers and her sisters and her dad got together in order to try to buy her mom a wedding ring,” Nettles told Sounds Like Nashville . “There’s also in it fun nativity scene craziness at the school and there’s a near death experience in a mine and there’s a near death experience in a blizzard and it’s high drama and high laughter .”
Parton, who is the film’s executive producer, says that watching the blizzard scene was especially difficult.
“We were trapped in the house,” she recalled. “We were freezing to death. We’d run out of everything. And so when we got into that part when Mama was praying and the tears were froze on our little faces – here I go again, anybody got any more Kleenex? – I honestly … I can’t talk about it. But it’s a good kind of pain, really, it’s a sweet sorrow.”
Parker Sacks, Jennifer Nettles, Kelli Berglund, Hannah Goergen, Alyvia Alyn Lind, and Ricky Schroder. [Image by: Quantrell Colbert/NBC]
Dolly also plays a surprising role in this movie as the town’s prostitute . She was a woman whom she admired, she told Jimmy Fallon on his late-night talk show recently.
“She was the most beautiful thing. She had all this makeup and hair and all the tight clothes and everything I wanted so it impressed me. So I thought ‘well why not play the painted lady, you know, that I patterned my look after?’ So I did her in the movie.”
Dolly Parton’s Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love airs Wednesday, November 30, at 9:00 p.m. on NBC.
