Zane Stephens and Jaclyn Hales stars in the new Great American movie “A Belgian Christmas Chocolate” which is set to premiere on GAC on July 8 at 8p/7c. We at Survived The Shows had the pleasure of chatting with star Zane Stephens about his experience in the making of A Belgian Christmas Chocolate and what fans can expect from the movie.
Can you tell us a little bit about your character and how he fits into the story of “A Belgian Chocolate Christmas”?
Zane Stephens: Matthews Dubois is his name and basically his family’s from Belgium and his grandfather had been there his entire life. And so then he moves back, he moves to the States with his parents. This is his back story earlier. His grandfather passes and so he would go to Belgium every summer to see his grandfather and his grandfather was this master chocolate tier. And he had his own school and his own shop. Is it called the chocolate de Brooksalle. So the chocolate shop or the chocolate school of Brussels.
So he always taught Matthias how to make chocolate and how to do the whole thing and in his hope was that Matthias would take over the chocolate school, once he passed, so he passes and Matthias moves to Belgium and takes it over.
And so the story picks up. Matthias has been there for three years, living at an apartment above the school. He’s been living there and he actually runs the school that is not doing well at the start of the picture. He wants to preserve it and keep it open for the sake of his grandfather and his family. But it’s not doing well so he’s considering closing it and selling it. It’s his battle wrestling with ‘how do I preserve my family legacy or my grandfather’s legacy?‘.
And then a woman from the States from New York named Kate, but she kind of hides her identity a little bit.
Kate is a food photographer. She takes her friend’s identity, not intentionally. And then I teach her how to do the things and how to make chocolate and then there’s a little romance that ensues and then I find out that she’s actually not who I thought she was. And then there’s just kind of like wrestling with the distrust or the betrayal. At that point it’s pretty much too late because I’m pretty much spitten and in love and she saves the day and saves the school. All ends happy as Christmas movies always do.
What initially drew you to the role and made you want to be a part of this movie?
Stephens: I had met with some of the team at GAC earlier last year and they’re really good people and they care for their talent and they’re super supportive. And so when I had met with them, we had talked about potentially doing a project together and then when I got this call I didn’t really even need to read the script to be honest. I mean, I would have worked with them no matter what, just by nature of how good they were to me. But when I read the script I was like, this is great and I’m excited to jump in.
How did you prepare for your character and get into his mindset for the role?
Stephens: I should say I’m not. I don’t cook very well. I definitely don’t make chocolate well. So it’s interesting when as an actor the career that your character’s doing, the verbiage, like the language they speak is different than the language that we may speak in life. So if you’re playing a doctor role like the verbiage, the Doctors uses very different. The chocolate language I had to learn. So there was a lot of, I mean there were there was a chocolate tier onset, like a professional chocolate tier onset to help me kind of help me with the dialogue, help me understand what I’m saying.
There’s a lot of teaching in the movie there’s a lot of like me working with her, showing her how to make it, teaching how to make it. There’s just a lot of cooking and a lot of chocolate in the movie. And so for me it was really getting comfortable with what does it mean to be a passionate teacher of chocolate. So I’m pretty passionate in life as Zane and so I kind of just like allowed my mind hey, what would it be like? It’s like how I’m working. It’s like I’m passionate about acting and I transfer that into this idea of chocolate and so as long as I got the dialogue down and the understanding of what all these the chocolate terms, then I can just insert my passion, Zane’s passion into it and hopefully it works.
What was it like working with the rest of the cast, and did you have any particularly memorable moments on set?
Stephens: Everyone was really nice. There was no drama on our side. Everyone came to work ready and we had fun and it was great. It was great cast, great crew, great director, great deeply. A memorable there’s actually a lot of memorable. So we got to shoot in Belgium. I mean like the whole two week shooting was memorable but there’s some really cool things that we shot in Belgium. There’s this massive Ferris wheel. It’s Ferris, that’s what we call at least, and it’s huge and so we did the scene where there’s my character and the girl, we go to this Ferris wheel and we ride it.
And so we had our, we had the DP, the guy who operates the camera, we had him in the Ferris wheels cart with us. And so Jaclyn and I are here and then our DP’s there and we’re just going round and round and round shooting the scene and there were lights in the back that we’re trying to capture. So we had to hold until we came around and got like the twinkling lights in the background and then we just kept shooting over and over and it was so high and neither of us knew what we were doing.
Until we got there and looked up. We’re like no one ever said we have to go way up there to shoot a scene. But it actually ended up being a lot of fun. But again the two weeks in Belgium, almost every day there was something memorable. Because for me, it’s the first time that I’ve been able to travel internationally to shoot a movie. And so just the whole experience of being in Belgium was really, really cool. It’s beautiful over there.
Can you describe your character’s journey throughout the movie and how he transforms over the course of the story?
Stephens: He’s kind of a fuddy dud in the beginning. He’s not really too into Christmas. He’s borderline depressed. That’s a hard word, but I mean his grandfather’s passed and he has this call on his life to carry on his grandfather’s legacy and the school is closing. He doesn’t know what else to do. So there’s just like weight and burden that he has at the top of the movie. All of the other, you know, like some of the dialogue is all of the other stores in the area are decorated for Christmas, but we’re not decorated.
You know my store is still decorated, but it’s not as decorated as the other stores.
So there’s this dialogue about how I’m just kind of sad, you know like I’m feel like a failure that I wasn’t able to carry my grandfather’s legacy on and that’s the heartbeat. And then as the story evolves we begin to see Mattie’s passion for his grandfather’s school, for chocolate. And this girl just lights this passion up. I mean like he just becomes more and more passionate and you just there’s just like this change where he realizes that everything’s going to be okay everything.
The school’s going to make it and his grandfather’s legacy is going to survive and he needed some innovation that he didn’t have and that came from or comes from the girl. And so it’s this evolution of really Mathis’ he’s very passionate. He’s very loyal and he cares deeply about his family and that’s all kind of nonexistent in terms of what the audience sees, the beginning. And then by the end it’s fully realized and you see how much he really loves what he does. And so it’s great. It’s a cool character.
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced while filming “A Belgian Chocolate Christmas” and how you overcame them?
Zane Stephens: I had to speak French and I don’t speak French. Some of the dialogue is in French and and this thing is the storyline is my family’s from there and so I would have a working knowledge of it and I’ve lived there for three years since. So the the understatement I should be pretty good at French. Zane is not. I had never had a French class in my life and so when I got the script and I started breaking down, breaking it down, I was like, there’s a lot of French.
That’s not good. So I called the high school where I graduated from and I said “hey, do you guys have a French teacher?”
And they said, yeah. And I said I need to book some time with her or him. So I went after school one day. And I sat down with this French teacher of my almater, and she kind of wrote out phonetically how I would look at, how I would look at in English and pronounce it in French.
And then we recorded her saying it. So I always had on my phone, always had her speaking in my ear of how to say it correctly. So that’s how I started doing that and then they ended up hiring the guy who plays Peter, the guy who plays him, he is French and so he went and we were on set a lot together but we did some and so he was able to work with me some when he was on set. And so there’s one scene where I speak, I mean like it’s a three page scene and it’s like a lot of French.
I was super nervous about it, but there were enough people around me that helped me with that.
And so it was I’ve never had to do that. I’ve had to have accents before, but I’ve never actually had to speak another language and be fluent in that language. So I haven’t actually seen the movie. I have only seen a little bit. And so we’ll see how the French sounds. I don’t know.
What message do you hope viewers take away from “A Belgian Chocolate Christmas” after watching it?
Zane Stephens: It’s a Christmas movie. Loaded with chocolate. And so what I hope when we set out to make this kind of my heartbeat behind it was there’s so much love in it, there’s so much about family in it. And those are two really key themes to the idea of Christmas into the Christmas season. So when people watch this movie, I really hope they feel the love of Christmas. They feel that the love of family for Christmas. And on top of that, you just get a bunch of chocolate, which makes it so much better.
What was your favorite scene to film in the movie, and why?
Stephens: Well so the the Ferris wheel scene was great to film. There was another scene we shot in Brussels. In the story as people come to my school and I help teach them how to make chocolate, I take them to other chocolate tiers in Brussels so they can learn other methods, not just my own. That’s part of my schooling process. And so we actually went to a a Belgian chocolate tier who has been like highly like the highest voted chocolate tier in Brussels for the past three years.
So we went to his shop and we signed. We signed up to be in his class and then the whole camera crew came in. And we shot an entire scene with this chocolate tier, as if I’m learning from him as well. And I’m showing her other methods of how to make chocolate, so to be able to be in a room that has a real Belgian chocolate tier and actually students who are trying to learn and then to be able to film all that. It was just it was pretty magical. So it was cool. I’m telling you all of the scenes that we shot in Brussels I could say they’re all amazing. It was just a different, very special experience being in Belgium for sure.
Finally, what can viewers expect from your character and the overall story of “A Belgian Chocolate Christmas”, and why should they tune in to watch it?
Zane Stephens: You should expect passion, love and someone who has to overcome some stuff. And you should watch it because it’s going to hopefully it will inspire your passion. It will make you feel the warmth and the love of Christmas time, and it’ll make you very hungry for chocolate. And who does not love chocolate?
What can you tease about your next projects?
Stephens: So I’ve had preliminary meetings about another Christmas movie. About another rom-com, not Christmas and a couple TV shows. And I have written some of them. So we will see what happens that we are still in the discussing phase.
The interview with Zane Stephens has been edited and condensed for lenght and clarity. Watch the full video interview at the top of the article!
A Belgian Christmas Chocolate premieres July 8 on Great American Family.
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Desirèe
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