Cookie-making contests, royal romance, and holiday party hijinks. Hallmark Channel Christmas movies often rely on familiar tropes to deliver heart-warming stories of love and connection. But not every one of the network’s seasonal movies involves a Santa mix-up or a reunion with the high school sweetheart who got away. 

This year’s Christmas in July lineup kicks off on July 5 with Unwrapping Christmas: Tina’s Miracle. The movie follows Tina (Natalie Hall) the owner of a gift-wrapping shop who is in charge of planning an annual gala. But her plans start to go awry when the gala faces cancellation due to a scrooge-like estate owner. That might sound like standard Hallmark fare, but there’s more to the movie that tissue paper and bows.  

“It’s slightly different for Hallmark because it’s quite serious,” star Alec Santos told Showbiz Cheat Sheet. He plays Tina’s love interest Michael in the film, which is the first in the four-part Unwrapping Christmas series. (The other movies focus on different women who work at the same gift-wrapping shop.)  

‘Unwrapping Christmas: Tina’s Miracle’ has a serious story at its core

“I am a single dad raising a pre-teen daughter,” Santos said. “So my character’s whole arc is I live my life, I do everything focusing on my daughter. Falling in love was sort of never in the cards for me again, and it kind of serendipitously happens.”

“Then on the other side, Tina, she’s coming off an ugly breakup,” he adds. “She was set to be married to somebody and it fell through because of unsavory – it wasn’t a natural fall through. He was not a very good person. So we’re both dealing with these tragedies, but we come together, and so it’s a more sort of serious tone of a film.”

It’s the second weekend in a row that Santos will play the leading man in one of the network’s made-for-TV movies. Last week, he starred A Machu Picchu Proposal, where he played a free-spirited chef who falls for a buttoned-up teacher during a visit to Peru. His two characters are quite different, which suits Santos, a Brazilian-born actor who has also appeared in TV shows like and Netflix’s Virgin River and The CW’s Sight Unseen, a detective drama where he provides “comic relief” as the younger brother of the female lead.

“It’s kind of cool that on back-to-back weekends, I get to be this gregarious, live off the seat of his pants character, and then the second week I’m a very serious businessman, very dad-like person,” he said. “So even though I’m the same person, I get to play two different characters.”

Santos hopes to continue to stretch his acting muscles in future roles, perhaps on a Broadway stage.

“The only reason I would like to be famous is because I would love to be on Broadway. You know how they invite actors over once they’ve made it big in Hollywood?” he said. “I think if I got to that point, if I can step on a Broadway stage, that would be it for me, because theater by far is so much more rewarding than film.’

Another dream? Saddling up for a Western.

“I would really love to be in a cowboy show, like a Yellowstone kind of thing, where my character gets to ride horses on a daily basis,” he said. “I just love horses. I’m trying to manifest that.”

Unwrapping Christmas: Tina’s Miracle airs July 5 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Hallmark Channel. It’s also streaming on Hallmark+. 

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