Hallmark Crowns New Winner In Finding Mr Christmas Season 2
Hallmark Channel has officially crowned its second Finding Mr. Christmas winner! From football player to actor, Long Island’s very own Craig Geoghan is our new leading man. Speaking with Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado, the New York native opens up about winning the whole competition and filming his very first Hallmark Christmas movie.
Geoghan’s whole life revolved around sports, but, when he realized he wasn’t going to the NFL, he took advice from his parents to refocus his priorities on acting. After years of classes and booking guest spots and commercials, he found out about Finding Mr. Christmas by walking into the Hallmark building unannounced and simply introducing himself. “It worked out pretty well for me,” laughed Geoghan. While it wasn’t something he expected, he welcomed the new experience. "I feel like Hallmark is on every TV, or at least it should be, in America during the holiday season. [The] fact that I got to become a part of the Hallmark family took it to a whole another level. It was really, really cool to be able to go from a fan to a member of the channel itself.”
“To be crowned Mr. Christmas and know that I just won a leading role in a major movie on a major network, [it’s] really cool, inspiring to keep going,” said Geoghan of his 10 year journey to get to this space in his career. “Validation that I'm in the right spot. It was all of it.”
The series, hosted and created by Jonathan Bennett, finds contestants participating in various acting and physical challenges — with a festive twist. “My favorite challenges [were] the acting challenges, what they call the Star Quality Challenges in the show, because I knew I had experience acting where some of the other guys didn't. So there was a leg up there,” shared Geoghan, calling out the talent show where he did a Christmas rap and an intense game that put several contestants on oxygen. “Some of the physical challenges were pretty intense, I'm not going to lie. There was one where we're doing the slip and slide back and forth. You have to grab a candy cane from one side and put it in a bucket on the other — and we're at altitude. That was really hard. There were guys literally on oxygen after the fact. I don't think anybody anticipated it to be as hard as it was.”
Immediately, Geoghan was a frontrunner as he won the very first Festive Face-Off in the season 2 premiere for his hilarious New York inspired Santa Claus. But throughout the season he found himself in both the top and bottom of the competition. “I knew that I had a chance at that moment, which gave me confidence because it was very early on in the show,” he said about that initial win. “But then I was in the bottom a couple times as well. I didn't think that I can't do this. I always had confidence in myself. But I knew going up against the other guys that it wasn't going to be easy. There had been surprises in the show prior, so anyone could go home at any time. I never felt safe. I always felt confident, but never safe.”
“We clicked the moment all the guys walked into the house,” said Geoghan about his fellow contestants. “It was like a bond or a brotherhood, almost like a frat instantly. Within 20 minutes, we're all cracking jokes on each other as if we've known each other for our whole lives.” It could be tough to compete against each other because of the bond they built. You want to win, but you also want to see your friends do well. Luckily there were some opportunities to work together as a team. One challenge found Davey with a surprising advantage that helped Craig’s whole team in an acting scene with Hunter King. “There are four people in the scene. Everything bounces off each other. To have that squad and that comfort and knowing that they're going to help you, you're going to help them, it goes it goes a long way.”
The acting challenges were particularly fascinating to watch because of how each contestant was able to bring something different to the scenes. “There's no right and there's no wrong in acting. It's not a sport where 10 is more than nine or this person finished the race first. It's all subjective,” he explained. “And as long as you bring yourself to it — if Craig brings Craig, Drake brings Drake, Angel brings Angel, Marcus brings Marcus — that's what you want. That's what sets you apart from everyone else is being yourself. And as long as you bring that charm, charisma, and exactly what it means to be a Hallmark leading man, then you should be you should be set up for success.”
Being crowned Mr. Christmas means he gets to star in a 2025 Countdown to Christmas movie. He gave us the scoop on his new film A Make or Break Holiday that finds him co-starring alongside Hunter King. “My character's name is Reed and he is the brother to Liv who is in a relationship with the leading man,” revealed Geoghan, which is surprisingly close to the challenge he did with King on the show. “It's probably where they got the idea. It's what got the wheels turning.”
The couple are going through a tough point in their relationship while the families come to visit for the holidays. “They put on a happy face and pretend everything is okay. Then Reed and one other character Kim catch on and try to almost parent trap them back together without all the parents finding out,” he continued. “Because once they find out, you'll see that they're chaos in their own way. It was a pretty cool role to play the guy who knows a secret but can't really let it out.”
“There are some physical aspects in that movie as well that I actually didn't have to compete in. I'll just say that. The rest of the cast actually had to do this whole obstacle course. Very similar to Finding Mr. Christmas in a lot of ways, but my character didn't have to participate,” laughed Geoghan. “It was nice to take a step back and watch everybody else go through all the torture for once.”
He was blown away by just how intricate the set of his first Hallmark Christmas movie was. “You would have thought that this was going to theaters and has a $500 million budget. Like it truly seemed like that,” Geoghan said. “The number of cast and crew working day in and day out, trucks, cameras, just one after the next after the next. Tarps, food everywhere. It was like a circus in a good in the best possible way.”
So what gets Geoghan into the Christmas spirit? “Cold weather,” he laughed. While he lives in LA now, he often goes back to New York for the holidays. “The moment I get off the plane and I feel like that cold air hitting my face, it snaps me into the holiday spirit. My parents always decorate. The house is always beautiful when I show up. My mom's an amazing cook. So when you smell holiday ham or […] she'll make a big turkey sometimes, Italian food, it just really sets the tone. There's a lot of sports on during the holiday season. I know that's not too standard, but my dad and I are huge sports fans, so that's another thing that gets the mood going. Then, of course, your good old fashioned Hallmark movie.”
See Finding Mr. Christmas winner Craig Geoghan in A Make or Break Holiday airing December 20 on Hallmark Channel.
