Hallmark Casts First Christmas Movies With Black Leads: Christina Milian, Jerrika Hinton Star

Christina Milian and Jerrika Hinton are making their Hallmark debuts this Christmas, but they’ve already made Hallmark history.

The two are the first black actresses to be cast as romantic leads in a Hallmark Christmas movie, with Milian, an Afro-Latina, taking that place on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries with “Memories of Christmas” and Hinton on Hallmark Channel with “A Majestic Christmas.” Entertainment Tonight first shared the news of their casting. Mark Taylor and Christian Vincent, who will co-star with the women respectively, have made history alongside them as the first male black actors to be cast as romantic leads in Hallmark Christmas movies.

The full lineups for Hallmark Channel’s 2018 Countdown to Christmas event and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ The Most Wonderful Miracles of Christmas event have not yet been announced, but they are expected to be revealed in the next few weeks. Of the 36 new movies on the way, only the details of a handful have been shared. While Milian, Hinton, Taylor and Vincent are the first black romantic leads to ever be announced for a Christmas movie, it’s possible more will be revealed when the full schedule is out.

Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas started in 2009, and HMM’s annual The Most Wonderful Miracles of Christmas event (previously titled The Most Wonderful Movies of Christmas) began a few years later. Over the years, the combined networks have premiered a slew of original Christmas flicks, with over 30 airing just in 2017. This year, though, will be the first time any of them will feature black romantic leads.

Starring alongside the “Grey’s Anatomy” alum in her Hallmark Channel Christmas movie will be dancer-choreographer Vincent. In the movie, she’ll portray “Nell, an architect who goes back to her hometown after being tasked with turning her hometown’s historic playhouse, which has been home to the annual Christmas tableaux, into a modern multiplex, much to the resident’s objections,” according to the outlet. “When she meets the new owner of the theater, Connor (Vincent), his vision and ideas clash with Nell’s. Since Connor hasn’t had much experience celebrating Christmas, Nell hopes that if she can give him a crash course in Christmas during the town’s Twelve Day Festival, that he might just change his mind about modernizing the Majestic.”

As for Milian, her character Noelle will inherit her mother’s house after she passes away, and she’ll discover that someone had been hired to decorate it for Christmas. That someone will be Dave, played by “Instant Star” alum Taylor. He convinces Noelle to let him decorate the house anyway, and the two grow closer along the way.

After last year’s Hallmark Christmas movie events, International Business Times spoke with William (Bill) Abbott, the president and CEO of Crown Media Family Networks, the parent company of the Hallmark networks, about the lack of diversity.

“I feel like this is an industry-wide problem,” Abbott told IBT. “Others have made a little more progress than we have made, granted, but, at the same time, certainly we, as a brand and as an organization, we have a great track record of doing the right thing, and I think that you will see significant change over the years as we continue to evolve our content.”

Milian alone is proof that other networks have made more progress than Hallmark and quicker. She starred in the Christmas movies “Snowglobe” in 2007 and “Christmas Cupid” in 2010 on ABC Family (now Freeform). Abbott realized that Hallmark needed to make adjustments with its on-screen representation, telling IBT that it’s “one of our major initiatives and major focuses.”

One of the ways Hallmark started 2018 off on the right foot was with Holly Robinson Peete’s HMM franchise, “Morning Show Mystery,” which kicked off in January. There have been two films in the series so far. Now, with this Christmas movie news, the company’s showing that it really is beginning the process of catching up to 2018.