- Asa Butterfield leads the cast of Prime Video's new festive rom-com "Your Christmas or Mine?"
- The film follows a couple who accidentally end up spending Christmas at the other's family homes.
Asa Butterfield might be best known to viewers for playing a teenaged sex-and-relationships guru in "Sex Education," but in the new festive rom-com "Your Christmas or Mine?" he plays a student with a problem that not even Otis Milburn could fix.
In the British film, which is now available to stream on Prime Video, Butterfield's character James and his girlfriend, Hayley (Cora Kirk) both make the same split-second decision to get on a train and surprise each other for the holidays.
Completely unaware that they had the same idea, they find themselves stranded on Christmas Eve with each other's families when the country is blanketed in the biggest snowfall on record.
However, although the cold weather is a pivotal plot device in the film, it turns out that it couldn't be further from the conditions in which the film was shot.
Speaking to Insider, Butterfield and his costar Kirk shared that they filmed the movie in the summer of 2021 when temperatures reached highs of 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) in the UK capital, which made things difficult, to say the least.
"It was quite surreal," Butterfield said. "I don't think we totally appreciated how weird that was going to be until we were there in a Christmas jumper, singing a Christmas song in the height of summer."
He said that they "never really forgot" that it was actually summer "because it was so warm."
"We were having to act like it was cold but we were actually sweating buckets," the "Hugo" actor added.
"We were always distinctly aware that it's the height of summer, even when we were trudging through snow, we were like, 'This is weird.'"
He said that he, Kirk, as well as director Jim O'Hanlon, and costars Daniel Mays, Angela Griffin, David Bradley, Alex Jennings, and Lucien Laviscount had no choice but to "embrace" the weirdness.
He said he told himself: "You know what, fine, there are going be two Christmases this year. We're gonna sing out Christmas songs, we're gonna get in the spirit of things and all have mulled wine."
"And it was great," he continued. "I think that's partially because we just had such a nice team of people around us, such nice crew, such a nice cast. Everyone was just kind of in it together."
Newcomer Kirk said that O'Hanlon – who has previously directed episodes of "Catastrophe," "Trying," and "The Punisher" – was having to constantly remind the cast to act as if they were in icy conditions.
"He would always shout, 'It's cold! Remember it's cold!'" she said.
Asa added that his cue from the filmmaker to bring him back into scenes was: "Shivering!"
Elsewhere in the interview, Butterfield also spoke about the upcoming fourth season of the Netflix smash-hit "Sex Education," sharing that filming for the new episodes is currently underway.
"That's kind of been my world for the last few months. I'm shooting that the moment," he told Insider, adding that production will be ongoing "until the end of January."
He said that it was not difficult to get back into the character of Otis, nor fall back into rhythm with his returning costars, which include Emma Mackey, Ncuti Gatwa, and Gillian Anderson.
"I mean, we're all so close at this point," he said. "And we've made some really, really lovely friends, not just the cast but the crew as well. So it's a nice family we've established now. So it was very warm and comforting to be back."
"Your Christmas or Mine?" is available to watch on Prime Video now.