ComingSoon caught up with actor Chad Michael Murray about starring in Walmart’s new Deals of Desire series, which can be seen on its YouTube channel. Murray discussed his history with Black Friday shopping, his role in Deals of Desire, and much more. Walmart’s Black Friday deals are now live through December 1, and Walmart+ members can get even more benefits.
“Get ready for the hottest new drama (and Deals!) of the season. Deals of Desire is a shocking, supernatural, action-packed, historical, western drama like you’ve never seen before. There will be laughs. And there will be Deals,” says Walmart’s description.
Tyler Treese: Chad, congrats on this new Walmart promotion, Deals of Desire. I watched the trailer. It’s so over the top and fun. They describe it, and I wanted to get the quote because it’s just something else, as “a shocking, supernatural, action-packed, historical, western drama.” What kind of drew you to this? There are a lot of great stars in this.
Chad Michael Murray: We checked all the boxes, didn’t we? Man, it was so much fun. Truly, like, when I saw the outline and the proposal for this, it was a no-brainer. It’s like, yes, obviously the Deals of Desire campaign is so ingenious. We created something that I would’ve never thought of in a million years. To go out there and to take these kind of beautiful, nostalgic moments and beats and tell a story with you say stars, I say props.
The stars of this entire campaign are the deals that are going on for Walmart on Black Friday, for Cyber Monday. It’s pretty clear, like when we were there, that’s how it felt, right? It was so much fun doing it. Because you have to be a hundred percent committed, otherwise it doesn’t work. So, just to have the opportunity to work with everybody over there, to meet everybody in the branding department, to work with these great group of actors and artists, directors, the whole team, it was A+ from the top-down, genuinely.
Your character is a football coach. What can we expect from your storyline in it?
When I saw that, I said, well, there’s life imitating art. I actually coached my son’s team here in Nova Scotia. So, I felt like, okay, I went from practice, boom, right into the screen. Look, he’s a coach. He wants to be the guy, right? He wants to be the guy in this kind of Walmart-verse that we’ve created. He wants to be the head coach. He’s had a lot of success as a younger player back in the day at the same school, and here he is, and he’s kind of being held back a little bit. We’re gonna find out how he’s either gonna rise to the top or fall behind throughout this series. I think, in total, it’s 10 episodes of all the series combined. So, get ready for a little drama, a little action, and all those things. Like we said, a little western and for hella good deals, as they would say.
Nothing beats Black Friday deals. Did you ever used to go through those wild Black Friday crowds, or are you more of like a Cyber Monday guy now?
I still go out now. I don’t get up at three in the morning and sit out there and go postal by any means. I’m more of the type that I really like to be in the environment. There’s something about it that feels like good comfort food, right? I like going out and seeing the people and seeing the deals that are on display. I like having the opportunity to get a good deal. Because why wouldn’t you? For instance, we just bought a house recently, and I need a TV. Well, I could get it now, or I could wait till then, and I know where I’m going. You know what I mean?
I like that aspect of it, and I like that aspect of being able to shop for friends and family. I like the aspect of going out there and just having these moments with friends and family, grabbing a coffee, and walking through busy shopping centers. It feels good, right? There’s something that I really truly enjoy about it. I remember my first memory of Black Friday: I was 15 and we really wanted an N64. I had to get it, come on. I really wanted an Nintendo 64. So my brother and I got up, drove out at like two in the morning, and him and I just sat in the parking, my older brother and I, and we waited. We ended up being like third in line, boom. Got our hands on it, the Nintendo 64.
Now I have to ask, what were the early N64 games you were playing? Like Super Mario 64? What really drew you in?
Super Mario 64 and Goldeneye, baby. Is there anything else, really?
November’s a big month for you. You also have The Merry Gentleman out, which is a stripper Christmas movie. That’s such a hilarious combination. What sold you on that project? I know you’ve done a lot of Christmas movies in the past, but this is such a unique film.
Someone said, “Stripper Christmas movie.” I said, “Yes.” Come on. Like, what says Christmas more than male strippers? Now that’s sarcasm. That sarcasm. You know… what it was, the idea of it scared the crap out of me. I’d never danced professionally by any means. I’d never done choreographed dancing. So I thought, man, what an opportunity to do something that I’d never done as an actor, an artist. I wanna do it. I wanna go for it. I knew all the work that would go into just trying to get myself physically, mentally, and spiritually prepared to go in there and be shirtless for half a movie.
I just put the work in, and it really was a testament to hard work from everybody and calling in so many people to get me where I needed to be, from choreographers to consulting with different people for just body. As you get older, it ain’t as easy as it used to be to get in shape and to do it in a short timeframe. So, it was a lot of work, man. But it was a lot of fun. I think we really thread the needle to find a movie that actually fits the mold for a Christmas male revue.
You’ve always been a very fit guy, but I saw the trailer for this film and you’re in incredible shape for this. How daunting was that task to just really get extra swole for that? That’s crazy.
Thank you, dude. You’re making me blush, bro. It was a lot of work. I’m not gonna lie. I’m that guy that every holiday season, without fail, I’m gonna gain five to 10 pounds. I hang it up. I don’t go to the gym. I eat a lot of pumpkin pie with extra, extra, extra cool whip, and I just enjoy it, right? I spent all the time with my kids, and I just turn off. Then it was somewhere like late January when I heard the first inkling of this, and it was like, uh-oh, I gotta go to work. So in order to get yourself in shape, you have to build up and then lose because doing both at the same time, you’re just gonna end up like a very, very skinny version of yourself if you’re just trying to cut weight.
So you have to build the muscle and then burn the fat. So, it was a lot of work, man. It was like three-four months of just kind of hitting it. In a perfect world, you’d always have more time to get everything and all your dreams and expectations met. But I was really happy with the results because the film itself, it’s great, man. It’s a great movie, and I think people are really gonna enjoy it. It’s really a head turn because you’re going, “How do you blend Christmas and male dancing?” We did it. Get ready.
This is such an exciting moment for your career. You have Freakier Friday also coming out, and Freaky Friday was one of your first movies, so how was that kind of full circle moment of reuniting with such great actors, and that film has still been so beloved this entire time?
Good. I can only say I just feel blessed. You know, I feel blessed that I had the opportunity to work with Jamie Lee [Curtis] and Lindsay [Lohan] 22 years ago, and then here we are going on set. It felt like it’s bizarre because it felt like no time had passed, but yet, at the same time, we had had entire lifetimes in between finish to start, you know what I mean?
So, I’ll tell you that the new additions to the cast are incredible. Jamie was just such a champion leader in every way, from preparation to making everybody comfortable and ready to go and to bringing and elevating the script on a daily basis. It was a great team, everyone from Kristen Burr and our director, Nisha [Ganatra], and Jamie and Lindsay, just everybody all out together just wanted to make a great movie and make sure if we’re gonna do it, we were gonna do it right. So it felt really blessed to have the opportunity to come back, live in Jake’s clothes, and decide what Jake had been doing the past 22 years with his life. Conveniently, my hair just happened to be long again. I hadn’t had it long forever, and all of a sudden I’m like, “Oh yeah, ’tis the season.”
The stars aligned for sure. You mentioned something that I was really curious about, that lifetimes have happened since that first film. You mentioned that that chemistry was still there, but how is it when you’re reuniting after that many years? Because you’ve all evolved as actors in that interim. Do you have to kind of navigate that or was it just instant chemistry again?
I think it was better for me. I think it’s even better chemistry, to be honest with you, because I was a baby then, you know? It was one of my first gigs, so you’re a little more green behind the ears. So I think you’ve aged, right? You’ve really worked on your instrument a little bit more. So you’re more willing to take chances and try new things. I don’t think the nerves are as heavy as they were back 22 years ago.
I think that it’s exciting when you got babies coming to set. I got three kids now. Lindsay’s got her little baby, and it’s like we’re all in these different places in our lives from where we were so long ago. It’s just a really cool moment. It’s really incredibly fulfilling and a nostalgic burst for us as well, making it as I hope it is, and I believe it’s going to be for everyone watching it on August 8.
You’ve had so many great roles over the years. I really thought you were excellent in Agent Carter, as well, which is like this really underrated part of Marvel over the past decade. I’ve seen a lot of people go back to it recently just because it’s on streaming and really fall in love with it. How do you kind of look back at that show’s two seasons?
It’s great. I learned a lot. Just the opportunity to work with those core people. Louis [D’Esposito] would come to set and you got this whole Marvel universe right around you. I remember they were cutting — was it The Avengers? They were cutting one of the major franchises. The Russo Brothers were coming in and they were directing an episode. Then they’re out and they’re directing The Avengers. You’re just seeing how the whole universe was working and how hard everyone was working. You’re doing this really cool period piece and you want to be as authentic [as you can], but, yet, kind of bigger and grander than you can be because you’re doing something that’s [a superhero project].
I love Jack Thompson. I think there’s a universe where Jack Thompson had a much bigger world, you know what I mean? There’s something really cool about Jack Thompson. We never really peeled the layers, we never really pulled back and saw what was beneath the surface. I always like to say Jack would’ve been back.
If you remember the cliffhanger in Season 2… Well, I don’t want to ruin it for anyone, I don’t want to be a spoiler. But if you’re watching, something happens to Jack. Jack would’ve been back. I can picture it now, and we would’ve learned a lot more about Jack. But there was something so likably unlikable about him, you know what I mean?
One Tree Hill was obviously a huge part of your early career, and they announced a sequel series recently. Is that something you’d like to pop up in the future?
Golly, man, I don’t know. I have no idea. It is funny ’cause you hear all these things, right? We’ve heard about a bunch of different iterations, and I know that, supposedly, the word is out there. I can say that truthfully, I want that to be real for the fan base that brought it to the show, right? That show has always been the fan’s show. It was since we started 20-something years ago. The fans are what kept it on the air. They were the ones who were cheering at the river court. Every time we’d film out there, we’d have 400, 500, 600 people just sitting there watching this film all day and walk over. We take pictures and sign autographs with people at the end of the day.
I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget that bond that’s been grown and has genuinely stuck with us this entire time. They’re still there. So for them, I do hope that some version, and I don’t know what that version will be if the show comes, for them to tell modern stories and have a contemporary take on it, but not kind of get too far off the dotted line of what really made that show work.
Thanks to Chad Michael Murray for taking the time to talk about Walmart‘s Deals of Desire and more.