Jefferson White is starting the Christmas season in a hilarious and heartwarming way with his new movie Drink and Be Merry. Audiences who are used to seeing him in very serious projects—most notably as Jimmy Hurdstrom on Yellowstone and Sean O’Neil on Chicago PD—will have a chance to enjoy him in something much lighter as Chet, a bartender who’s determined to salvage some holiday spirit.

In an interview now that the film is available digitally, on demand, on DVD and Blu-Ray, Jefferson spoke to TVBrittanyF.com about the joys of doing a comedy. He also explained how he created chemistry with his Drink and Be Merry co-stars. Plus, he reflected on the unique filming experience as both an actor and an executive producer on this indie film that will make viewers laugh and warm their hearts.

Brittany Frederick: Audiences are so used to seeing you in very dramatic TV shows like Yellowstone. How fun was it to do something that’s a true comedy?

Jefferson White: It was a blast. It’s really fun to get to explore the whole spectrum. You know, actors, we crave novelty. We like getting to mix it up. I’ve worked on a lot of these kind of big, complicated, extensive, massive TV shows—so it’s really fun to also do something really small and focused. It was a blast, and it was a contrast to a lot of my other work, in many ways.

From a performance standpoint, is it a process to shift gears when you’re going into a project that’s so different from what you’re used to?

Personally, what I love when I’m watching something is to be surprised. I think that one of the strengths of something like Yellowstone, or my character on Yellowstone, is it’s a very, very serious show, and then I’m often kind of the comic relief, or this kind of surprising, sort of strange other element. It’s really fun, and it’s also fun to look for the tragedy in a comedy.

I would say this movie is, I would call it a comedy, but it’s also quite melancholic. It’s quite elegiac in some ways; it is also kind of a little bit of a downer… You want take the biggest swings in both directions. I feel like [that’s] the most fun thing to do as an actor.

Drink and Be Merry is universal in that everyone can relate to the concept of found family between Chet and his regulars at the bar. But how do you work with your fellow actors to create that chemistry the movie needs?

Most of the characters in this film have known each other for a long time. They’re kind of stuck together in this stasis. And one of the great fun questions of an indie film that shoots for twelve days is, how do you, on day one, pretend you’ve known each other for 15 years?

We were lucky to have this incredibly immersive set. We were really in this bar, which opened in 1974 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And when you get closed into the same space together, that’s a huge bonding agent that really does a lot of the work… You find yourself in exactly the same circumstances as each other. You look around and you’re all crabs in the same bucket, and that does a ton of that work for you.

And the nature of our shooting was, we were shooting during the day, but the whole movie basically takes place at night. So we boarded up the windows, and we kind of couldn’t leave the bar while we were working—which is a real gift, because all of a sudden you’re all stuck in there together and you have nothing to do but bond.

Being stuck in that bar, and playing Chet who’s been stuck behind that bar for so long, how much did you learn about bartending in this process?

I had never bartended before. I’ve been a waiter in a lot of restaurants, so I’ve worked in restaurants a lot, but I’ve never been a bartender before. But luckily, everybody on set was apparently an expert. [Laughs.] Actors will know what I mean—when there’s some very specific thing you have to do, all of a sudden, everybody else on set is an expert in it and wants to show you how to do it. We were very lucky to have a number of people on set who had bartended before and who could give me guidance.

One of the great challenges of being an actor—that’s also one of the fun things about it—is doing something for the first time and pretending that you’ve done it for 15 years. Actors always talk about smoking—if you don’t smoke cigarettes, it’s really hard to fake, because the people that do it do it a million times a day. It’s this almost purely reflexive behavior. Pouring a beer is the same thing. If you’re a bartender, you do that a thousand times a day, year after year. So pretending, trying to let your body settle into that, is such a fun, weird challenge.

And it’s a big part of my career. A big part of my career is like hey, buddy, I know you’ve never done this before, but pretend you’re good at it. [Laughs.]

What do you love about Drink and Be Merry? Were there favorite parts of the movie that you enjoyed, or scenes that stuck with you during filming?

I really love the cast of characters. It’s a deep ensemble of great actors, and new characters keep showing up all the way through the film. An actor who I really love, Griffin Newman, shows up at like the 75 percent mark… That’s one of my favorite things about it, is just this rotating cast of eclectic characters.

The movie is kind of about this intergenerational divide. It’s about this younger bartender dealing with these older regulars, and the ways in which they connect and they don’t connect. So for me, it was very exciting and electric to have Sophie Zucker and Casey Wortmann on set… There’s these other young women that come into the bar. And for everybody in the bar, it’s this kind of crisis, because young people never come into this bar. [Laughs.] Those sequences were all very, very fun for me, and working with with both of them was a real treat.

Was there something that you walked away from the experience of Drink and Be Merry with? When you look back on the movie, what are you going to remember?

This was a really exciting one, because I was sort of the constant variable, and it feels like my job was to stay open to all these elements kind of swirling around me. And I made this movie with my friend; my friend Adam Volerich directed it. It was the first feature he’s directed. For a lot of us, it was a big sort of step forward, so we were really looking out for each other and taking care of each other.

I was also a producer on this movie—so I learned a tremendous amount about filmmaking through making this movie. And then as an actor, the challenge of it was [to] stay available to and open to all of these other amazing actors. Each of these scenes is their chance to shine, and my job is just to be present with them, to set up these cool character moments.

Something that I learned from working with Taylor Sheridan on Yellowstone is, Taylor was an actor for a long time, and then he decided to start making his own luck. To start writing his own films to then directing. That’s a journey that I’ve been on for the last few years. So I would just say the biggest sort of thing about Drink and Be Merry is it’s an expression of a years-long effort from me and my community to graduate to making feature films. I’m very proud of it in that regard.

And it’s a true indie; it’s a tiny movie. We had no money, and I’m very proud of what we did with the resources we had.

Drink and Be Merry is available now on demand, digital, DVD and Blu-Ray from X4 Pictures. Photo Credit: Courtesy of X4 Pictures.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.