Britt Robertson and Chad Michael Murray star as Ashley and Luke in The Merry Gentlemen. The film is now streaming on Netflix.

To save her parents’ small-town performing venue, a former big-city dancer decides to stage an all-male, Christmas-themed revue.

“I do remember when I was really young doing theater for the first time, I remember my grandmother and my mom sitting on the couch and I would be doing my bit, and I remember it being so much not about the bit, not about the things, but it was more about like, ‘I hope they like this,’ you know? I do remember that feeling and I think it’s a similar feeling to how I feel now, which is that I’m performing for the people that I love most,” Robertson explained. “Like, I’ll be thinking of my husband, like, ‘Oh, I hope he likes my tap dance routine,’ or you just think about the people that you want to be connecting with on the other side and then, hopefully, that resonates in some way.”

Murray added, “I just chalk it all up to wanting to make people happy and so, it is always really who you’re performing for, right? That’s why you commit, that’s why you give everything you got and you leave it all out on the dance floor because, at the end of the day, somebody’s gonna sit there, they’re gonna be on the other side of the screen, they’re gonna be taking it in, and they’re gonna be affected one way or the other and you want your best foot forward to give them everything you got because if they can get a genuine smile or a departure from whatever it is that they may be going through, I mean, that’s why we do it. That’s why I do it, I can tell you that.”

We discussed who they perform for as actors, what they consider to be the perfect elements for a holiday rom-com, and their favorite movie meet-cutes.

Watch my interview below: