Michael Nardelli Talks ‘Christmas in Homestead’ and ‘Dark/Web’ [Exclusive Interview]

It’s that time of the year where the snow is falling, hot chocolate gets made, Christmas music comes on the radio, and every holiday special takes over every channel on TV.

One of the new TV movies you can expect to see on the Hallmark Channel is Christmas in Homestead, in which one of the most famous actresses in the world heads to the Christmas-obsessed town of Homestead, Iowa to shoot a holiday-themed movie.

She finds herself falling in love with an inn keeper and single dad named Matt. Over the course of the movie she gets a taste of small-town life and discovers the true meaning of Christmas.

I recently spoke with one of the stars of the film, Michael Nardelli, to discuss the movie, his own Christmas traditions, and some upcoming projects he’s working on.

Nardelli plays Ian, a paparazzo, and he described how he came to this role and what drew him to Ian’s story.

“I auditioned for Ian and I never had done much research or thought a lot about what the life of a paparazzo is like.” said Nardelli. “For a lot of them it seems like a pretty lonely life, where you show up for work and no one wants you to be there, and day in and day out you’re constantly getting yelled at or pushed around.”

He also commented on some of the more unpleasants aspects of being a paparazzo.

“You know, a lot of people think it’s a nasty job, and I guess it is, but it was interesting to step in those shoes and see what that would actually feel like,” Nardelli added.

“I definitely wouldn’t have the gumption to be a paparazzo.”

One of the best aspects of Ian’s character, and a story that resonates with the true spirit of Christmas is the way that he grows and changes throughout the course of the film.

“Playing someone who has a very stong arc was cool, because he starts out as someone who is very LA-affected, with sort-of that life of following celebrities around and getting the scoop, and then over the course of the story, as is the case with a lot of Christmas movies, he changes and you see a nicer more sympathetic side of him,” Nardelli explained.

“I love to play those, and that’s kind of the thing I love to watch, where someone starts out as one thing and winds up as something else and usually, hopefully, something better than what they started as,” said Nardelli.

Nardelli also told us about some of his own Christmas traditions.

“I grew up with Christmas being a big thing. You know when you’re in grade school, it’s like ‘Oh, it’s almost Christmas we get a week off of school!’ and it still has that fun, family, relaxing vibe,” stated Nardelli.

“My family is a big Christmas family. My mom is a big Christmas-nerd. She puts the decorations up right after Halloween ends,” he laughed. “She skips Thanksgiving and goes right to Christmas.”

There are some timeless Christmas traditions that Nardelli still looks forward to year after year.

“We have traditions of opening some presents on Christmas Eve and some on Christmas morning, and always taking a picture on the stairwell. We have all these cheesy family traditions that I still look forward to even in my thirties,” Nardelli laughed.

Nardelli also loves Christmas music, including Frank Sinatra’s album.

“I always have that one playing,” says Nardelli. “Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas too, that song! I think that’s a good one. Then there’s Charlie Brown! Charlie Brown Christmas — we always have that going too.”

While Christmas in Homestead gets viewers into the Christmas spirit, Nardelli is also currently working on a digital series called Dark/Web, where he is acting, writing, and producing the show.

Dark/Web follows Ethan, Sam, and James as they find themselves the target of cryptic emails from someone posing as their childhood friend Molly. After reaching out to Molly to alert her to what they think is an all-to-common hack, the discover that Molly has been missing for months and no one knows what happened to her.

As the emails keep coming, they discover that they might be more than just a sick joke. Details in each email point them towards people and places in Molly’s past and may help them find their missing friend.

The compelling plot and unique structure make for what sounds like an exciting new series.

“It’s a hybrid format. It’s an anthology show, sort of like Black Mirror, that deals with, the modern fears and the modern horrors of technology and social media, and being connected all the time, and how that can be good in some ways and dangerous in other ways, how it is changing our brains and our interactions. So it’s one part anthology series and then there is a serialized element that kind of ties everything together,” Nardelli explained.

“It’s funny, as we were writing it and producing it, a lot of the storylines we have in the show are happening on the news in terms of freedom of information, and the role that hackers play now in everything from daily business to the elections,” said Nardelli.

Dark/Web has been in production for a while now, and there are still five episodes left to produce, but as Nardelli continued working on the series, he found that many of the topics addressed in the show had come to the forefront in several news stories.

“Cyberterror is a big element of the show, and that’s a big element of everything that happened last year with the Sony Hacks and what people think Russia is doing right now. All these kind of really scary things that are happening are addressed in the show.” said Nardelli.

“The goal is to kind of do an anthology that addressed modern paranoia and fear and take it a little more in the direction of sci-fi/horror than Black Mirror does,” explained Nardelli.

While they don’t have the exact details about how independently produced Dark/web will be distributed they have been promoting the show with the help of LRM Online.

“We’ve been working with this website LRM Online to kind of promote the show, we had a contest where readers of that site were able to submit their own writing as an episode and we picked one of them to film and produce. So we’ll probably debut some of the material, maybe an episode or two on that website,” Nardelli elaborated.

“You know the scope of the show has grown a little bit since we first started, so we’re kind of trying now just to get everything done. We still have five episodes left to film, and from there decide if we want to sell this to an online distributor like Netflix or Hulu or do we want to try to release it ourselves.

The technology storyline at the forefront of Dark/Web is something that Nardelli thinks about in his everyday life. He recently tweeted about konmari-ing his Twitter friends, an Eastern philosophy about organization, his twitter feed to make it easier to organize.

“I struggle with it everyday because I try to be super organized with everything I do. Everything with social media, that’s kind of what the show deals with too, I feel like it’s changing my brain. It’s like now I have to answer messages that come in on Facebook and email and text messages, can’t there just be one thing? And for me it kind of gives me anxiety because I’m like ‘I want to get back to everyone, but I have messages for me here and that portal, and Twitter,” he said.

“When you’re an actor or a writer in the entertainment industry, there’s an expectation that you have to be on those things now, and active, so I am trying to honor that. but I am still trying to figure it out: ‘Are we supposed to use Twitter for this and Facebook for that, Snapchat for this, and Instagram?'” he laughed.

“Someone needs to write a rule book, like an etiquette book for social media, because I am overwhelmed.”

While social media can be a saving grace to keep in touch with people the abundance of new platforms popping up can also add to the confusion.

“I am terrified. I am wondering what the next thing is going to be that we’re all going to have to join, because it takes up a portion of your day, and you have to be active on that stuff to keep up with everything and everyone. It’s fun sometimes, but it’s an obligation too.”

Nardelli also appeared in the film Circle, opposite Julie Benz, in which fifty people wake up and find that they have to vote on who will be executed every two minutes.

“That’s the kind of storytelling I like the most, even going back to say Twilight Zone, it’s genre stuff that is entertaining but can also educate and maybe enlighten,” said Nardelli. “It’s fun to watch, but it also has some substance to it.”

Circle, a single-room thriller has similar notes to Dark/Web. Nardelli elaborated on how this makes these complicated social issues more accessible.

“I think it’s good to explore those issues in sci-fi, because it feels less kind of alienating and in-your-face. In Circle, and in Dark/Web, there’s a lot of heavy political and social issues that we bring up like race, class warfare, and gender, in Circle, which is basically a one-room sci-fi thriller.

“I think people are drawn to that stuff, especially when it appears in genre material, because it can kind of make them think without making them think they are thinking,” said Nardelli.

“If you tell a certain people ‘You’re going to sit down and watch a movie about gender bias or something like that?’ there’s maybe a lot of people that are like, ‘Ahhhh, that’s not my thing. I don’t want to watch that.’ But if you sneak it into a movie like Circle or Dark/Web, then I feel like you get to talk about interesting things in a way that can be entertaining, and it’s not as off-putting or alienating.”

Nardelli has also appeared in several TV shows, including Nashville and Revenge. When asked about this TV experiences, he couldn’t pick just one set.

“I loved coming out of Revenge and doing that. That was a really fun set,” said Nardelli.

“Guest starring is really fun, because you just come in and do your thing and sometimes you stay around and sometimes you don’t. Every set is a little bit different and the actors are always a little bit different, and you get to learn from them in different ways,” explained Nardelli.

When he isn’t working, Nardelli volunteers with People Assisting the Homeless (PATH) in Los Angles, which provides homes for the homeless. He’s been involved with the organization for the past three years and tries to put together two to three care packages a year.

“With these care packages it’s usually single mothers with kids and PATH finds the apartment or the home the family needs and they go through a lot of steps to make sure the family is ready for it,” he said.

“You get a little bit into their backstory and what they’ve been through and it’s usually they’ve endured a lot of hardships, or they come from broken homes, or they’ve had to overcome drug addictions, things like that.”

PATH does more than just help organize homes for the homeless, the volunteers furnish and provide everyday essentials to get the new family started.

“Me and my friends kind of pool our resources and basically give the new home dignity by finding couches and fridges and toiletries and toys for the kids,” explained Nardelli.

“We all just have so much stuff lying around that doesn’t hold value anymore, but to a family like that, it means the world to,” said Nardelli.

Nardelli’s involvement in PATH offsets his life in Los Angeles and his work as an actor by reminding him that there is something bigger in the world.

“I’ve had a lot of generosity towards me, and good things happen for me, that I always say it’s sort of a responsibility to give that back. Living in L.A. is super narcissistic and all about self-promotion a lot of times. Unfortunately, I feel like I have to engage in that sometimes when I am promoting something that I’m in or trying to get another job, but then it feels good to say, ‘Okay, I am going to do something as self-less as possible and spend a lot of time organizing this and helping out a family that, at the moment, hasn’t had as much luck as I’ve had,'” explained Nardelli.

In addition to his work with PATH, Nardelli has also helped out with ASPCA, another organization he would love to get more involved with in the future.

“I would like to get more active, but anything animal related, I definitely am in support of, because I love animals, they bring joy to the world, and they don’t have voices so, someone has to speak out for them,” said Nardelli.

While Nardelli has done great work with Christmas in Homestead, Dark/Web, and through his work with PATH, his Netflix queue seems to have suffered a little bit.

“I’m behind. I have a lot I am trying to catch up on, but Orange is the New Black is on there, the new season of Black Mirror is on there,” he mentioned.

One series he is very excited to see is Season 3 of The Fall on Netflix with Gillian Anderson.

“The Fall! The Fall just came out! I love The Fall, I am a huge Gillian Anderson super fan, so I will be bingeing that very soon.” said Nardelli.

Be sure to catch Michael Nardelli on Christmas in Homestead, airing this holiday season on the Hallmark Channel.