Marla Sokoloff Makes Her Network Directorial Debut with Lifetime's "Christmas Hotel"
Actor Marla Sokoloff is no stranger to being in front of a camera. She basically grew up before our eyes, beginning her career at age 14 and appearing on television shows like Boy Meets World, Full House, Party of Five and Friends before transitioning to more adult roles on The Practice and Desperate Housewives. Now, at age 38, Sokoloff is transitioning to director, and she's making her network debut this weekend with the Lifetime holiday movie Christmas Hotel starring Tatyana Ali. Her association with the network is a long one, as she has appeared in many original films there, her most recent being The Road Home for Christmas (which also allowed her to display some impressive vocal talents). But for Sokoloff, moving behind the camera was a natural transition. “It's actually shocking how natural it feels to direct,” she revealed in an exclusive interview with MediaVillage. “I'm coming up on 29 years of being on sets acting, so I have spent quite a bit of time on them. It really feels like home and I love it -- every facet of it, right down to knowing what camera angles are going to make the actors look good. I've taken so many notes from directors on how to talk to actors over the years, which comes in really handy. It's being creative in a completely different way. It's exciting, but also scary because if something goes wrong or looks bad on camera, it's your fault.”
Sokoloff told me that it was a few years ago that she started to dip into directing, after writing a bunch of projects and deciding she wanted to make one. “I was starring in it and was interviewing a bunch of directors,” she explained. “Throughout that process, I found no one was really seeing it the way that I did and that's when I asked myself, ‘Can I direct this?’ So, I did. It wound up being one of the best experiences I've had working on a set and I became ignited in figuring out a way to do more of it.”
With her creative passion fired up, Sokoloff began her “apprenticeship” shadowing directors to connect the dots and figure out ways that she could do what they were doing. In fact, filming The Road Home for Christmas proved invaluable in that department. “Our director Peter Sullivan let me shadow him,” she recalled. “Admittedly there were certain days I thought, ‘I just can't do this’, because the schedule was so busy, but he showed me tricks and was always down to show me how he made the movie look beautiful.”
It was her union with Sullivan that led her to taking a position behind the camera for Lifetime. “He was a huge champion for me in that I was ready, I could do it, so give me a shot,” she shared. “While filming Christmas Hotel in Utah, I felt incredibly grateful as it was such a great experience.”
Given the fast turnaround on the production, which filmed in November for telecast in December, Sokoloff knew the crunch was on. She compared it to going live. “It was a live feed Christmas movie,” she laughed.
While she’s used to seeing her name listed in credits, seeing that ‘Directed by’ title is going to be a whole new deal. “Seeing the production slate that read, ‘Directed by Marla Sokoloff,’ I couldn't believe it," she said in closing. "I've directed things in the past, but this one freaked me out because it was my network directorial debut. It's big time -- and it’s on Lifetime!"
Christmas Hotelpremieres Saturday, December 21 at 8 p.m. on Lifetime, concluding the network’s It’s a Wonderful Lifetime programming event.
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Steve Gidlow
Steve Gidlow, a long-time columnist for MediaVillage ("Behind the Scenes in Hollywood"), has written about television and pop culture since 1994, beginning in Australia. Since moving to Hollywood in 1997, Steve has focused on celebrity interv…
