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- “The Merry Gentlemen” is one of Netflix’s latest original Christmas movies.
- It stars Chad Michael Murray as a small-town handyman who joins a male dance revue to save a local bar.
- Murray said he doesn’t think the nudity is gratuitous, and he’s choosing roles with his kids in mind.
Chad Michael Murray stripped down for his new Netflix movie, but it’s for a good cause.
The “One Tree Hill” actor stars in one of the streamer’s latest Christmas films, “The Merry Gentlemen,” as a small-town handyman who agrees to participate in an all-male dance revue to save the family bar belonging to his new love interest, played by Britt Robertson.
Much of the film — and the marketing for it — features Murray’s character in various states of undress. He even posed shirtless for an old-school 2025 “stripper calendar” for Netflix to promote the movie (with proceeds from every sale going to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital).
But despite the semi-nudity, Murray feels his “stripper Christmas movie” is very much a family-friendly holiday film.
“It’s so very tongue-in-cheek and goofy and fun,” he told Business Insider. “And look, we’re telling a story. We’re pushing the envelope a little bit, but it is still a holiday movie. We’re still fun, festive, and light, with a little bit of spice this year.”
That’s not to say he didn’t have some trepidation about saying yes, especially knowing how much skin he’d be baring for a good portion of the runtime. “It turns out that your metabolism does slow down when you get older,” Murray joked.
He told BI his fitness regimen to prep for the movie included clean eating (“If God made it, I eat it”), six-hour dance sessions multiple times a week, and exercising at home. He even managed to incorporate his kids into his workout sessions.
“My daughter would jump in the gym and she’d sit on one of the machines and she’d instruct me as we went along, and we just made it fun,” he said.
Murray made headlines earlier this year when he said he chooses acting jobs with his son and two daughters in mind. “I don’t want my kids going to school, being freshmen in high school, and dad’s butt [is] postered all over their locker,” he told Numéro Netherlands. “That’s not fair to them.”
Murray told BI that family was still “100%” a consideration when he signed on to “The Merry Gentlemen,” jokingly noting that you don’t see his butt in the movie. And while he said even his wife Sarah Roemer was “slightly nervous” about the movie, he reassured her it would be fine.
“It was one of those things, for me, where it didn’t feel gratuitous. I felt like we had to thread a needle,” Murray said.
“You can have this on in the background and not feel like you’re going to get judged,” he added.
It also helped that the filming process was a blast. Murray said it was some of the most fun he’s ever had on set.
“It was this and ‘A Cinderella Story,'” Murray said, referring to his classic 2004 teen rom-com costarring Hilary Duff. “Those are the two top most fun I’ve ever had making a movie, and I really believe that that comes through in the work.”
“The Merry Gentlemen” is now streaming on Netflix.
