Inside Hallmark’s New Lesbian Christmas Movie, ‘The Christmas Baby’

Featured Image: Ali Liebert and Katherine Barrell star in ‘The Christmas Baby’. ©2025 Hallmark Media/Photographer: Paulina Stevens

There’s something uniquely tender about a Hallmark Christmas movie. The soft glow, the flannel, the seasonal baked goods that absolutely no one has time to make in real life. But when Hallmark drops a queer holiday rom-com, it becomes less of a movie and more of a cultural event. And when Hallmark drops a queer holiday rom-com about a married lesbian couple who discover a random baby at their UPS Store and unexpectedly become parents overnight? That’s practically folklore. That’s oral-history-worthy. That’s “remember where you were when you first heard about this” cinema.

The Christmas Baby, starring Ali Liebert as Erin and Katherine Barrell as Kelly, is one of the channel’s strongest entries into LGBTQ+ storytelling yet. It centers queer familyhood without using queerness as the tension point. It is soft. It is domestic. It is chaotic. And at the center of it all is baby Nicholas—the tiny plot twist and tender reminder of how queer people choose each other again and again, even when life hands you a baby you definitely weren’t expecting.

Hallmark’s LGBTQ+ storytelling has been slow but steady—ever since 2020’s The Christmas House and the network’s first same-sex lead film, The Holiday Sitter, in 2022. But The Christmas Baby feels like a milestone simply because it’s so…chill. There’s no coming-out arc, no community backlash, no heavy-handed lesson about acceptance. Just two married women living their lives when, in true holiday-movie fashion, a baby drops into their world. It centers queer familyhood without using queerness as the tension point.

Liebert—also known for being a little Hallmark famous, thanks to her growing list of holiday movies, including the channel’s first lesbian romance  Friends & Family Christmas—loved that from the moment she read the script. “There are not enough lesbian, sapphic Christmas stories,” she says. “I loved that the conflict wasn’t that they were queer; it was the conflict of having this baby brought into their lives. It just normalizes them as an awesome married couple.”

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For Barrell, a real-life mom to two young kids, the material felt emotionally familiar in ways she couldn’t ignore: “I’m so deep [into] kid land; I just loved the idea that we were going to get to have this baby and explore all those feelings of parenthood and the fears and the ‘I don’t know what to do,’ and the struggling to hold on to your identity. These are [all] present in my life. So getting to explore that was great.” 

The beauty of the movie is that it lets queer women be complicated without making queerness the complication. It centers the baby, the marriage, and the decision-making instead of the identity politics. And that alone feels like progress.

Both Liebert and Barrell are no strangers to iconic queer characters. Barrell’s Nicole Haught on Wynonna Earp is permanently etched into sapphic culture. Liebert’s portrayal of Betty McRae on Bomb Girls remains one of the quietly revolutionary queer arcs of early-2010s TV. 

But telling a story about new parenthood asked them to tap into a different emotional register. Less yearning, more, “Did you remember to sanitize the bottle?”

Barrell found it a refreshing shift into queer adulthood’s middle chapters. “I’ve done the whole falling-in-love-for-the-first-time arc. Now, being in my late 30s and a parent, it felt so refreshing to play a married couple dealing with real-life stuff.”

The actors’ real-life friendship deepened quickly, making their on-screen chemistry that much more believable. They made a point of hanging out before filming and checking in with each other on set, calibrating their characters’ marriage the way real couples do, with micro-adjustments and intuitive reading. 

Liebert still laughs when she talks about the first time they met. “We had to do a photoshoot for set décor before we even sat down for dinner together. Hugging, taking selfies…it was the funniest icebreaker. Luckily, we became the fastest, bestest friends. That chemistry is real.”

On screen, it shows. Erin and Kelly feel lived-in, not assembled.

Liebert’s Erin leads with emotion, as she loves quickly, attaches even faster, and dreams out loud. So when she bonds with baby Nicholas almost instantly, she feels the impending separation like a physical ache.

Barrell’s Kelly, meanwhile, approaches the situation like a spreadsheet with legs: cautious, prepared, slightly overwhelmed but determined to stay functional.

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Barrell recalls their first scene together with equal parts disbelief and amusement; it certainly wasn’t the warm, cozy ease-in it might look like on screen. “I remember the first scene—we had just decided to give Nicholas back,” she says. “We were cleaning up toys, cleaning the kitchen…it was…a really hard scene to start with.” And in the midst of all that, she was making reindeer pancakes. The emotional difficulty of that opener became a quiet anchor for the dynamic she and Liebert would build throughout the film. 

Liebert credits the clarity of the writing, along with Barrell’s real-time motherhood proximity, for anchoring her performance. “It was there on the page. And Kelly being more practical worked with my own sort of naivete about parenthood. A lot of my performance came from imagining what it would be like to have a baby full-time and from watching Kat, who was literally living it.”

It’s not just the off-chemistry and real-life motherhood experience that cemented these characters as believable and lovable. Both actors identify as queer, giving the relationship an ease that can’t be manufactured.

Liebert, who has been open about discovering her identity while portraying Betty McRae, describes the feeling of playing queer characters as deeply natural; “I’m always excited when I get to play a lesbian or a queer woman—it’s relaxing. I feel like I can be myself.”

For Barrell, acting has been a personal compass for her own identity: “Playing queer characters has been a huge part of my journey. This movie lined up perfectly with my life. I had just had my daughter, so pulling from real experiences, imagination, a friend’s story…it all blended together.”

Barrell’s path to directing grew naturally out of her acting career. She began creating her own short films years ago, eventually building a small body of work behind the camera. In 2023, she made her feature directorial debut with Flipping for Christmas, followed by co-directing Clickbait: Unfollowed a year later. But this movie inspired her differently, not because she was directing, but because she had a front-row seat to someone else’s first time in the big chair.

“This was our director Eva’s first feature, and it was so inspiring to watch her take that first swing. You never forget your first movie. Seeing her highs, lows, challenges—it reinvigorated me [and] reminded me how cool it is, what we get to do.”

Barrell left with a renewed creative spark and a fresh reminder of how filmmaking, at its core, is an act of faith.

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Liebert has been building queer Hallmark history from multiple angles—not just in front of the camera, but behind it. After starring in Friends & Family Christmas, she went on to direct The Holiday Sitter, a landmark for Hallmark’s LGBTQ+ storytelling. Now, with The Christmas Baby, she’s helping usher in the channel’s next evolution: a married lesbian couple navigating the beautiful chaos of new parenthood. It’s a legacy she doesn’t take lightly.

“I love it. The progress that Hallmark is making in the queer landscape is ever-expanding. We need more lesbian and gay and queer movies on this channel. And I’m proud to be part of that shift, along with Kat, Jonathan Bennett, and so many folks opening doors for representation.”

One of her favorite memories from this era is a moment of classic Jonathan Bennett humor—equal parts pep talk and pressure valve—as she prepared to direct The Holiday Sitter. As Liebert tells it: 

“He said, ‘Bitch, if this isn’t funny, they’re not gonna let us make any more gay movies on the Hallmark Channel.’”

She laughs retelling it, but the intention was real: deliver something sharp, warm, and undeniably queer so that more stories could follow. “We really tried to make it very funny,” she says, “and I think we succeeded.”

When Erin and Kelly fall for baby Nicholas, they reimagine what family can look like, without fanfare, exceptionalism, or tragedy.

Liebert hopes queer families feel the warmth of that normalization. “Queer people deserve warm, everyday stories. I hope viewers feel joy watching these two women navigate something universal.”

Barrell adds that she wants queer parents—especially the cautious, spreadsheet-brained ones—to feel seen. “Parenthood is overwhelming for everyone. I hope people see that fear and still see the love.”

If Hallmark is embracing more queer family stories, The Christmas Baby sets a strong precedent: queer narratives don’t need trauma to be meaningful. Sometimes they just need pancakes, a surprise infant, and two women trying their best.

Catch The Christmas Baby premiere on Sunday, December 21, 2025, at 8/7c on the Hallmark Channel.