How Eric Stonestreet became ‘Mad Santa’ on Disney+ series ‘The Santa Clauses’

Eric Stonestreet wasn’t looking for a job when he sent a photo of his fiancée’s 11-year-old boys watching the TV series “The Santa Clauses” to a writer-producer friend who’d created the Disney+ show.

“I was saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got a couple of fans here in Kansas City, loving the show,” Stonestreet says of his message to Jack Burditt, who’d worked with Stonestreet on the ABC sitcom “Modern Family.” “He wrote back saying, “If we get picked up for a second season, maybe you could come play.’ And that was kind of where we left it.”

“The Santa Clauses” debuted in 2022 as a continuation of the movie franchise in which actor Tim Allen plays Scott Calvin, an ordinary man who, after accidentally causing the death of Santa Claus, learns he must now take over as Santa.

And when it got renewed, Burditt reached out as he’d promised, Stonestreet says.

“He’s like, ‘Hear me out,’ and started explaining it,” Stonestreet says. “I’d always thought Santa would be something I’d get to play at some point.”

But not, he adds, this particular Santa. Oh no. The character named Magnus Antas was a Santa of an entirely different order.

“He said, ‘You’re this 14th century, you know, medieval Santa,’” Stonestreet continues. “I didn’t know at first, but then he started talking to me, and just the opportunity to put the suit on and kind of create some of the Santa lore for the show, it all just made too much sense.

“Going from my couch in Kansas City to the North Pole was quite a treat.”

‘The Mad Santa’

Here’s the other thing Stonestreet didn’t know about the Santa he was to play: Magnus Antas is “the Mad Santa.” In order to protect the world from him after he lost his way, Magnus Antas had been turned into a nutcracker.

As the second season begins, the nutcracker is part of the Christmas museum at Santapolis, a struggling theme park run by Kris Moreno, played by the comedian-actor Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias. When Moreno accidentally breaks the spell on the nutcracker, Magnus Antas is freed, and, well, it ain’t good for Christmas.

Stonestreet, perhaps not surprisingly, argues that the mad Santa isn’t really a bad Santa. He’s just misunderstood.

“Magnus Antas is only a bad guy because he was wronged in his mind,” he says. “He used to be great. He tells his gnomes that: ‘You said I was the best Santa ever. You said it.’

“So at some point, I was the great Santa that we all know and love,” Stonestreet says. “And then something changed in my heart and brought me over to the dark side. I started to change how Christmas was, and I was exiled into this nutcracker.”

And who says Magnus Antas can’t get his good Santa groove back? Stonestreet says the character has a nice redemption arc over the season’s six episodes, which conclude on Dec. 6 but remain available for streaming.

“I still have the good heart of Santa Claus in me,” he says. “So for me, it was fun to get the opportunity to play the duality of that.

“You know, I said from the beginning, I wanted my character to be someone, if a 7-year-old or 8-year-old saw at Disneyland, that they would reluctantly line up to meet,” Stonestreet says. “Meaning, they knew I was scary and intimidating, fun, funny, loveable.”

Screen Santas

There’s a long, long history of Santa Claus in movies and television. For Stonestreet, his favorites include a pair of classics, old and new.

“Well, it all starts off with watching the (stop-motion animation) shows when I was a kid they were on TV on Christmas Eve,” he says, pointing primarily to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” for which actor-singer Burl Ives played narrator Snowman Sam and the little-known Canadian actor Stan Francis voiced Santa Claus.

“I love Ed Asner in ‘Elf,’” Stonestreet continued. “I love his suits and I love everything about him. He’s also a Kansas City native, and I was so happy that I got to work with Ed on ‘Modern Family’ before he passed away. He’s way up there.”

And, of course, he’s a big fan of Tim Allen as Scott Calvin-turned-Santa Claus in the franchise of which Stonestreet now is part.

“For me, it’s similar to my experience in 2009, when all of a sudden I’m on a soundstage with Al Bundy – Ed O’Neill – who I’ve admired and watched work for years,” he says of working with the “Married … With Children” star on “Modern Family.” “And I’m sharing space with him, eye to eye, in a scene.

“I had that moment with (Tim Allen) where we were at craft service, having pork chops for lunch, and then a few hours later, he’s Scott Calvin in the North Pole and I’m Magnus Antas. It was great working with him. He’s the OG, so I just loved sharing space and loved being a part of this world that he has created.”

Family holidays

Stonestreet divides his time between Los Angeles and Kansas City, his hometown, and the place that holds most of his Christmas memories. He lives with his fiancée and her twin sons there, and his mother Jamey Stonestreet, is there, too.

“Like many families, we’re a family that enjoys things that remind us of when we were younger,” he says. “A lot of times that’s favorite recipes from loved ones. Grandma’s stuffing. Grandma Louise’s heavenly hash. My dad passed away a couple of years ago. He always did a standing rib roast in the oven on Christmas Eve. And we love Polish sausage in Kansas City.

“So just getting together and having things that make us feel good and feel like we’re young again.”

He and his mother continue a Christmas tradition that dates back to his teen years, taking turns hiding a small Santa figure for each other to find.

Stonestreet also worked recently with his mother on a public advocacy campaign for regular eye exams to catch and treat ADM, or age-related macular degeneration, which Jamey Stonestreet has, and GA, or geographic atrophy, which is an advanced form of ADM, and which took much of his grandmother’s eyesight late in her life.

“It was a natural fit for me with my mom,” he says of the public-service announcement they filmed for Iveric Bio, a biopharmaceutical company that works with retinal diseases. “If you’ve seen the video, she’s a little superstar herself.”

He jokes that the old showbiz axiom cautioning never to work with dogs or children should be expanded to include your mother. His future stepsons might inspire some future saying too, given their blasé reaction to his arrival on “The Santa Clauses,” Stonestreet suggests.

“Because they live with me, they’re not that impressed with me, which is a learning curve for me to realize that every parent feels that way,” he says. “It’s like, ‘OK, I’m sitting in your living room, and I’m also on the TV screen right now. I need a little bit more of a reaction.’”

At least their friends are impressed, he says, laughing. In truth, they were too when the news first broke, and lately, they seem to be warming to him as Magnus Antas.

“I did get one comment out of them last week, which was at the end of the episode,” Stonestreet says. “He was like, ‘You’re pretty funny.’ Yeah, I know!”