Chad Michael Murray is keeping things spicy this holiday season.
The actor, 43, revealed that his racy Netflix Christmas movie The Merry Gentlemen, which features plenty of shirtless dancing, has an even saucier cut while speaking with Interview magazine.
Though Murray wants to keep his work “wholesome” because he has three young kids, he discussed how daring he is willing to go in his films. For now, he draws the line right around his risqué dancing in The Merry Gentlemen. However, he shared of the film, “there’s a spicy version that had more thrusting.”
“We threaded the needle, there, where it’s still totally free, and fun, and not… you know what I mean?,” he said regarding the cut that made it to Netflix.
“There is something invigorating and exciting about dance that I never accepted before,” he added. “There was such a dopamine rush and a freedom to what we were doing. I loved it.”
Netflix
The Merry Gentlemen features a big-city dancer, played by Britt Robertson, returning to her small hometown for the holidays and staging an all-male, Christmas-themed revue in the hopes of saving her parents’ performing venue.
Murray plays Luke, one of the ab-baring dancers, in the holiday movie.
The One Tree Hill actor recently shared with PEOPLE what it was like learning to dance for the first time for the film.
He said the risqué dance training involved “a lot of work, dedication and focus,” including arriving at the “six-hour days” at the dance hall earlier than the other men, who were previously trained in dance, to ensure he was well-prepared.
“If I was going to do this, I wanted to be all in,” he said.
The physical transformation was “very intense,” Murray shared, but, “I love a good challenge.”
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Prior to this role, Murray said, “I’d never danced professionally or trained by any means.”
“I love going out and dancing. My wife [Sarah Roemer] and I have danced at a wedding or two, and we dance on occasion, and we goof around at the house, but nothing to this level,” he said.
While he was scared of the role at first, his fear pushed him to do it.
“When I see something and it scares the crap out of me, something in me says, ‘Alright, well let’s see what we can do. I’m going to fall flat on my face or have a lot of fun doing it,'” he shared.
At first, his wife was “nervous” about the film upon seeing the behind-the-scenes footage for the first time. Murray said setting the right tone was important for the holiday movie.
“She was like, ‘Oh my God, what are you making?’ Because depending on how you shoot it and how you light it, it could be a completely different film,” he said. “It’s a fine line to thread a Christmas movie and strippers and to make it work, right? It’s not the first thing that comes to your mind when you think Christmas. So for us, it was really making sure that the tone’s right.”
The actor knows that confidence is key when it comes to sexiness — he shared his definition of the word “sexy” with PEOPLE before the release of Sexiest Man Alive.
“Sexy is a state of mind,” he told PEOPLE, rather than a “visual reflection” of a person. “It’s confidence, it’s sitting right with yourself. It’s laying your head to bed at night and knowing you had a good day and you did what you could do, and not having regret when you go to sleep.”
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