Paul Campbell: Original Plan for ‘Three Wise Men & a Baby’ Dance Was Very Different

Hallmark "Three Wise Men & a Baby"

Paul Campbell recently opened up about some behind-the-scenes moments from the Hallmark Christmas movie, “Three Wise Men & a Baby,” including how the now-viral dance scene was initially created. The original plan for the dance was very different from how it turned out.

They Shot the Dance in One Take

In an interview with Wide Open Country, Campbell revealed that the infamous dance scene was shot in just one take. The scene shows the three stars — Campbell, Andrew Walker, and Tyler Hynes — performing a hilarious rendition of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”

“We just spent every lunch hour for a week in the basement of this house just practicing different dumb things that we could do,” Campbell said, confirming that they made up the dance themselves. “And over the course of the week, it evolved into what it evolved into. We basically stopped choreographing when we had to shoot.”

He said they were told they had to shoot and so they just stopped and filmed the scene.

“And we’re like, ‘Okay, okay, we’re coming! Coming, coming!'” he recalled. “And then we just did it. And I think the take that they used was our first take. I think we just went up there and shot it dirty.”

They Initially Planned a ‘Backstreet Boys’ Parody

Interestingly, this wasn’t the original dance they planned to do. They had initially thought they might perform a very different dance, Campbell told Wide Open Country. He said it was going to be a parody of “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” by Backstreet Boys. The first lyrics would say, “Every party, yeah! Christmas party, yeah!”

“Alas, the price of sampling the song was in the hundreds of thousands,” he said.

When Campbell, Hynes, and Walker (via video) appeared at Roma Drama Live, they shared a blooper reel showing them practicing the dance.

The video goes on to show other blooper moments that took place while they were filming the movie.

There were 25 minutes of deleted scenes that didn’t make the movie’s final cut. Some of them were shown during Roma Drama Live in December.

The script also had a backstory about Hynes’ character that explained why Taylor didn’t drive a car, but that part didn’t make the cut. Campbell said that Taylor was supposed to be environmentally conscious and there was an ongoing conversation about it, but they just weren’t able to fit that into the film.

“Three Wise Men & a Baby” was such a big hit that it ended up being Hallmark’s most-viewed movie of 2022, in terms of live/same-day viewers, according to statistics from ShowBuzzDaily.  It also broke records reaching back to 2019.

The movie brought in 3.626 million views and ranked .31 in the 18-49 demographic for live/same-day viewers. That beat the first “The Wedding Veil” movie, which saw 3.394 million live viewers and hit .29 in the 18-49 demographic. It also beat the first movie in the new trilogy, “The Wedding Veil Expectations.” “Expectations” averaged 2.5 million total viewers and 291,000 women viewers between the ages of 25-54, according to Nielsen live and same-day viewing numbers. “Expectations” didn’t beat any of the first “Veil” movies in the trilogy, but it still beat all non-sports programs the day of its premiere.

But “Three Wise Men & a Baby” maintains its top spot with 3.626 million viewers.

READ NEXT: Watch Deleted Scenes from ‘Three Wise Men & a Baby’