Listen, I’ll happily say it first: they just don’t make festive films like they used to.
The older Christmas movies from ‘back in our day’ are the best ones, and I’ll bet you’ll agree that’s a fact.
I mean, there’s Elf, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Santa Clause, Love Actually… need I go on? Oh, and don’t worry I’ve not forgot it, of course, I’m including the Home Alone films in that mix.
But while we all have our own favourite moments and unforgettable bits from each one, of the Home Alone stars struggled to say one line to Macaulay Culkin as it was so ‘horrific’.
Catherine O’Hara played the mum, Kate McCallister in the 90s classic and reunited with the once child star who played the lead, Kevin, last December.
While speaking about the actor during his star unveiling on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she recalled the moment from the legendary Christmas film.
Now, as we all well know, the story follows the idea that young Kevin is left behind by his family when they go on holiday.
O'Hara and Culkin reunited last December. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
And the night before as they’re leaving for Paris, he falls out with them all, being sent to bed by his mum as she doesn’t want to see him ‘for the rest of the night’.
He responds bluntly: “I don’t want to see you again for the rest of my life, and I don’t want to see anybody else, either.”
With his mum saying back: “I hope you don’t mean that – you’d feel pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you didn’t have a family.”
But O’Hara revealed she found this pretty difficult to film.
O'Hara and Culkin in Home Alone. (20th Century Fox)
“The scene where I had to drag him upstairs to sleep in the attic ‘cause he’d misbehaved, he’s mouthing off about the family and I say, ‘Well, you’d be pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you had no family,’ and he says, ‘No, I wouldn’t.’ And I was supposed to say, ‘Then say it again - maybe it’ll happen,’” she recalled.
“I can’t tell you how much that killed me – I could not wrap my head around saying something so horrific to this beautiful child.”
O'Hara did then quip: "Of course I was not yet a mother at the time and I had no idea the kind of things would come out of my own mouth with my own two sons.”
She went on to praise Culkin's work in both the film and ever since, crediting his ‘perfect performance’ for giving us ‘that little every boy on an extraordinary adventure’.