Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Secret to His Love Story with Sarah Michelle Gellar (Exclusive)

“Extra’s” Jenn Lahmers spoke with Freddie and his co-star Aimee Garcia about the movie, as well as his relationship with wife Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Freddie and Sarah just celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary after meeting on their 1997 film “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

Freddie and Sarah were able to find love before the dating app era. Of the dating apps, he noted, “It sounds terrible the way everyone is prejudged… It seems very inorganic… I don’t think any social media at all even existed when Sarah and I met. There was no public humiliation. We just got to date the way they did it back in the ’50s.”

“That’s the secret, be born earlier,” Prinze Jr. quipped with a smile. “The rest of you, misery.”

In the movie, Freddie is a widower whose daughter dreams of meeting a famous pop star and getting dates for her dad. Aimee plays the pop star, Angelina.

Aimee dished, “Angelina is a pop star, has fame, fortune, and Grammys, but she’s missing one thing: Love. Enter Freddie Prinze Jr... She is facing a crossroad where she is becoming irrelevant… His daughter has a Christmas wish to meet her favorite pop star, so she goes home to her high school and meets Freddie’s character.”

Of his character, Freddie said, “He is a music teacher and a widower single parent, trying to raise a daughter and have her turn out okay.”

Freddie also opened up about how he related to his character after his famous father, Freddie Prinze Sr., took his own life in 1977. He commented, “I had never played a father to a teenage daughter and with the gravity and weight of what it means to lose the person you love, the love of your life, but my mother did and I grew up with her, and so it was a ton of stealing her memories.”

Freddie also related to being a dad in real life to his kids Charlotte and Rocky. He noted, “Getting an opportunity to show what I have learned over the last decade-plus raising a kid instead of pursuing a career anymore… I was excited to show one half of it and nervous for the first time in over 20 years to act in a scene. I hadn’t been nervous since ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer.’

“I didn’t have restful nights because the scenes were making me nervous where a father would break down and at least try and control emotions where people can still see it, ’cause you want to be strong for your daughter,” Prinze Jr. went on.

“I was very, very nervous. I worked on the scenes all the time, could not step away. We would get there, it was time to shoot, and everything was thrown out the window. The girl who plays my daughter, Deja… is the most vulnerable. She looks like Bambi. When she looks up with you with those eyes, every idea and instinct, like, those are gone and we’re just gonna see what happens… I’m more proud of those scenes than any work I put on camera, period… I genuinely loved, loved shooting those scenes.”

“Christmas with You” streams November 17 on Netflix.