The Santa Clauses has cast a new evil Santa Claus to square off against Tim Allen. The series, which premiered on Disney+ in November 2022, is a follow-up to Allen’s Santa Clause film trilogy, in which he played unwitting suburban dad turned Santa Scott Calvin from 1994 through 2006. Episode 5 of the series, which also stars Elizabeth Mitchell and Kal Penn, presented an It’s a Wonderful Life scenario where Calvin had the opportunity to encounter many previous Santas from throughout history, setting up the potential to explore even more iterations of the iconic character.
Per Variety, Eric Stonestreet has joined the cast of The Santa Clauses season 2. Stonestreet is best known for playing Cam, the eccentric husband of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Mitchell on the ABC long-running sitcom Modern Family. In The Santa Clauses, he will be playing Magnus Antas, the Mad Santa who held the gig in the 1300s and now wants to return to the role, taking down Calvin in the process.
What Eric Stonestreet Has Done Since Modern Family
While Modern Family provided Stonestreet with work for 11 years, the Emmy-winning series went off the air in April 2020. The Santa Clauses will provide the first major television role for the actor since that point. However, he has been quite busy in the past two years.
Stonestreet can be seen and heard all over television, including a voice role as Harley Horns in a 2021 episode of the Peacock animated series Madagascar: A Little Wild. He also appeared on two episodes of the workplace sitcom American Auto. On season 2 of the series, he played crisis manager Ian Ostofsky, who is brought in during a particularly perilous moment for the company.
Despite these appearances, before getting this role on The Santa Clauses, Stonestreet was mostly working as a TV host. His first taste of post-Modern Family hosting came in 2020 when he briefly replaced Heidi Klum as a guest judge on America’s Got Talent. That was followed by a proper hosting gig on the 2022 series Domino Masters. Whether he chooses to act or host more in the future remains to be seen, but both sides of his career seem to be thriving at the moment.
Source: Variety