Kristen Stewart came down with COVID filming 'Happiest Season' back in February

Aubrey Plaza spilled the pandemic beans to Stephen Colbert.
December 7, 2020 4:00 p.m. EST
December 9, 2020 11:00 p.m. EST
TriStar Pictures TriStar Pictures

Aubrey Plaza has spilled the pandemic beans about her time on the set of everyone’s new favourite holiday film, Happiest Season — including the news that the movie’s star, Kristen Stewart, came down with COVID-19 while the cast was shooting in Pittsburgh in February. In an interview with Late Show host Stephen Colbert, Plaza revealed that Stewart and several other crew members got sick during the very early days of the Coronavirus outbreak earlier this year.

The Parks and Rec star was on the show to talk about her latest film release, Black Bear, in which she stars opposite Canadian actor Sarah Gadon, but with the holidays being right around the corner, the conversation diverted to groundbreaking LGBTQ+ holiday rom-com Happiest Season and the topic no one can get through a chat without running into: the pandemic.

“COVID was on our set,” Plaza told Colbert. “Kristen got sick, but we didn’t know,” she added, explaining that it was the middle of winter, the cast and crew were filming long hours in freezing Pennsylvania, and when people began feeling unwell it wasn’t seen as an unusual thing.

“It was the last week of February so people were starting, it was like that zone where people were starting to talk about Coronavirus, but people were laughing about it,” she added. “No one understood how serious it was. But a bunch of people on our set got sick. I didn’t, thank god.”

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Plaza said that it wasn’t until she was returning home that she began to believe that the bug circulating around the Happiest Season set was actually COVID-19. As she was leaving the city, she made an inquiry that she still hasn’t forgotten: “I said to one of the transpo guys, ‘Do you think I should be worried about this virus thing?’ and he went, ‘It’s already here. That sh-t’s been in Pittsburgh for a long time,’” she recalled.

Thanks to the pandemic, Happiest Season ended up having its premiere at a drive-in theatre, a first for Plaza who said that the event featured a lot of appreciative car horn honking, a masked-up red carpet, and heroic efforts to put Tyra Banks’ smizing technique to use.

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