Tinsel Town: How Yorkshire became the star of new Christmas movie starring Kiefer Sutherland

In Tinsel Town, a fading Hollywood action star (Kiefer Sutherland) accidentally signs on for a Christmas pantomime in the quiet English town of Stoneford. “I’m a huge Eighties and Nineties action movie fan and I’m a huge musical theatre fan,” remarks producer Matt Williams. “And this was a script that took to extremities what I love about entertainment.”

Written by Frazer Flintham and Adam Brown, Tinsel Town centres around the very theatrical world of Christmas pantos, with Dames and Dad jokes aplenty. “It was a brilliant idea,” adds Williams. Straight away, he sent it to his regular collaborators over at Sky Originals, with whom he’d already made the 2021 festive movie Last Train To Christmas. The script was met with similar enthusiasm, and the

production began to take shape.

Needing a talented director to bring this to life, Williams contacted Chris Foggin, his collaborator on the hugely popular Bank of Dave (2023) and Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger (2025). Raised in the northeast, Foggin grew up watching pantomimes every year at the Sunderland Empire. “I’m a big fan of panto,’” he says. “I’ve seen them all. Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella. I think that they’re a good British tradition. They keep theatres alive.”

Foggin was familiar with the region, having filmed there before, and felt he needed to splice various Yorkshire towns together to create the fictitious Yorkshire own of Stoneford. “I wanted, obviously, that chocolate box kind of feel,” he says. “When Brad steps out of

the car, it had to feel really different to what he was used to, whether that be in L.A. or London. So, it took us a while to piece it together.” Thankfully, Foggin had help from Andrew Holden-Stokes, the film’s production designer, who had worked on the Burnley-set Bank of Dave films.

One of the key decisions was how to create Stoneford Theatre Royal. The principle location was the Theatre Royal Wakefield, a Victorian venue that dates back to 1894, but there were other requirements too. “We didn’t want it to feel like the Palladium,” says Holden-Stokes. “We didn’t want it to feel like a brand new, big extravaganza of a pantomime that has millions of pounds spent on it. We wanted it to feel like a local parochial theatre which is in our fictitious town of Stoneford. We didn’t want it to be all singing or dancing. We wanted it to have a tradition about it.”

Holden-Stokes’ team also had to recreate a Christmas market, but the timing of the shoot was ideal. “We were really lucky in the fact that the commercial decorators that we worked with, the people supplying all the alpine huts and everything for the Christmas market…[all that would have] just been in the warehouse at this time of year. It meant that all of that stuff was available to us.” With the market created in Knaresborough in February, it impressed the locals. “They were asking, ‘Why can’t we have one every year?’”

When it came to constructing the panto, Foggin had some help from his knowledgeable cast, especially theatre icon Maria Freidman and Jason Manford, who had just finished playing Prince Charming in a real production of Cinderella at Manchester Opera House when he came to shoot Tinsel Town. “I relied on them quite a lot in terms of ‘Are we doing the right thing?’” says Foggin. “I didn’t know little things like the baddies never come on from the left-hand side. They always come on from the right-hand side. So I was learning from them.”

Foggin also remembers the day the production got volunteers to come and sit in the Theatre Royal Wakefield, to fill it out for the moments where the camera cuts to the audience. “Jason and Asim (Chaudhry) said, ‘Shall we go out and entertain a crowd?’ Non-scripted. And they went and did a ten-minute stand up. And it was honestly hilarious. Jason would go, ‘Stoneford, there’s got to be a good-looking man in here.’ He would walk around: You sir? Have you seen any good-looking men? And it’s all this stuff that he’d learned from panto that we captured and stayed in the film.”

The key to Tinsel Town was always going to be securing the right actor to play Brad Mac. Williams and Sky decided to send the script to Kiefer Sutherland. Sutherland read the script and had exactly the reaction everyone hoped for. “It had made me laugh out loud a number of times,” he says. But it was more than just that. “As much as it made me laugh. I also found it to be quite a tender story and something that was very relatable.”

With Sutherland on board, Williams could reach out to actors and bring together what he calls “the best ensemble cast I think I’ve ever put together”. It included casting Albert, the former pantomime dame who now works behind-the-scenes at the Stoneford Theatre Royal, where the production of Cinderella will take place. They went straight to Sir Derek Jacobi, the iconic star of stage and screen most

recently seen in Ridley Scott’s Roman epic Gladiator II. Like so many, Jacobi’s first experience of the theatre was seeing pantomime, when his parents took him to the London Palladium, and he immediately fell in love with Albert. “He’s eminently likeable, even lovable,” he says. “He’s a sweet man. He’s a gentle man.”

Leading the laughs, Asim Chaudhry and Jason Manford joined as Danny and David, who play the ugly sisters Fanny and Annie.

Rebel Wilson, the Australian comedienne, whose work has ranged from starring in the Pitch Perfect series to hosting the BAFTAs plays Jill, the show’s choreographer. With Wilson deciding to take on Jill’s Yorkshire accent, that the film was set around Christmas was an added bonus. “I’d never done a Christmas movie before, but I’m a huge fan of Christmas movies like Home Alone and some of the Richard Curtis movies that have a lot of Christmas elements to them,” says Wilson. “And so I thought it would just be really cool to come to the UK and do something very, very Christmassy, because I love Christmas.”

Playing Jill’s ex-husband was Danny Dyer, the actor best known to millions for playing the character of Mick Carter on BBC soap Eastenders for a decade.

Tinsel Town may well be full of stars from around the world, but one of the biggest stars has to be Yorkshire – although the county is not the only local star.

Matilda Firth, 10, from Cleckheaton in West Yorkshire plays the lead role of Sutherland’s daughter. Articulate Agency, which is based in Shipley in West Yorkshire and has a reputation in supporting children and young acting talent, has represented Matilda since she was just three. Matilda has filmed all over the world, including Spain, Bulgaria, Prague, and New Zealand.

"Working on a Christmas movie is so magical. I felt so lucky being able to work with Kiefer and Rebel - and all the amazing cast - I learnt so much from them during my time on set. I love singing, so having the opportunity to record some songs for the movie was just amazing. Our family goes to see a pantomime every Christmas, so I loved the pantomime in this film - the set for the theatre and the costumes, especially for the pantomime dames were just amazing. Between takes, there was a really lovely atmosphere, we were doing TikTok dances and generally having a good time."

Tinsel Town is available on Sky Cinema