Neal Bledsoe won’t have another Christmas at the Drive-In with Danica McKellar on Great American Family. The actor recently announced his decision to leave the cable channel over comments made by Candace Cameron Bure, its chief creative officer, and Bill Abbott, its chief executive. But McKellar, his costar in this year’s Christmas at the Drive-In, thinks he got Bure’s words wrong.
“Neal is a wonderful person. He’s such a great actor, and I have enjoyed working with him so much. He and I both share our love and support of [the] LGBT community, for sure,” McKellar told Fox News Digital on Saturday, December 10. “You know, I don’t agree with his interpretation of her comments. I just didn’t see them the same way.”
The comments in question came from Bure’s recent Wall Street Journal interview, in which she said that she didn’t expect Great American Family to feature same-sex couples as the leads of holiday movies. “I think that Great American Family will keep traditional marriage at the core,” the Full House alum added.
In that same profile, Abbott gave his thoughts on the topic, saying, “It’s certainly the year 2022, so we’re aware of the trends. There’s no whiteboard that says, ‘Yes, this’ or ‘No, we’ll never go here.’”
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As a result, Bledsoe, who also appeared with McKellar in the 2021 Great American Family movie The Winter Palace, told Variety last week that he’s stepping away from the channel. “I hope GAF will change, but until everyone can be represented in their films with pride, my choice is clear. I look forward to working with creators who put no limits on the stories we tell and follow through on their message of values with open arms,” he said in part. “My support for the LGBTQIA+ community is unconditional — nothing is worth my silence or their ability to live and love freely in a world that we are lucky enough to share with them. … The recent comments made by leadership at Great American Family are hurtful, wrong, and reflect an ideology that prioritizes judgment over love.”
On Saturday, however, McKellar defended Bure’s comments. “When she was talking about the portrayal of heterosexual couples in the movies, she started the sentence with ‘I think,’ which is not definitive, and she ended it with ‘at its core,’ which doesn’t mean exclusively,” the Wonder Years alum said. “But I love [Bledsoe] to death and wish him well.”
