John Kiesewetter
Nick and Drew Lachey return to TV this week – but don’t expect to see them on tour any time soon with 98 Degrees.
After their final concert Aug. 4, the four guys resumed the lives they put on hold for their “2.0” reunion album, and the Package Tour with New Kids On The Block and Boyz II Men.
Nick Lachey, 40, started production the next day on “The Sing-Off,” NBC’s a cappella group competition returning Monday (9-11 p.m., Channel 5). The University of Kentucky’s student Acoustikats and nine other groups compete for $100,000 and a recording contract through Dec. 23.
“Everybody is busy taking care of the things they put on hold to tour,” said Drew Lachey, who stars in the new “Guess Who’s Coming To Christmas” movie Sunday (7 and 10 p.m., UP TV, Time Warner Channel 257).
“We left the door open to do another tour and album. It’s still a dream of everyone to get out and perform together. It’s a matter of making time for it, because all of us now have families,” said Drew, 37. “It was a lot of fun. It never gets old having 1,500 or 1,800 people screaming for you.”
On “Guess Who’s Coming To Christmas,” Drew plays Dax, a bad boy rock star, rehabbing his image spending Christmas with a small-town preacher’s family after the paparazzi find him passed out in his car.
Dax really isn’t all that bad, since the movie airs on the Uplifting Entertainment network, formerly the Gospel Music Channel. “It’s a very family-friend movie. We walk a very fine line. He’s a bad boy enough that you know he’s hurting people around him,” Drew said.
You can guess how it ends, even if you’ve never seen a Christmas cable TV movie. Dax is charmed by the preacher’s family, and smitten with their daughter Kelly (singer-actress MacKenzie Porter).
Drew and MacKenzie sing a duet, “You,” which they wrote during lunch breaks, “mirroring what was happening in the movie. We’d go over to the corner and work on the song,” he said.
He shot the film a year ago in Vancouver in 11 days – four days faster than Nicollette Sheridan’s “The Christmas Spirit” in Lebanon. (“Spirit” repeats 8 p.m. Wednesday on the Hallmark Channel.) “Once we started, we had to stick to the script. There wasn’t any wasting time,” he said.
While looking for his next project, Drew and wife Leah teach three days a week at their alma mater, the School for Creative & Performing Arts, and train young performers through their Lachey Arts program. They provide caroling quartets nightly for the Cincinnati Zoo’s Festival of Lights.
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