Jennifer Love Hewitt remembers her mother in new book and Lifetime movie

Jennifer Love Hewitt opens up for the first time about her close relationship with her mother in a new book Inherit magic — the title, which she says describes how she has carried on her mother, Patricia Mae’s, legacy of making everyone around her feel special.

“I’d be on a very successful TV show, we’d go into a restaurant and people couldn’t care less about me; it was my mother,” Hewitt said in an interview with 9-1-1 co-star Bryan Safi at a celebration of the upcoming book and Lifetime movie The holiday junkie at Zibby’s Bookshop in Los Angeles. “They wanted to know who was the woman that I stood next to because she was light, she was joy. She made friends with everyone, there was no stranger in the world to her at all.”

Hewitt went on to share an example of how her mother made even the most unusual days feel magical at home. “If I was having a broken heart or a bad day, she would put up Christmas lights because she thought that kind of lifted the mood,” she said, laughing at the memory. “If I had bad cramps, there was light.”

Patricia Mae died of complications from cancer on June 12, 2012, at the age of 67. The media, Hewitt says, heard the news before she did.

“The part that I didn’t write in the book is that the press actually knew my mother had passed before I did,” said Hewitt, who was in Monaco at the time for the 52nd Monte Carlo TV Festival. “The flight time for me to come back was so long. It was like a 10-and-a-half-hour flight, so when I arrived, everyone knew, and it was such a weird thing for me. But later, I was like that everyone has always known everything about my life before. Even brides, people have been like, “He already cheated on you.” Really, people? Like, why didn’t you tell me?”

Twelve years later, Hewitt says she finally feels ready to share her memories of her mother and the ways in which she now makes life magical for her family as a mother through her book, out on December 10. had never said so much about my mother after she passed away, because I didn’t have the words,” she said The Hollywood Reporter. “I just didn’t know what to say and it felt like the right time to talk about her and kind of say, ‘This is what she left behind.'”

Some of that experience will also translate on screen to The Holiday junkiewhich Hewitt directed, executive produced and stars in with her husband Brian Hallisay. Their three children also make a cameo in the film, which opens on December 14.

“I really wanted a movie for everyone,” Hewitt explained of the story of a woman facing her first Christmas without her mother, who potentially finds love with a man who unwittingly harbors his own grief. “I wanted a film for people who were happy and for people who felt sad. I wanted both sides to be seen during the holidays, because that’s how it is. As much as I’m a holiday junkie, I find Christmas really hard without my mom. I always have a moment. And I think that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re in the festive AF spirit, you just have this hole in your heart. and it happens.”

On the set of the film – which features a special guest star appearance from Kristin Chenoweth, who was close friends with Hewitt’s mother – a tribute was broadcast to honor the memories of those the cast and crew lost.

“We had a board where everyone would bring pictures of their loved ones who had passed, and every day we dedicated the film to all of them,” Hewitt said. “I really didn’t want it to feel like it was just my experience. I wanted it to be everyone’s. So it was really nice because the crew and everyone at the end said, ‘I felt like I really honored my father’ or ‘I felt like I really honored my grandmother’ or ‘I felt like they were here with us.’ It felt like it was a journey for everyone and I think we all felt , that we let it go when it was finished, and it was beautiful that way.”

Sharing a final memory of her mother, Hewitt recalled how every time she left the house to shoot, no matter the time of day or night, her mother would ask to hold her hand.

“I didn’t ask her until I was probably in my very late 20s, I was like, ‘Why are we holding hands? What’s this about?’ Because I didn’t get it right. And she said, ‘I want you to take my love and support with you during the day. I want you to feel it and know that I’m with you. ‘ And I miss that,” Hewitt said. “That’s what I miss the most. I wish I had her hand.”