'How The Gringo Stole Christmas' Director Reveals 'Greatest Surprise' Working With George Lopez (Exclusive)

Iconic stand-up comedian George Lopez is starring in a new movie, How the Gringo Stole Christmas, about a Mexican father struggling to come to terms with his daughter's new Caucasian boyfriend. The movie is directed by Angel Gracia (From Nada to Prade), from a script by Ezequiel Martinez Jr. (A Gunman's Curse). Recently, PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Gracia about the movie, and he shared what the "greatest surprise" was that he found while working with Lopez.

Speaking to Lopez's ability to improvise, Gracia explained, "When you have George Lopez, you can't avoid it and you want to embrace it and welcome it, right? So it's like, 'OK, this is the line, this is what we got to do....' And then so you have a good base to start with and now it's like, 'Say whatever you want at the end of each line and let's do one for you.'" Gracia added, "Now that I had the luxury of 20 lines, right? Everything you had to do in about three, four takes and move on. It's still a very small movie shot in 15 days. But if you encourage the actors to be ready with their lines as written and then with the bits of improvisation, every time he finished the scene or at the backend of a line, he will say something like that."

While there is no doubt that How the Gringo Stole Christmas is a holiday comedy, it has some very emotional moments as well, with maybe the most sentimental coming near the end of the film as Lopez's character, Bennie, is opening up about his childhood and how hard his father had to work in order to make Christmas special for their family. "That was one of my favorite moments," Gracia confessed. "A little scene, a couple of actors on the set, and stress, pressure, little time, always running behind, got to get this done quickly, but this is a precious moment. We must make it work."

"So you give yourself the extra time to go there," he continued. "But with someone like George and Mariana [Treviño] and Emily [Tosta] in those things, you don't need that preparation that time. They can't prepare. They're ready. They're bringing their own emotions into it."

"Comedy a lot of times comes from pain," Gracia went on to note, "and George is a guy who had to work really hard to get where he's at. I'm sure he was drawing, I didn't ask him from personal experience because the emotion was right on his fingertips, right? It was like, 'Action.' He got it right there. He had us all in tears while shooting and then OK, we got to do something a little different for take two."

Gracia finally shared, "I didn't want to push him do another take like that. He said, "No, no problem." as if it was a regular conversation, a regular performance. Then roll camera, same thing, just pitch perfect. So that was the greatest surprise. I expected him to be a great comedian. I just didn't know how good an actor he really was until we did that scene." How the Gringo Stole Christmas is now available on digital and on demand.