When The Santa Clauses Season 2 premiered on Disney+ earlier this month, audiences noticed a couple of new characters. One of them is Kris “Kringle” Moreno, played by Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias —who plays a key role in the future of Christmas. PopCulture.com spoke to Iglesias about the series, and he said that he and Kris are not very different.
“You know what? It’s pretty much like me. Aside from changing my clothes, the personality is very similar,” Iglesias told PopCulture. “I thought that they would wind up putting a funny hat or something on me to disguise the fact that I’m a bald dude, that maybe they’d make me shave the goatee, but they let me keep everything. And it’s not like I even had to change my voice or the personality’s different at all. I mean, it’s me with overalls. I still got to be a Mexican too. It was crazy.”
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In the series, Kris runs a Santa Claus amusement park, which Iglesias described as “an old school Santa’s Village.” Kris bought a nutcracker from a merchant in Norway, but little did he know the nutcracker contained Mad Santa (Eric Stonestreet). Kris drops his magical snowglobe next to the nutcracker which frees Mad Santa who is looking to get back to the North Pole and take over as Santa Claus from Scott Calvin (Tim Allen).
Iglesias said he was happy to work with Stonestreet again. “So we were calling it our little reunion because we did get to work together a little bit on Modern Family,” Iglesias said. “But this time around, very different situation, very festive environment. I didn’t recognize him most of the time. He plays that character so well and there’s so much on him with the beard and the hat and the makeup, it’s like you don’t realize it’s him. The only time it was like normal was when we were in hair and makeup. And for me, hair and makeup is this. And for him, it’s about an hour. Super cool hanging out. We would talk about comedy. We would talk about wrestling. We’re both big wrestling fans.”
Kris does dress up as Santa but is not in line to be the next Santa Claus. However, Iglesias believes he would make a great Santa Claus for a few reasons. “In real life, I’m a very generous giving person and I think that’s very much the Santa spirit,” he said. “And I love cookies and milk. So yeah, put a beard on me, give me a hat and a bag full of goodies and I’m happy to give them out and make people happy.”
New episodes of The Santa Clauses Season 2 premiere every Wednesday on Disney+ with the finale set to stream on Dec. 6.
