For years now, an online shop called Super Yaki has been selling T-shirts and hats printed with the message “Judy Greer should’ve been the lead.” That there is a market for such merch is a testament to just how beloved an actress Greer is, despite her reputation for always playing the sidekick rather than the main character. This month, though, all those T-shirt wearers’ wishes have come true, sort of: The 49-year-old receives top billing in a movie that debuted on more than 3,000 screens last week. If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard of it, here comes the catch: Greer’s lead role is in a Christian family movie from the son of the guy who co-wrote the Left Behind books. Oh, and it’s debatable whether it’s really even a lead at all.
Greer plays a mother who takes on the challenge of directing her church’s annual Christmas play in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, directed by Dallas Jenkins, creator of Christian miniseries The Chosen, and based on the 1972 children’s book of the same name. It is not, strictly speaking, actually her first lead role. She headlined the short-lived FX comedy Married in 2014 alongside Nat Faxon, some critics called her 2022 turn in the Hulu sitcom Reboot a lead, and just last year she starred in a sci-fi film called Aporia. But that movie was small-budget and little-seen, and her most prominent roles have been, if not supporting, in ensembles (which is how Reboot would best be classified). Even if it’s not technically true, certainly the perception of Greer has long been that she’s a tried-and-true second fiddle: the best friend (as in The Wedding Planner), the deliverer of bitchy asides (as in 13 Going on 30), the wacky comic relief (as in Arrested Development), and often, the scene stealer. This is not a quality that has gone unremarked upon, even and especially by Greer herself, who often speaks about it in interviews and used it as a jumping-off point for her 2014 memoir, I Don’t Know What You Know Me From: My Life as a Co-Star.
Fans of Greer want more for the actress, and have for a long time. (Hence the T-shirts.) In 2015, Scott Meslow wrote a memorable piece for the Week giving name to what he dubbed “the Judy Greer effect”—his observation that as Greer’s career went on, she was being cast in bigger and bigger movies, like any actress might hope to be, only in smaller and smaller roles. She had moved on from playing the rom-com best friend to playing parts in some of the most high-budget projects out there, but rather than getting better, her parts had arguably diminished. That year alone, she appeared in four major movies, including Ant-Man and Jurassic World, but in each one her part was unimportant at best, thankless at worst. She was just another victim of Hollywood’s tendency to stick accomplished actresses in so-called personal roles, playing the wives and mothers of the people who actually the drive the action in the story. Such roles only scratched the surfaces of Greer’s talent, and she deserved better, Meslow wrote.
Nearly a decade later, has anything changed? Greer has stayed booked and busy, as the saying goes, and her IMDb page is a wonder to behold, with its 160-plus credits. But one could easily make the argument that she still hasn’t been given the showcase her abilities merit. The best approximation may have been the Hollywood satire Reboot, which was canceled after one season, a decision that Greer seemed particularly disappointed about when she spoke about it in a Wall Street Journal interview last year. (She has also stepped behind the camera, directing her own film in 2018.)
All of that brings us back to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which has already exceeded some box-office expectations, beating out such buzzy, less Christian alternatives as Hugh Grant’s A24 horror movie Heretic. In the movie, Greer plays Grace, a stay-at-home mother of two. Her family lives in a small town where the annual church Christmas pageant is a big deal. (It’s purposely unclear what year it is, but it’s the video game– and cellphone–free idyllic past.) This year is the pageant’s 75th anniversary, meaning it’s more important than ever, and when health problems take the usual director out of commission, Grace volunteers, even though her family and the other mothers in town don’t think she has it in her. Problems arise when the Herdmans, six siblings who are notorious around town for being badly behaved, show up at church wanting to participate in the play.
The Herdmans are the real center of the movie; Greer, then, is only the lead by default, the six of them splitting the vote, as it were. Grace spends most of the movie doing her best to civilize the Herdmans and shield them from the judgmental townfolk, and Greer radiates kindness in the role, mostly but not always succeeding in doing so without dipping into condescension. There’s little room, though, for the quirk and wit fans have come to expect of Greer’s best performances. Playing a sweet, guileless mother doesn’t give her much to chew on. She’s pleasant, and so is the movie, which has the overall feel of a cartoon Christmas special come to life. But it’s decidedly not the lead performance all those T-shirts had in mind for her. And so, Greerios, we must continue to manifest. Yes, Judy Greer should have been the lead … of a good movie.
