EXCLUSIVE: “A Christmas Story” actor Peter Billingsley talks movie’s rise ahead of Jax show

JACKSONVILLE, Fla — “A Christmas Story” actor Peter Billingsley is coming to the Florida Theatre on November 28 for “An Evening With Peter Billingsley.” The event will feature a screening of the beloved Christmas classic, followed by a Q&A event with the actor. Billingsley sat down with WOKV’s Chase Bunker ahead of the show to talk about the movie’s rise in popularity, life as a child actor, and the worst Christmas present he ever received.

When it was first released, “A Christmas Story” was not as popular as we know it is today. A reflecting Billingsley says, “It was a little disappointing, I think, for everyone because the filmmakers had worked so hard for so long to get the movie made, about 12 years it took them to get the movie made. It came out, and you know it did fine, and this was really sort of before, it came out in ‘83, so this was before the home video boom. I think people still had Betamax and VHS players, and not everyone really had a home video system, but it was growing. So it came in the theater and went, and we sort of thought, ‘Alright, well I guess that’s it.’ Like it was cool, but it wasn’t some mega hit. And then people started, what I learned was, handing VHS tapes around to each other. So the movie came out on VHS, and they would share it family to family, and say, ‘You got to see this movie,’ and it started to build a cult following. And I remember I was in a video store, we were living in Phoenix at the time, and I was just there to rent a movie, it was probably seven or eight years later. I came around the corner to get a video, and there was a cardboard cutout, a standee of me, huge, life-sized, holding the Red Ryder BB Gun in the cowboy outfit. And I marched up to the desk and I said, ‘What the hell is this?’ and he said, ‘Oh, hey, you’re that guy!’ I’m like ‘Yeah, I know, but why is this here? It’s like nine years later,’ and he’s like, ‘People are asking for it. Every year, we can’t keep it on the shelves.”

Tickets for “An Evening with Peter Billingsley” are on sale now. You can hear more about the worst Christmas gift Peter ever received in the full interview. It’s worse than the pink bunny pajamas.