Twelve Days of Christmas: Louis McCartney & Alex Breaux

The holidays are upon us and BroadwayWorld is continuing our favorite annual tradition of celebrating the holiday season with a Twelve Days of Christmas countdown. This year we are featuring some of our favorite members of the 2025 Broadway scene to share their most cherished holiday songs, films, and performances. This year's countdown is sponsored by The Artist, streaming now on the Network.

In the twilight of the Gilded Age an eccentric, failing tycoon (Mandy Patinkin) and his brilliant wife (Janet McTeer) host an ensemble of the era's biggest celebrities including Thomas Edison, Edgar Degas and Evelyn Nesbit. The gathering soon turns deadly. The Artist also stars Danny Huston, Patti LuPone, Hank Azaria, Clark Gregg, Zachary Quinto and more. Check out the series the New York Times calls "....Operatic in its passions and power plays."

Stranger Things: The First Shadow might be all about thrills and chills, but its cast still gets warm and fuzzy during the holiday season. Two of its stars, Louis McCartney and Alex Breaux told us about two Christmas films that they can't get enough of every year.

"Oh! It's The Nightmare Before Christmas! It was always me and my brother's favorite Christmas movie growing up," Breaux told BroadwayWorld. "If I had a role that I want to play on Broadway someday, it'd be Jack Skellington in an adaptation of The Nightmare Before Christmas."

"My favorite Christmas movie is Nativity because when I was shown it, apparently this was one of my partner's favorite films that I had no idea about," added McCartney. "Just watching her face watch the film was equally as good as that film is. I could feel the love and the Christmas spirit, and being away from home, particularly when I watched it, it just felt really nice to share Christmas with somebody I just met and to feel so much love in the room."

Breaux is an actor, writer, and director of films. Since graduating from Harvard University and The Juilliard School, Breaux has acted on Broadway opposite Ewan McGregor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and David Harbour, been profiled in The New York Times and Esquire magazine detailing his work as an actor, and named a “Top Breakout Performer” by Time Out magazine. Breaux will be a series regular in the fifth and final season of “Stranger Things,” written/created by Matt and Ross Duffer (Netflix). He recently wrapped post-production on his feature directorial debut, The Reckoning — playing film festivals in 2025. Breaux worked opposite Viggo Mortensen in The Dead Don’t Hurt and is currently portraying Wild Bill Hickman in “American Primeval,” created/directed by Peter Berg (Netflix, Jan 2025). Breaux is Timothy McVeigh in “Waco: The Aftermath” (Paramount+) and the Grimm Brothers in Season 2 of “Joe Pickett” (Paramount+).

McCartney is best known for his leading role, in his stage debut, as Henry Creel in Stranger Things: The First Shadow in London's West End. He received a Tony nomination for reprising the role on Broadway. Louis got his first break when he was burnt alive by a dragon in “Games of Thrones” (credited role). He was then cast in the BBC television series “Hope Street,” as Shay, a cheeky but lovable, returning character. This was followed by the feature film Silent Roar, directed by Johnny Barrington and produced by Chris Young, where Louis was cast in the lead role as Dondo, a young surfer dealing with the grief of his father’s death. Next up was William of Orangedale, a coming-of-age comedy set in a council estate in East Belfast, for Hat Trick Productions and Channel 4. Louis is represented by Ollie Azis at Independent Talent Group.

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Twelve Days of Christmas