Last spring, when Ezra Moreland, 31, a former Navy swimmer from Wichita, Kansas, applied for a new reality TV competition, he knew only that the production was family oriented.
He had been busy modeling — flying to Denver for a clothing company and to Costa Rica for a commercial.
When the secret project was revealed to be a Hallmark+ reality show in which 10 good-natured hunks vie to win the title of “Mr. Christmas” and a starring role in a Hallmark holiday movie, the aspiring actor was ecstatic.
“I was 110 percent in,” said Mr. Moreland, who now lives in Los Angeles and is as earnest as Christmas Day.
The show, “Finding Mr. Christmas,” filmed this summer outside Park City, Utah, involved festive face-offs between contestants: Unraveling tangled Christmas lights, cutting down Christmas trees and decorating ugly Christmas sweaters among them.
To test their star quality, Mr. Moreland and his competitors posed for photo shoots and acted-out scenes with Hallmark movie regulars while being coached by the actors and network mainstays including Jonathan Bennett, the host and a creator of “Finding Mr. Christmas,” and Melissa Peterman, its lead judge. The contestants became fast friends as they drank lots of hot cocoa.
