By Rubin E. Grant
Savannah Lathem has experienced her share of adversity, even though she’s only 25.
But the past few months, things have been on the upswing for the young actress who is a Hoover native now living in McCalla.
She got married in August, and now she’s starring in a Christmas movie called “A Law for Christmas.”
The premiere will be Nov. 21 at the Birmingham Premiere LUX Ciné GSX & Pizza Pub on Lakeshore Parkway. It also will be premiered at theaters in Nashville and Tampa. The movie will be shown in select theaters in several states throughout the country.
For Lathem, the movie represents somewhat of a comeback. In 2019, she contracted Lyme disease and was exposed to mold. She spent six months in the hospital, hooked up to an IV receiving an antibiotic.
“It was horrible,” Lathem said. “I was sick for a long time. I couldn’t do anything. So, this is like my comeback role. I hadn’t acted for several years.”
Lathem stars as Gloria Winters, an aspiring politician who wants to be in Washington, D.C., but lands a cabinet position as secretary of agriculture and has to go to the countryside.
“The only thing she really valued was a bigger paycheck and the happy life it could buy,” Lathem said.
But once Gloria travels to a small farming community for work, her life is transformed when she encounters a little girl and learns the value of Christmas. Her character also falls in love with her co-star, a character played by Chase Giacomo.
“The thing I like the most about playing the lead role of Gloria Winters is that her character transitions in so many ways throughout the film,” Lathem said. “She evolves from being very self-centered and business driven with a business-driven work ethic to realizing the true values of life in family and community.”
The film is an original of Wesely Bros., an independent film company operated by brothers Simon and Joshua Wesely. They also released a movie called “2025” in 2021. They will join Lathem and Giacomo on Fox 6’s “Good Day Alabama” on the morning of the Birmingham premiere to discuss the movie.
Unexpected Role
Lathem didn’t expect to land the lead role.
“I never auditioned for it,” she said. “I auditioned for one of the supporting roles, not the lead. But they called me back about two weeks later after my audition and told me they wanted me to play the lead.”
That presented somewhat of a problem. She was a newlywed and wasn’t sure whether her husband, Matthew Blaes, would be OK with her being gone for an extended time. The couple was married Aug. 5 at the Burns Bluff at High Falls Wedding and Event Venue in Albertville.
“We were going to be filming all of September,” Lathem said. “I didn’t know if that would work since I had just gotten married. I asked Matthew if he was going to be OK with me going off to film a movie. He told me he never wanted to be the one to get in the way of me fulfilling my dreams, and I would be the same way with him.
“We were filming in Nashville, which wasn’t that far away, so he told me to go for it.”
As the lead actress, Lathem had to memorize the entire script, all 124 pages.
“It’s so different,” Lathem said. “I’ve always wanted to do a Christmas movie. ‘A Law for Christmas’ is a family fun Christmas film full of comedy, drama and romance combined. The thing I like most about ‘A Law for Christmas’ is that it is a faith-based Christmas film that centers around modern everyday life resolving conflicts with Christ at the center.”
Child Actor
The youngest of three siblings, Lathem has been acting since she was a child. She was homeschooled and took online classes in Los Angeles and Birmingham from the fourth grade until graduating high school.
“I always knew I wanted to be an actress,” she said. “I loved watching TV and I always knew I would be on TV.”
Lathem’s first television role came in 2009, when she was 10 and appeared as a guest star on ABC’s “Lost.” She played young Rachel Carlson, for which she received a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Performance in a Guest Star role.
She was in Los Angeles at the time, but the episode was filmed in Hawaii.
It was a case of art mimicking real life.
Lathem’s character played the role of a child whose mother had cancer. Lathem’s real-life mother, Gina Lathem, had just gone through breast cancer treatments then was diagnosed with another rare cancer and given only a year to live.
Gina Lathem decided to go be with her daughter in Los Angeles and then accompanied her to Hawaii for the filming. In “Lost,” Lathem’s character’s mother survives her battle with cancer, and Gina Lathem took that as a sign.
“She said, God’s going to cure me,” Savannah Lathem recalled. “After we flew back, she had a CT scan and a CAT scan and the cancer was gone. The doctor said, ‘What did you do.’ And she said, ‘It was the Lord.’”
Savannah Lathem made her feature film debut in 2013 in “California Solo” alongside Robert Carlyle at the Sundance Film Festival. The role earned her a Young Artist Award for Best Supporting Role.
Not limited to acting, Lathem is a skilled singer, songwriter, dancer and classically trained pianist. In 2019, she was in the Lionsgate biographical western “Hell on the Border,” which includes a song she wrote and performed called “Gonna Make a Change,” based on the life of Bass Reeves, who was the first African American U.S. marshal.
Lathem also has made a number of TV appearances, including on the TNT series “Major Crimes,” “I Didn’t Do It” on the Disney Channel, and “Criminal Minds.” In 2016, she won Young Entertainer Award for Best Actress in a guest starring role on “Major Crimes” in the episode “A Rose Is a Rose.” She won Best Actress at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival for her lead role in the independent feature film “The Guest House.”
TikTok Star
Lathem, who has a psychology degree from Liberty University, admits she’s addicted to social media, especially TikTok, where she has more than 150,000 followers. In fact, that’s how she met her husband.
She and Blaes had both posted popular content on the app. In 2020, while she was living in Atlanta and he was living in Mobile, they began messaging each other about collaborating. They discovered they were both from Birmingham, and in early 2022 they each decided to move back to Birmingham without either one knowing.
Once they discovered they lived close to one another, they decided to meet in person and sparks began to fly. Exactly one year later, Blaes proposed.
“We just found out that we had so much in common,” Lathem said.
The couple lives in McCalla. Blaes, an avid photographer, works as a car salesman for Hendrick Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM in Hoover.
When she’s not acting, Lathem works with her parents, Don and Gina Lathem, at Champion Properties, a residential real estate investment and property management firm in Helena.
“My whole family is entrepreneurs,” Lathem said. “But I love acting and I love music.”
