By Paul Salfen AMFM Magazine Exclusive
The snow was falling in fat, lazy flakes outside the ski lodge when Shannon Thornton stepped onto her balcony for the first time. She had a room with a balcony. In Colorado. At a resort that looked like someone had shaken a snow globe and forgotten to stop. Below her, an ice-skating rink glittered under strings of golden lights, and the mountains rose up like a painting she could walk into.
“I just stood there,” she says now, laughing at the memory, “thinking, I have a balcony. I have a balcony and a skating rink and I’m in a Tyler Perry movie. This is not a drill.”
That moment—equal parts wonder and disbelief—became the heartbeat of Finding Joy, the new holiday rom-com that feels less like a film and more like a warm hug from a friend you didn’t know you needed. And Shannon Thornton? She’s the friend doing the hugging.
Let’s rewind.
Joy Brooks is a New York fashion designer with a closet full of talent and a boss who treats her like a human Post-it note. Her love life? A series of almosts and not-quites. So when her crush Colton (played by the unfairly charming Aaron O’Connell) mentions a holiday trip to Colorado, Joy does what any self-respecting rom-com heroine would do: she follows him.
With her ride-or-die besties Ashley (Brittany S. Hall) and Littia (Inayah) cheering her on via group chat, Joy boards a plane, visions of mistletoe and maybe-kisses dancing in her head.
Then the universe laughs.
A bombshell revelation. A blizzard. A canceled flight. Suddenly, Joy is stranded in a tiny mountain town with nothing but her luggage, her wounded pride, and a growing suspicion that love might not be waiting at the end of a ski lift.
Enter Ridge.
Played by Tosin Morohunfola with the kind of quiet steadiness that makes you believe in good men again, Ridge is a local who finds Joy at her lowest—snow-soaked, ego-bruised, and dangerously close to giving up. He doesn’t fix her. He doesn’t swoop in with grand gestures. He just… sees her. And in the glow of twinkling lights and shared hot chocolate, Joy starts to remember who she was before the world taught her to play small.
Back in real life, Shannon Thornton knows a thing or two about playing small—and refusing to.
“I’ve wanted this since I was a kid,” she says, curled up in a hotel chair in Atlanta, fresh off a day of filming. “Seventh grade. Cinderella. I was an evil stepsister—full cackle, full commitment. The second the audience laughed, I was hooked. I thought, I want to do this forever.”
Forever took work. Years of classes. A coach who told her, “You are the descendant of magicians. The universe is inside you.” A leap of faith on P-Valley, where she played a character so layered, so alive, that casting directors started seeing her—not just the roles she could fill.
Then came the call from Tyler Perry.
“I was on the phone with him,” she says, eyes wide like she still can’t believe it. “Tyler Perry. Talking about Joy. About acting. About fear and freedom. I hung up and just… floated.”
On set, the magic wasn’t just in the script.
“We were kids in a candy store,” Shannon remembers. “Days off? We’d bundle up and explore. One night we found this little dive bar with a mechanical bull. Brittany tried it. Inayah filmed it. I laughed so hard I cried. We weren’t just coworkers—we were friends.”
That joy bleeds into every frame. You feel it when Joy and Ridge share their first real conversation over burnt marshmallows. You feel it when the whole cast piles into a golf cart and races through the snow like teenagers. You feel it when Shannon, in character, lets her guard down and smiles—like she’s remembering something she forgot she knew.
So what happens when a woman who’s been overlooked, underestimated, and snowed-in finally chooses herself?
Watch Finding Joy and find out.
But here’s a spoiler Shannon doesn’t mind giving: “I want this to be your Home Alone. Your Grinch. The movie you put on when the world’s too loud and you just need to believe again. Grab your people. Make the cocoa. Let yourself feel the fuzzy stuff.”
The snow was falling in fat, lazy flakes outside the ski lodge when Shannon Thornton stepped onto her balcony for the first time. She had a room with a balcony. In Colorado. At a resort that looked like someone had shaken a snow globe and forgotten to stop. Below her, an ice-skating rink glittered under strings of golden lights, and the mountains rose up like a painting she could walk into.
“I have a balcony,” she says now, laughing at the memory. “I’m like, oh my gosh. And then there’s like a skating rink right beneath me. And I was like, oh, wow, this is really cool. And then everything just looks like a picture. Like it looks like you can walk out and touch it like a backdrop. It’s really gorgeous.”
That moment became the heartbeat of Finding Joy, Tyler Perry’s new holiday rom-com. Shannon stars as Joy, a New York fashion designer whose talents are overshadowed by her boss and whose love life has been a string of almosts. Encouraged by her friends, Joy follows her crush to Colorado—only to face a shocking revelation, a snowstorm, and a chance encounter with a man named Ridge that changes everything.
On set, the joy was real.
“We had a blast,” Shannon says. “We split our time between Colorado and Atlanta. And it was gorgeous. And our days off, we would just explore—so much fun.”
The cast clicked instantly. “We all got to know each other throughout filming,” she recalls. “Some people I met before we started, so we had kind of built a rapport by the time we got onto the set. And everybody’s so silly and funny and we all just—we were just laughing the whole time. So a lot of fun.”
Shannon’s journey to this moment started long before the snow.
“I’ve wanted to act since I was a kid,” she says. “Maybe it was when I got on stage in the seventh grade and did a play like Cinderella. I was one of the evil stepsisters and I would get the immediate crowd response, and it just gave me such a high. And I was like, I think I can do this forever. I can’t see myself doing anything else.”
Her advice to aspiring actors? “Train and find a great acting coach. Really study and watch great movies and read good plays. Start reading plays right away and all different kinds of works of fiction to expand your imagination. As an actor you need a vivid imagination for sure.”
She carries a mantra from her coach: “You are the descendants of magicians… acting is just a very, very ancient, sacred art, and you have the universe inside of you. So whenever I feel self-doubt or stuck creatively, I remind myself I have the universe inside me and I can pull from it at any point.”
Her “Hail Mary” moment came with P-Valley. “There’s this amazing, incredible Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Katori Hall, who adapted this play into a TV series. It’s already intimidating… and then you have this big responsibility of playing this character. I just allowed myself to be free and to just play and to trust my instincts and say, If I’m going to do this, I’m going to go all the way and I’m just going to go for it.”
She brought that same fearlessness to Finding Joy. “This character, who is a completely different person from a completely different walk of life, so that allowed me to be free and play here.”
Working with Tyler Perry was a dream. “Having a private conversation with him on the phone was really nice and really beautiful,” she says. “I was like, wow, this is what is life right now. This is so cool.”
Seeing herself on a billboard on Sunset Boulevard? “It still doesn’t feel real to me… I can’t believe it. It’s really amazing and so cool.”
What does she hope audiences take away?
“I hope that people add this to their holiday movie collection,” she says. “When they just their go-tos, and I hope they watch it with their families and just laugh and enjoy each other and feel all the good fuzzy things that you feel watching a holiday movie.”
Her own watch list? “Home Alone for sure. The Grinch—oh my gosh, Charlie Brown Christmas. Just all the classic older films.”
Next up: “Season three of P-Valley on Starz… I am extremely excited about that. I can’t wait for everybody to see what we’ve done.” And one more project she can’t name yet—“coming out very soon.”
What will stay with her from Finding Joy?
“The bond that I created with the cast,” she says. “We just got along so well and we just so perfectly gelled together… They made it so much fun for me because I was so nervous. It was just a very loving set. And everybody from the cast to the crew to just everybody on set was just so pleasant and kind. So that’s something that will stick with me for sure.”
Finding Joy is in theaters and streaming this holiday season. As Shannon says, “Something that we need right now… just a moment of levity and something really light and fun and sweet.”
Grab your people. Make the cocoa. Let the snow fall.
Joy is waiting.
Finding Joy isn’t just a movie. It’s a reminder: sometimes the best love stories aren’t about finding someone else. They’re about finding your way back to you.
And if you’re lucky? You’ll have a balcony, a blizzard, and a little holiday magic to help you get there.
Finding Joy is in theaters and streaming this holiday season. Bring tissues. Bring laughter. Bring joy.
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