When Christmas Was Young

A non-flop propelled her career of music and more

Fresh from a classy British drama school, Karen David jumped into her first professional job.
It seemed like an odd one at the time – a musical that simply patched together pop hits.
“I remember all my classmates just saying, ‘You’re going to ruin your whole career before it even starts …. This is going to be the biggest flop and you’ve just done Chekhov and Ibsen and Shakespeare at the Globe,’” David recalled in a press conference for her new movie (shown here), “When Christmas Was Young.”
The show, “Mamma Mia,” didn’t flop. It’s still in London, 23 years later; it did 14 years on Broadway, has been seen by 65 million people worldwide and been spurred two movies. And David’s career didn’t flop, either; she stars in “When Christmas Was Young,” at 8:30 p.m. Sunday (but 8 p.m. on the West Coast) on CBS. Read more…