ATLANTA — Atlanta actress Charity Jordan was hankering for bigger roles, tired of auditioning for minor characters like the supportive best friend.

“I wanted to make a path to play the roles I wanted,” she said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I wanted to play a leading lady and a comedic role. I also wanted to celebrate the friendships I have. So I wrote it all myself.”

The result: an ensemble Christmas comedy she self-funded with her husband, Justin Jordan, called “Vera’s Holiday Flop,” which she sold to BET+ this year. It’s now available on the streaming service.

Jordan plays Vera, who hosts a small high school reunion with old friends that goes comedically sideways very quickly.

“I absolutely love holidays,” Jordan said. “If I went to heaven, it’d be a holiday every day. But I especially love the spirit of Christmas.”

She tapped her network of friends to help make the movie a reality. Her cast includes Terri J. Vaughn (the recent Netflix comedy “Miss Governor”), Saycon Sengbloh (“The Wonder Years” reboot), comic Tyler Chronicles (formerly of V-103), R&B singer Algebra Blessett and longtime Atlanta morning show host Arlen “Griff” Griffin (V-103, now Praise 102.5).

“I come from an amazing circle of actors and performers here in Atlanta,” Jordan said. She graduated from Tri-Cities High School in East Point, also the alma mater of Andre 3000 and Big Boi of Outkast, “Saturday Night Live” veteran Kenan Thompson, and “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star and Xscape artist Kandi Burruss. She was friends with Sengbloh in high school, along with fellow cast member Jelani Jones and head of hair and makeup Frandresha Hall.

Griffin, who plays Vaughn’s goofy husband, said working on the movie was a blast: “We knew we were doing something powerful, and every day we believed in it even more. It was cool to be part of it, man.”

Unfortunately, Jordan lacked a network of deep-pocketed financiers. “Unless you have studio backing and connections,” she said, “it makes it tough to make a quality film you really want.”

Instead, the Jordans used a sizable home equity loan to fund “Vera’s Holiday Flop.”

“We took a leap of faith on ourselves,” Charity Jordan said. (BET+ told her not to specify what the film budget was, but it was well below $1 million.)

As a mass communications and theater teacher at Martha Ellen Stilwell School of the Arts in Clayton County, Jordan wanted to set a good example: “I talk a big talk to my students: Pursue your dreams. Work hard. Take risks.”

Her husband said the film was “made on a shoestring and a prayer. We got a lot of cinematic value and scale for very little.”

One major way to save money was to shoot a bulk of the film at their own house in Tyrone, with neighbors allowing them to shoot on the block over a span of two weeks in December 2023.

“Every room became a department,” Justin Jordan said. “Our bonus room became the costume room filled with racks of clothing. Our guest room was the changing room. Our kids’ bedrooms were used for video village and the area where we downloaded footage and dailies. At night, we’d sleep anywhere we could find. My wife slept in the kids’ bunk beds.”

The Jordans happened to set up production just as the lengthy 2023 writers and actors strike ended. This enabled them to find experienced crew members and producers for a dime. People were eager to work after sitting on the sidelines for much of that year. Many crew members had worked on Marvel movies and the “Wonder Years” reboot.

“We had such a talented cinematographer in Matthew Hutchens (“The Wonder Years,” “Legacies”),” Justin Jordan said. “The crew was so seasoned. We were able to move probably twice as fast as another typical production and still maintain such a high level of quality.”

Once “Vera’s Holiday Flop” was finished, they landed a spot at the BronzeLens Film Festival and won the Audience Award.

“We got a few offers” from streamers, Justin Jordan said. “BET+ gave us the best deal. They gave us a chance when others didn’t. We are very thankful.”

Charity Jordan said she thinks BET+ is “the perfect spot for us. We were filming in a car and people were watching. Someone yelled, ‘I’ll see you on BET!’ We were laughing. What a silly thing to say! But that was divine intervention. They only picked a few films this year, and we are so grateful and proud to be part of it.”

Charity Jordan found a niche in the early 2010s with a web series called “Mommy Uncensored,” loosely based on her own life with a husband and two young kids. Aspire, a broadcast network created by Magic Johnson in 2012 targeting a Black audience, commissioned a scripted series pilot based on her web series.

Unfortunately, Aspire had limited funds and audience and didn’t end up turning “Mommy Uncensored” into a series. She instead got an agent and landed small roles in dramas “Selma,” “Respect” and “The Piano Lesson,” and comedies “The Wonder Years” and “They Cloned Tyrone.”

Griffin, who worked with Charity Jordan on an AM radio show many years ago, said he hopes “Vera’s Holiday Flop” will boost her career. “Charity is such a character,” he said. “When the world finds out who she is, there’s going to be a reckoning”

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