Almost 40 years after the beloved movie’s 1983 release, it has cemented its place as a part of American Christmas tradition, thanks to TBS’s airing of the 1940s comedy on a continuous loop every Christmas Eve since 1997.

With A Christmas Story Christmas—the long-awaited sequel—debuting November 17 on HBO Max, viewers can see an update of the story and its characters. The film marks the return of Pete Billingsley as Ralphie, Ian Petrella as Randy, Scott Schwartz as Flick, R.D. Robb as Schwartz and Zack Ward as Scut.

The gang reconnects in the 1970s, roughly 30 years after the events of the original film. While the first movie focused on Ralphie’s obsession with persuading his parents to get him a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, the sequel has Ralphie, now an adult, returning to his childhood home with his own children for Christmas.

However, one glaring change has been the recasting of matriarch Mother Parker, who was originally played by Melinda Dillon and is now played by Julie Hagerty.

In the first film, Dillon, now 83, was seen playing the patient wife and mother who protected her boys from the local bully and their father’s potential scorn.

Dillon went on to act for decades after the original film, appearing in such movies as Harry and the Hendersons (1987), The Prince of Tides (1991) and Magnolia. She is now retired.

Her last credited roles are three episodes in the short-lived TNT medical drama series Heartland in 2007 and a role in the film Reign Over Me, which featured Adam Sandler and Jada Pinkett Smith and debuted that same year.

Although Dillon has stepped away from acting, she reunited with her A Christmas Story castmates in December 2018 to celebrate the film’s 35th anniversary.

Dillon, who won acclaim for her Tony-winning Broadway debut as Honey in the original cast of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the early 1960s, has previously spoken about her approach to selecting roles.

“I want to do stories that have meaning—for me and, I hope, for other people,” she told The New York Times in 1976. “I would like to have more money, I would like to live better than I’m living, but I have principles that restrain me from doing some things. It’s my politics, if you will.”

The Alabama-raised actress has also been open about the mental health struggles she endured during her Broadway debut. “I had had the American dream—to go to New York and study with Lee Strasberg. I guess I just wasn’t prepared for it all to happen so quickly in New York,” she told the Times.

“I’m not sophisticated, hadn’t had any kind of cultural education at all, so when it came to meeting people and presenting any kind of ideas I might have to offer, I would be terrified.”

At the time of the interview, Dillon was living in a Malibu beachfront property that was once Buster Keaton’s home, but she expressed a desire to be in New York or Cape Cod instead of California. “I’m terribly homesick,” she said.

A Christmas Story Christmas is airing on HBO Max.