ET’s Nischelle Turner Celebrates 50th Birthday By Starring in First Movie (Exclusive)

Nischelle Turner has gifted herself something she’ll never forget.

The Emmy-winning Entertainment Tonight host, 50, known for covering celebrity news on the daily show alongside friend and co-host Kevin Frazier, has flipped the script and is taking on a whole new role.

“I’m completely stepping out of my comfort zone to do something that I’ve never done before,” Turner tells PEOPLE of starring in Lifetime’s new holiday movie A Runaway Bride for Christmas, premiering Dec. 12. “I’m trying to give myself grace, but I’m also one of those perfectionists where I’m like, ‘What are you doing?'”

The new venture comes after the host celebrated her milestone 50th birthday this year. After an executive at A&E network saw her host an awards gala earlier this year, “he came up to me and he said, ‘Do you do scripted?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not an actor, I’m a journalist.’ And he was like, ‘Well, I think you can.'”

When Turner looked over some scripts she decided to lean in and level up. “They said you can choose whatever role you want and the weirdo overachiever in me said, ‘How about I just be the lead?'”

She had good reason to swing for the fences. “I turned 50 this year, so I’ve really been telling myself happy birthday. I said to myself, ‘You know what? I’m going to do things this year that I’ve never done before, and I’m going to lean into those things and I’m going to do them purposefully and intentionally.'”

Turner treated herself to her first trip to Paris, took up dance classes and now, “I’m an ingenue at 50! My first movie, to be the lead in it, that was pretty wild. We shot it in 11 days and when we were done, that next morning I woke up and I was like, ‘holy s—. I just shot a movie!'”

In the film she plays a woman who leaves her big city fiancé on their wedding day and returns to her hometown where family and one attractive long lost friend played by Mark Ghanimé help her pick up the pieces.

Turner admits she wasn’t fully prepared for the level of intimacy required for the role.

“Mark is a really great guy and a good actor,” she says of her love interest in the film. “We had to kiss, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know how to kiss [on camera]’. And he was laughing. So I’m like, ‘What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to turn my head?'”

Call it on the job training: “When we did it, I didn’t know if he was going to do a movie kiss or a regular kiss. And it was like ‘Oh, we really kissing.’ We had to do it like 15 times!”

When she let her co-host in on the news of the film, he had jokes. “Kevin is like a big brother to me,” she says of Frazier. “He was like, ‘Oh, you’re a run away bride in this movie, and you do have trouble keeping a relationship.’ He’a teaser.”

In real life Turner is still dating with hopes of finding the one. “Listen. I don’t hide anything. I am in these single girl streets and there is pee in the pool! It’s hard out here. It’s very hard. And I’m at an age now, to be perfectly honest, to where I’m looking for a life partner and I don’t know that that needs to end in marriage.”

While she refuses to go on “the apps” she has been thinking of casting a wider net recently. “I have not really dated interracially. I prefer Black men but I also know that I need to be open.”

One thing she knows not to do is let her pal Frazier play matchmaker. “Kevin, set me up with a guy once. The worst ever. No, Kevin Frazier is not allowed to set me up with anybody else.”

More than anything, she’s exciting about all the risks she’s able to take these days. “It’s so interesting that now being 50, doors are opening up in ways that before for women, we felt like we were being put out to pasture. But I became the host of Entertainment Tonight at 46! It’s different now.”

A Runaway Bride for Christmas premieres Dec. 12 at 8/7c on Lifetime.