Proving a point. Hugh Grant would appear in a Notting Hill sequel with former costar Julia Roberts, but his casting would come with a catch.
In a Q&A session for his new HBO miniseries, The Undoing, Grant joked about what it would take for him to agree to revisit the late ‘90s film.
“I would like to do a sequel to one of my own romantic comedies that shows what happened after those films ended,” the British actor, 60, said via HBO’s Twitter page on Sunday, October 25. “Really, to prove the terrible lie that they all were, that it was a happy ending.”
The Gentleman star continued, “I’d like to do me and Julia and the hideous divorce that’s ensued with really expensive lawyers, children involved in [a] tug of love, floods of tears. Psychologically scarred forever. I’d love to do that film.”
Grant and Roberts, 52, starred in Notting Hill in 1999. The flick followed London bookstore owner William Thacker (Grant) and his love story with Anna Scott (Roberts), a famous movie star who he met when she walked into his store.
Over the course of his decades-long career, the Golden Globe winner has appeared in several romantic comedies including Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994, Bridget Jones’s Diary in 2001 and Music and Lyrics in 2007. After years of taking on more light-hearted roles, Grant recently admitted that he is enjoying playing bad guys for a change. (He plays Jonathan Sachs, who is accused of murder, in The Undoing alongside Nicole Kidman.)
“[It is] such a relief. I can’t tell you,” he told reporters at a Television Critics Association press tour in January, per TV Guide. “Richard Curtis, who wrote all of those romantic comedies did a lot of — it always used to make him laugh that people thought I was that nice, public, Englishman, because he knew that exactly the reverse was true. It’s very nice to be closer to home.”
In 2016, Grant’s charming playboy character Daniel Cleaver was noticeably absent from the third Bridget Jones’s Diary film. At the time, he spoke out about why he ultimately passed on joining the third film, where Patrick Dempsey took his place in a new role.
“When they came to me a few years ago, they had a good central premise, but I didn’t think the script completely worked,” the Florence Foster Jenkins actor told Bustle at the time. “So, I worked with them on it for some time, almost a year, I think, and I could never make the second half of the film work, as far as I was concerned, especially for my character. So, in the end, we sort of ran out of time, and I said, ‘I think you should make it with someone else.’”
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