Molly Ringwald Says She Should Have Kept Working With John Hughes After ‘Pretty in Pink’: ‘I Got Typecast Anyway!’

Molly Ringwald — the beloved actress who rose to fame in the 1980s working on a trio of John Hughes-penned features (“Sixteen Candles” in 1984, “The Breakfast Club” in 1985 and “Pretty in Pink” in 1986) — recently reflected on her time working with the storied filmmaker and why she turned him down for a fourth project, 1987’s “Some Kind of Wonderful.”

The actress, now 55, said that in hindsight, she should have said yes to the movie, noting that she turned it down in hopes of diversifying her résumé and not being put in a box.

“I got typecast anyway,” she said, “so I should’ve just kept working with him.”

Speaking on NPR’s “Fresh Air” on Monday with host Tonya Mosley, Ringwald was asked about her penchant for working with repeat-collaborators like Hughes and TV super-producer Ryan Murphy, who cast her in Netflix’s “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” in 2022 and in this year’s true-story Hulu drama, “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.” (Ringwald costars in the latter as Truman Capote confidante and ex-wife to Johnny Carson, Joanne Carson.)

“I really love working with the same people as long as I like the people, as long as they’re good and if I have a positive experience,” Ringwald shared. “I mean, I stopped working with John [Hughes] after the three movies that I did with him. I was supposed to do one more and then it didn’t end up happening.”

That’s when she confirmed that she was asked to star in Hughes’ “Some Kind of Wonderful,” which would have also reunited her with “Pretty in Pink” director Howard Deutch.

“He asked me to do it, but I didn’t. Because at that point I was really worried about people never seeing me in another project,” she explained. “So that was my feeling, was that I had to work with somebody else because I was going to get typecast. But you know what? I got typecast anyway, so I should’ve just kept working with him.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Ringwald also reflected on watching “The Breakfast Club” with her children — most recently her 14-year-old twins — and, in Mosley’s words, forever being seen as a teenager “for a certain generation of people.”

“There’s been times where I’ve been really frustrated by that,” Ringwald admitted. “I feel like people always think that I’m younger than I am or older than I am. Older just because I’ve been around for so long. And I also started really young.

“I’m the same age as a lot of people that became famous in the ’90s, but they’ll think that I’m older because I was famous in the ’80s. So I feel like those films are always, you know, they’re iconic, and they’re special. I don’t like to use the word ‘iconic’ because I feel like it’s overused, but they really are. Those films are really iconic.”

Listen to Ringwald’s full “Fresh Air” interview here.

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