Richard Curtis on why he wrote a sequel to Four Weddings and a Funeral
This Thursday, NBC will host the Red Nose Day Special, the network’s annual night of programming which raises money to change and save the lives of children in need in the U.S. as well as some of the most underserved communities around the world.
This year’s lineup includes performances by Blake Shelton and Kelly Clarkson while Kate McKinnon and future NBC late-night host Lilly Singh will appear in sketches. But, for romantic-comedy fans, the evening’s most anticipated element is the short film One Nose Day and a Wedding, a sequel to the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral, which reunites almost all of the cast, including Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Rowan Atkinson. Like the classic rom-com, One Red Nose Day and a Wedding is directed by Mike Newell and written by Richard Curtis. When EW visited the set of the sequel last year, Curtis explained that it was his partner and script editor Emma Freud who persuaded him to revisit the characters all these years later.
“I think it was my Emma who suddenly said, ‘Do you think we could do it?'” he said. “I said, ‘No.’ And then I thought, Oh, look, we probably could do a wedding, and it is 25 years, which means there would be a child. Because there’s been speculation: Is Hugh finally marrying Andie? Or, Is Andie dead and is he marrying Kristin? I suddenly had this idea that, no actually, it is a whole generation on, and that actually might be quite touching and quite sweet. So, we thought we’d give it a go. I mean, I wouldn’t have [done] it for anything except for Red Nose Day.”
Prior to the two-day shoot, Curtis and Freud invited the cast round to their London house for dinner.
“The most touching thing was the way that the people who had got married to each other in the film felt they ought to sit next to each other,” said Curtis. “That was very sweet. They fell back into their natural couples.”
What did the couple feed them?
“Chili,” said Curtis. “Yeah, we didn’t work too hard. What, you thought it would have to be very English? To which you are right! We should have gone for roast chicken or parsnip or grouse or something. No, it was alright.”
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