‘A very poor idea’: Julia Roberts rejected Richard Curtis’s proposed Notting Hill divorce sequel

The writer and director Richard Curtis has revealed that he had been planning a follow-up to romcom hit Notting Hill in which the lead characters split up.

Speaking to IndieWire to promote forthcoming animation That Christmas, Curtis – who has previously overseen short spin-offs of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually in aid of Comic Relief – said he had envisioned a similar “mini sequel” to Notting Hill.

The 1999 romcom starred Julia Roberts as a superstar actor and Hugh Grant as the bumbling bookshop owner with whom she falls in love. The ending shows that the pair have got married and are expecting a child.

“I tried doing one with Notting Hill,” said Curtis, “where they were going to get divorced.”

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The project was halted by Roberts, he added, who “thought that was a very poor idea”.

In 2020, during a Q&A for HBO show The Undoing, Grant suggested a similar idea, saying: “I would like to do a sequel to one of my own romantic comedies that shows what happened after those films ended. Really, to prove the terrible lie that they all were, that it was a happy ending.”

The actor specifically cited Notting Hill in his proposal, adding: “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 for ever. I’d love to do that film.”

Grant, who is currently promoting horror film Heretic and will be return as the dastardly Daniel Cleaver in next year’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, recently told Vanity Fair that he thinks his character in Notting Hill is “despicable”.

“Whenever I’m flicking the channels at home after a few drinks and this comes up, I just think, ‘Why doesn’t my character have any balls?’” Grant said.

“There’s a scene in this film where she’s in my house and the paps come to the front door and ring the bell and I think I just let her go past me and open the door. That’s awful. I’ve never had a girlfriend, or indeed now wife, who hasn’t said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you stop her? What’s wrong with you?’ And I don’t really have an answer to that – it’s how it was written. And I think he’s despicable, really.”