Notting Hill writer Richard Curtis shares why Julia Roberts turned down sequel

Roberts played Hollywood film star Anna Scott alongside Hugh Grant, who played bookshop seller William Thacker in the 1999 romcom

Richard Curtis has revealed that Notting Hill could’ve had a sequel but Julia Roberts was not a fan of the script.

The 1999 romantic comedy was written by Curtis and starred Julia Roberts as Hollywood film star Anna Scott, who walks into a bookshop in Notting Hill owned by William Thacker, played by Hugh Grant.

In an interview, Curtis was asked if he wanted to ever make a sequel to any of his past films, and he brought up Notting Hill, saying Roberts rejected the “poor idea” because the script saw her character divorce Grant’s.

“I don’t think so. I actually did four Red Nose Days and Comic Relief. We did those mini sequels to Love Actually, and those satisfied me,” Curtis told IndieWire, referring to Red Nose Day Actually, a 2017 short film Curtis wrote the script for which brought back a dozen characters from Love Actually 14 years after the film ended.

“I tried doing one with Notting Hill where they were going to get divorced, and Julia [Roberts] thought that was a very poor idea.”

The Independent has reached out to Roberts for comment.

Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in 1999’s Notting Hill (Getty Images)

Even though Roberts seemed to disagree that Scott and Thacker would get a divorce, her costar clearly agreed with Curtis.

In 2020, Grant said that he thought their characters would end up going through the “ugliest imaginable divorce”.

“I’m sure that my character in Notting Hill and Julia Roberts’ character have been through the ugliest imaginable divorce with really expensive, nasty lawyers,” he told Collider.

He later added as part of a Q&A with HBO’s Twitter account that he would like to film a sequel charting the “hideous divorce that’s ensued”.

Grant said it would feature “children involved in tug of love, floods of tears, psychologically scarred forever”.

“I’d love to do that film,” he added.

Last year, Grant divulged a subtle “in-joke” hidden away in the “nauseating” final scene of Notting Hill, where Thacker and Scott can be seen cosied up together on a park bench, with Grant’s character reading a book.

Hugh Grant revealed that the book he was reading in the final scene in Notting Hill was an ‘in-joke’ placed by director Roger Michell (Netflix)

Grant said that the book he was reading was an in-joke placed there by director Roger Michell, who died in 2021.

“In that nauseating moment on the bench at the end, I’m reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières, which was going to be his next film,” Grant said, adding: “So it’s a little in-joke from Roger Michell, God rest his soul.”

Earlier this year, in a conversation with Curtis, Roberts explained that she “loathed” being dressed as a movie star for Notting Hill, and that the clothes she ended up wearing for the famous “I’m just a girl” scene were her own she’d worn that day.

“Honestly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was your movie, playing a movie actress. I was so uncomfortable!” she told Curtis of Notting Hill.

“I mean, we’ve talked about this so many times, but I almost didn’t take the part because it just seemed – oh, it just seemed so awkward. I didn’t even know how to play that person.”

“My driver, lovely Tommy, I sent him back to my flat that morning,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Go into my bedroom and grab this, this and this out of my closet.’ And it was my own flip-flops and my cute little blue velvet skirt and a T-shirt and my cardigan… I mean, it was a great scene. But who knew that that would become the line.”