The Parent Trap sequel can’t happen due to co-star’s tragic death, says Dennis Quaid

The actor said that making a sequel to the beloved 1998 comedy would otherwise be ‘fantastic’

Dennis Quaid has distanced himself from a long-rumoured sequel to his 1998 smash The Parent Trap, believing it difficult in the wake of the death of his co-star.

The actor starred alongside Lindsay Lohan and the late Natasha Richardson in the film, itself a remake of the classic 1961 film of the same name, which starred British actor Hayley Mills.

Lohan played twins Hallie and Annie, who were separated at birth when their parents (Quaid and Richardson) split and each took custody of one baby. The pair are fortuitously reunited at summer camp, and switch places in one another’s lives.

While speaking on the red carpet of his new film Reagan, where he plays the late US president Ronald Reagan, Quaid said that he’d love to make a sequel to the film but believes it impossible.

“That would be fantastic, but Natasha,” he told People Magazine. “How do we do it without Natasha?”

Richardson, the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and Tony Richardson and wife of Liam Neeson, died in 2009 at the age of 45. She had been skiing in Montreal when she hit her head during a fall on a ski slope. She was flown to a New York hospital but died two days later from an epidural hematoma.

Quaid added that Richardson’s death “still breaks my heart”.

Dennis Quaid starred alongside Natasha Richardson, Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan in the 1998 hit (Sky)

In 2020, Lohan remembered Richardson as an actor with “such … elegance and grace, and she was so maternal to me”. A year later, she posted a tribute to the star on what would have been her 58th birthday, writing: “Happy Birthday Angel.”

Lohan just wrapped filming on a different sequel to one of her past hits, however, joining Jamie Lee Curtis in a belated follow-up to their 2003 comedy Freaky Friday.

On her Instagram this week, Curtis hit out at paparazzi photographers who she said had spoilt a pivotal moment in the film.

Freakier Friday is in cinemas next year.