Why Julia Roberts denied a sequel to ‘A Place Called Notting Hill’, according to screenwriter

Julia Roberts thought that a sequence of A Place Called Notting Hill it would be a bad idea.

This was a suggestion from the screenwriter Richard Curtiswho thought, for the possible second part of the film, about the divorce of the characters from roberts and Hugh Grant.

In an interview with IndieWire published this Wednesday, 27th, the screenwriter said (via People): “I tried to make a [sequência] with A Place Called Notting Hillin which they were going to get divorced, and Julia [Roberts] thought it was a really bad idea.”

The filmmaker was responsible for the sequence of Simply Love (2003), which came out in 2017.

In the 1999 feature film, roberts plays big movie star Anna Scott, who falls in love with William Thacker, a bookstore owner played by grant.

What Hugh Grant thinks about his character

In an interview with Vanity Fair, grant recalled working on the iconic romantic comedy.

“Whenever I’m changing the channel at home after a few drinks and this happens, I think, ‘Why doesn’t my character have the courage?'” he said, before taking issue with one particular scene involving Will and Anna.

There’s a scene in this movie where she’s at my house and the paparazzi come to the front door and ring the doorbell, and I think I just let her walk past me and open the door, and that’s horrible. I’ve never had a girlfriend, or rather a wife, who didn’t say, ‘Why the hell didn’t you stop her? What’s wrong with you?’ And I don’t really have an answer for that. That’s how it was written and I think he’s despicable, really.

Finally, grant praised the performance of Julia Roberts: “Probably the whole time with Julia, like with any brilliant actress, you think, ‘Oh, Christ, they’re really good. I’m not going to be as good as her.’ And she’s great at emoting, and she has this kind of quality where it feels like her skin is as thin as a cookie. You can kind of see into her soul.”