The 15-year passion project that became Meg Ryan’s last stand: “Heads really turned”
In the 1990s, Meg Ryan was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and Kate & Leopold turned her into the reigning rom-com queen at the peak of the genre. She was America’s sweetheart, and it seemed that she was destined to have longevity in the industry.
However, in the early 2000s, her career took a downturn from which it has never recovered. It had nothing to do with bad acting or even bad movies. It was simply because, when she tried to diversify her roles, her fans rebelled. The 2000 thriller Proof of Life saw her play the wife of an abducted American engineer who hires a hostage negotiator to help her rescue her husband. In the Jane Campion movie In the Cut, she played a college professor who has an affair with a detective who is investigating a local murder. The sexual explicitness of the film proved to be too much for audiences to handle, and Ryan was all but blacklisted.
Despite this rapid fall from grace, she was still attached to a project that she was hoping could turn into her comeback vehicle. The Women was almost too promising to be true. Based on the 1939 box office smash of the same name, which in turn was based on the Broadway hit by Clare Boothe Luce, it stays true to its title by centring on a group of women. The 1939 version was directed by George Cukor and starred a who’s-who of Hollywood talent, including Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard, and Joan Fontaine.
The original movie is extremely dated by modern standards. The women mostly fight over men and backstab each other, but the fact that it was such a hit despite featuring an all-female cast illustrates just how different audiences were at the time. Ryan became attached to the remake all the way back in 1994, but it would take nearly 15 years for it to finally come to fruition. You might assume that the issue was a lack of interest, but on the contrary, there was almost too much interest.
Everyone from Whitney Houston to Uma Thurman was attached at some point, and there was even a discussion about When Harry Met Sally screenwriter Nora Ephron coming on board to do the script. In a particularly promising moment in 1994, Julia Roberts and Ryan were planning to star in the film, and they even had brunch together to talk over potential script rewrites. “The heads really turned when people saw those two sitting there,” Ryan’s producing partner Kathryn Galan said (via Entertainment Weekly). “Lunch was a blast-with everybody throwing in ideas of how to update and tweak the plot.”
Things must have broken down quickly, though, because soon, there was an impasse. Roberts eventually dropped out, other people dropped in, and screenwriters and directors came and went. Eventually, Diane English, who had dreamt up the project in 1993, finally decided to direct and write it. Despite being turned down by nearly every studio due to the all-female cast (again, times have changed since the 1930s), she finally managed to get it over the line in 2008.
After nearly 15 years in development, the film did not revive Ryan’s career. Critics panned it. The original might have offered an outdated portrayal of female relationships, but the dialogue is still snappy and witty all these decades later. In contrast, the 2008 version, which ended up with an all-star cast of Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Carrie Fisher, was sorely lacking in the wit and charm department. It fared surprisingly well at the box office but did nothing to revitalise Ryan’s struggling career.
