Richard Curtis reveals he didn’t want to cast Hugh Grant in iconic role
Richard Curtis has reflected upon making Four Weddings and A Funeral in celebration of the film’s 30th anniversary, revealing he initially didn’t want Hugh Grant to star in the project.
Curtis and Grant’s careers will always be associated with one another, and they all begin with four weddings and a funeral. Following the success of the venture, Grant went on to star in Notting Hill and Love Actually, also penned by Curtis.
The collaboration in 1994 was responsible for skyrocketing both of their careers and making them stars, but if Curtis had his initial way, Grant would never have been cast in Four Weddings and A Funeral, which would have dramatically altered their respective trajectories.
In a new interview with The Times, Curtis shared: “The director, Mike Newell, took the casting unbelievably seriously. I argued hard against Hugh Grant. I had in my mind a less glamorous person because I’m a very unglamorous person. So I was thinking Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, John Gordon Sinclair. I argued for Alan Rickman.”
However, after the extensive casting process, Curtis was eventually convinced that Grant was the right person for the role and had the characteristics they desired for Charles.
Curtis added: “But we interviewed about 70 other people and it turned out that the combination you need of charm and wit to make it funny was very hard to find. And Hugh had it instantly. He gives the impression of being feckless and that he can’t act, but he worked so hard on every line.”
Meanwhile, Newell discussed why it was a difficult movie to make due to budget constraints and a limited shooting schedule, noting, “It was a very cheap movie. I think it was less than £3million. We only had 32 days to make it. There are five huge public occasions in the movie, plus everything else. We had to move very quickly – there wasn’t time to have second thoughts.”
While Four Weddings and A Funeral was a huge unexpected success at the box office, collecting over $250m worldwide, which massively superseded their wildest dreams, it has come under criticism over recent years along with other work in Curtis’ arsenal.
Last year, Curtis revealed he regrets the treatment of women in his past films and the lack of diversity in his films.
The writer made the comments at the Cheltenham Literature Festival during a discussion with his daughter, Scarlett Curtis. She posed to her father the “growing criticism around the ways your films treated women and people of colour”.
In response, Curtis admitted: “Yes, I wish I’d been ahead of the curve. Because I came from a very universe, school and bunch of university friends, I think that I’ve hung on, on the diversity issue, to the feeling that I wouldn’t know how to write those parts.” He added: “I think I was just sort of stupid and wrong about that.’”
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