Richard Curtis, the acclaimed British writer and director known for romantic comedies like “Love Actually,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “Notting Hill,” is taking his previous films’ portrayal of women and lack of diversity to task.
In a recent interview appearance moderated by his daughter, Scarlett, at The Time and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, Curtis reflected on his past films, admitting that he is ashamed of how he portrayed women and teased their weight with “fat” jokes. He also addressed the lack of diversity in films like “Notting Hill,” which gets its title from a prominent Black neighborhood.
Per media reports from the U.K. event, Scarlett said that there have been “growing criticisms” around Curtis’ films, specifically about how women and people of color were handled onscreen. Some of the examples mentioned during the conversation were how Jones’s legs being described as being the size of “tree-trunks,” and how 1999’s “Noting Hill” had a predominantly white cast set in a neighborhood that hosted the 1958 Notting Hill Race Riots.
“I think because I came from a very un-diverse school and a bunch of university friends, I think that I hung on to the feeling that I wouldn’t know how to write those parts,” Curtis said. “I think I was just stupid and wrong about that. I felt as though me, my casting director, my producers just didn’t look outwards.”
The comments echoed those he made in a 2022 ABC interview with Diane Sawyer, in which he said that “there are things you’d change but, thank God, society is changing, so my film is bound, in some moments, to feel out of date.”
“The lack of diversity makes me feel uncomfortable and a bit stupid,” he added at the time.
Back at the literature festival, Curtis shared how Scarlett encouraged him to no longer use the term “fat” in his writing, admitting that he wasn’t previously being as “observant” or “clever” as he felt he should have been.
“I remember how shocked I was five years ago when Scarlett said to me, ‘You can never use the word “fat” again,’” he said. “Wow you were right. In my generation, calling someone chubby [was funny] — in ‘Love Actually,’ there were jokes about that. Those jokes aren’t any longer funny.”
This year marks the 20th anniversary of “Love Actually,” which hit theaters on Nov. 6, 2003. The film starred Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson and Kiera Knightley.
“Bridget Jones’s Diary” came out on April 13, 2001, and “Notting Hill” debuted in theaters May 13, 1999.
