‘Love Actually’ Cast to Reunite in Mini-Sequel for Red Nose Day
There are different lines of thinking when it comes to putting up your Christmas tree — some families wait until the day after Thanksgiving, some until the first day of December. In recent years, I’ve taken to waiting until the first Love Actually hot take inevitably hits the internet. 14 years later, the critical debate over Richard Curtis’ festive rom-com has become a holiday tradition in its own right, and now we’re getting even more Love Actually to love…or hate.
Curtis is reuniting with (most of) the cast from his weirdly divisive 2003 rom-com to make a 10-minute mini-sequel for Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day Special — an annual charity event that attracts dozens of high-profile celebrities to raise awareness and money for children living in poverty all over the world.
The short Love Actually sequel will catch up with several characters from the original film to see what they’re up to in 2017. Joining Curtis for this special event are Liam Neeson, Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, Keira Knightley, Andrew Lincoln, Colin Firth, Lucia Moniz, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Olivia Olson, Bill Nighy, Marcus Brigstocke and Rowan Atkinson. (Emma Thompson and Laura Linney are strangely absent from the lineup.)
Curtis, who is also a co-founder of Comic Relief, had this to say about his Love Actually reunion:
Over the years I’ve enjoyed doing Red Nose Day specials of TV things I’ve worked on – ‘Blackadder,’ ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ and ‘Mr Bean.’ It seemed like a fun idea this year to do a special sketch based one of my films, since Red Nose Day is now in both the UK and America. I would never have dreamt of writing a sequel to ‘Love Actually,’ but I thought it might be fun to do 10 minutes to see what everyone is now up to. Who has aged best? – I guess that’s the big question… or is it so obviously Liam? We’ve been delighted and grateful that so many of the cast are around and able to take part – and it’ll certainly be a nostalgic moment getting back together and recreating their characters 14 years later. We hope to make something that’ll be fun – very much in the spirit of the original film and of Red Nose Day – and which we hope will help bring lots of viewers and cash to the Red Nose Day shows.
Look, even if you hate Love Actually, you can’t really knock Curtis for planning this cute reunion for a great cause.
The Red Nose Day Special airs in the UK on BBC1 on March 24 and on NBC in America on May 25. This is the third year of Red Nose Day in the US; to participate, head to your local Duane Reade or Walgreens to purchase a red nose and donate to this wonderful cause.