Looking back at Love Actually and Bridget Jones’s Diary, Richard Curtis regrets including negative commentary about women’s bodies in the films amid criticism in recent years.
While recently speaking at The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, via Today, the director-writer recalled “how shocked I was like five years ago when [my daughter] Scarlett said to me, ‘You can never use the word fat again.’”
In the 2003 Christmas movie, Martine McCutcheon’s character Natalie is teased a handful of times for her weight, including being called “plumpy” and someone saying she has “massive … tree trunk thighs.” At one point, Natalie’s love interest, the British Prime minister played by Hugh Grant, also says, “God, you weigh a lot,” when she jumps into his arms.
After noting that his daughter was “right” about not using the word “fat” anymore in his projects, he added, “I think I was behind, you know, behind the curve, and those jokes aren’t any longer funny, so I don’t feel I was malicious at the time, but I think I was unobservant and not as, you know, as clever as I should have been.”
Curtis also addressed criticism of his past films, including 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and 1999’s Notting Hill, for featuring predominantly all-white main casts and for how people of color were treated at the time.
“I think because I came from a very un-diverse school and a bunch of university friends,” the filmmaker said. “[With] Notting Hill, I think that I hung on to the diversity issue, to the feeling that I wouldn’t know how to write those parts. And I think I was just sort of stupid and wrong about that.”
He continued, “I feel as though me, my casting director, my producers just didn’t think about it. Just didn’t look outwards enough.”
