Love Actually is one of THE films of Christmas – topping everyone’s lists of top festive flicks to watch over December.
The film is, crazily, 20 years old, and in an extremely exciting twist, the Love Actually cast has reunited for a TV special.
Yes, this is not a drill. We repeat. This is not a drill.
It was the film’s writer, Richard Curtis, who made news this month however, as he opened up about the lack of diversity in the film, explaining that it made him feel “outdated”.
From Friends to Sex and the City – there are many famous TV series and films from the ’90s and early noughties that haven’t aged well. And millennials and Gen Zs never hold back in calling them out for their outdated gender representation, language and even storylines.
It was Curtis himself however who called Love Actually “outdated”, admitting that even though the film is still watched today by gen Z, the “lack of diversity” makes him “feel uncomfortable and a bit stupid.”
(Image credit: Monica Schipper/Getty Images for AXWII))
Talking on the ABC special The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later, he told host Diane Sawyer: “There are things you’d change, but thank god, society is, you know, changing. So, my film is bound, in some moments, to feel, you know, out of date.”
“I mean, there are things about the film, you know, the lack of diversity makes me feel uncomfortable and a bit stupid. You know, I think there are sort of three plots that have sort of bosses and people who work for them,” he added.
Curtis could be talking about Hugh Grant’s character, who plays the Prime Minister, and falls in love with his assistant, or Alan Rickman’s character, who plays the boss of a firm, where his secretary flirts with him and he starts an affair with her. Which, although we love the film, we have to admit, is pretty sexist.
However, Curtis has said that looking back, the film was obviously written when the world was in a more positive place. “I think the 20 years shows what a youthful optimist I probably was when I wrote it,” he explained.
“If you look at what happened during COVID and the extraordinary sort of bravery and heroism. I do think the way to think about life is that every day has the potential, in all its simplicity, just to be gorgeous.”