Entertainment
Meg Ryan Returns to Acting in New Rom-Com With David Duchovny After an 8-Year Hiatus
The queen of rom-coms is officially headed back to the big screen! Meg Ryan made her long-awaited return to acting in the new film What Happens Later.
Meg, 61, stars alongside David Duchovny in the highly anticipated movie. The pair play a former couple who get snowed in at the airport and reignite their romance. Meg also directed the film, which is based on Steven Dietz‘s play Shooting Star.
“Sometimes there’s a question of: Will they be together? Will they not be together?” Meg teased the film’s plot in an interview with Entertainment Weekly prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike. “For that reason, [What Happens Later] sort of evolves the rom-com genre just a little bit. It’s also about old people, and it’s still romantic and sexy.”
The last time Meg performed in front of the camera was eight years ago in 2015’s Ithaca, a drama film in which she also directed. As for her most recent bout in the rom-com genre, Meg appeared in Serious Moonlight with Kristen Bell and Timothy Hutton 14 years ago.
The Golden Globe nominee initially went on an acting hiatus to pursue other interests.
“I didn’t really aim to be an actor,” she said during a Goop wellness summit in 2018. “I was a journalism major at school and a curious person, and I wanted to go back out into the world and figure out who I was — am — in relation to other things and other people and other environments.”
In another candid interview, Meg explained that she stepped away from Hollywood to find herself.
“I didn’t feel like I knew enough anymore about myself or the world to reflect it as an actor. I felt isolated,” the Rich and Famous alum told The New York Times Magazine in February 2019. “Ever get in a car — maybe it’s a super expensive car — and the inside’s lovely, you can’t complain about it, but you can’t hear anything outside, because there’s so much metal? There’s so much between you and everything else.”
Meg continued on to say that being a “young, famous person” is “a disadvantage” because “you don’t know who’s telling you the truth.” After overcoming challenges in her career, Meg’s fans are so thrilled to see her acting again.
“CINEMA IS BACK BABY,” one person commented on the trailer for What Happens Later.
Others expressed their excitement for the film’s October 13 release.
“This looks so old-fashioned yet so fresh, I miss films like this,” another person tweeted. “Looks very good!”
