For the romantically and/or rom-com inclined, the news that the cast of “Love Actually” will be back in a semi-sequel was quite welcome. However, there’s two parts of the ensemble who won’t be returning: the late Alan Rickman, and his on-screen partner in Richard Curtis‘ film, Emma Thompson.
“Richard wrote to me and said, ‘Darling, we can’t write anything for you because of Alan’, and I said, ‘No, of course, it would be sad, too sad.’ It’s too soon. It’s absolutely right because it’s supposed to be for Comic Relief but there isn’t much comic relief in the loss of our dear friend, really, just over a year ago,” Thompson said last month (via The Guardian). “We thought and thought [about it] but it just seemed wrong. It was absolutely the right decision.”
However, Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, Keira Knightley, Andrew Lincoln, Colin Firth, Lucia Moniz, Liam Neeson, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Olivia Olson, Bill Nighy, Marcus Brigstocke, and Rowan Atkinson are all confirmed, and audiences will get to find out what their characters have been up to for fourteen years.
The “Love Actually” sequel sketch will be part of the “Red Nose Day” special airing on March 24th in the U.K. and May 25th in the U.S.