Love Actually creator Richard Curtis regrets packing his famous romcoms with white characters and fat girl gags.
The Four Weddings And A Funeral and Blackadder writer, 66, blames his “undiverse” public school background for failing to make his films more multi-cultural. The three-time Bafta winner has vowed never to include “fat” jokes in his flicks again after his daughter criticised his films.
He said at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, where he was interviewed by his 28-year-old daughter Scarlett: “I remember how shocked I was five years ago when Scarlett said to me, ‘You can never use the word fat again.’ And, wow, you were right.
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He went on: “In my generation, calling someone ‘chubby’. in Love Actually, there are endless jokes about that. I think I was behind the curve and those jokes aren’t any longer funny.”
(Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images for Net)
“I don’t feel I was malicious at the time but I feel I was unobservant and not as clever as I should have been,” he added. Mental health campaigner Scarlett highlighted “a growing criticism” of how her dad’s films treated women and people of colour.
She asked Oxford-educated Richard if there were things he wished he’d “done differently” in his scripts. He replied: “Yes, I wish I’d been ahead of the curve. Because I came from a very undiverse school and bunch of university friends, I think that I’ve hung on, on the diversity issue, to the feeling that I wouldn’t know how to write those parts. I think I was just sort of stupid and wrong about that.”
(Image: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)
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He continued: “I just don’t know. I feel as though me, my casting director, my producers, just didn’t think about it, just didn’t look outwards enough.”
Love Actually was criticised for comments made about Martine McCutcheon’s character Natalie in the film, who falls in love with Hugh Grant’s PM. Martine herself said: “There’s a lot of things that happen in it that aren’t PC, that aren’t perfect. But they are real human emotions, and human beings aren’t always perfect.
(Image: Getty Images)
“There’s something about Natalie’s vulnerability. She didn’t realise that it was actually her boyfriend who was the idiot and there was nothing wrong with her at all”. Scarlett said: “As your daughter, I can confirm that you’re a wonderful man, and I like to think I’ve taught you a lot about feminism.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
