Meg Ryan is Finally Back with a Brand-New Romantic Comedy
Meg Ryan is back after an eight-year hiatus! The rom-com queen is set to appear in a new film called What Happens Later, also starring David Duchovny. Ryan co-wrote and directed the movie too, making it quite the comeback. Ryan is talking about her new film and sharing the reasons why she didn’t act for so many years. Ryan, best known for her ’90s romantic comedies You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle, plays Willa, a woman who gets delayed at the airport with her ex.
She joked about the film, “Sometimes there’s a question of: Will they be together? Will they not be together? 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.” After her 2015 film Ithaca, which she also directed, she seemingly disappeared from Hollywood. In 2018, she made a rare appearance where she spoke about her hiatus.
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She said, “I didn’t really aim to be an actor. 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.” She added in another interview, “I felt in a crazy way that, as an actor, I was burning through life experiences. Somehow I was a helicopter pilot or a journalist or an alcoholic.”
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So, it seems that she took a step back to discover what she truly wanted in her own life. Ryan said that she often felt “isolated” in Hollywood. She added that she never wanted to complain because she knew it was a life that many people desired, but she just wanted to take a break to spend more time with her loved ones and do things she enjoyed. Ryan has two children, Jack Quaid with her ex-husband Dennis Quaid, and daughter, Daisy True Ryan, whom she adopted in 2006. She was previously engaged to musician John Mellencamp but they split in 2019.
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Check out the trailer for What Happens Later, which premieres in theaters on Friday, Oct. 13:
Where Are They Now?
May 2021
Catch up with the stars of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s!
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