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GRAZIA INTERVIEW
The queen of the genre tells Paul Flynn how her new project was a labour of love
IN AN EARLY SCENE in What Happens Later, Meg Ryan’s first film since 2015, her leading man, veteran X-Files alumnus David Duchovny, is wandering through an airport. His phone has run out of battery, so he unplugs an advertising hoarding, crashing an advert for a romcom. Called Romcom. ‘Those are self-aware cinematic choices that I make,’ says Ryan, who is co-writer, director and star of the film. ‘What I want to say is that this genre can be stretched, can evolve, can accommodate a lot of different ideas, you know?’
Has Ryan just reinvented the movie format that made her name? ‘This is not just a simple romcom about what’s going to happen, will they or won’t they end up together. It’s about many more things.’ Most famed for her era-defining work with the late writer/director Nora Ephron, who is posthumously thanked at the end of What Happens Later, Ryan is the most famous face of the golden age of romcom. With timeless classics like When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail, she instructed generations through the possibilities of laughing through love.
With What Happens Later, she is rewriting the rules. ‘I don’t think this is a traditional romcom at all,’ she says. Duchovny plays Bill, a Gen X businessman who once defined himself by the music rather than the women he loved. Ryan plays his ex, Willa. Lovers who separated over 25 years ago, they meet by chance at the airport, where a series of theatrical mishaps gives them the chance to go over what went wrong. ‘It’s almost a meditation on love, really, or relationships,’ says Ryan. ‘How come love can be so easy and relationships feel so hard?’
Telling a love affair in the past tense reframes the traditional romcom narrative. What results is a beautifully wise, often sadly reflective two-hander on how no relationship ever really ends. A piece of past
