If we want to see the girl who walked off the street, into his life, and stole his heart again – this has to happen.
Richard Gere revealed the only way fans would get a sequel to his and Julia Roberts’ 1990 rom-com “Pretty Woman” is if the writing was up to par.
“It all comes down to whether or not there’s a good script,” the actor, 75, told People on Wednesday.
The film — whose director Garry Marshall died in 2016 at age 81 — followed Gere’s character Edward Lewis, a wealthy businessman who hires Roberts’ Vivian Ward, a sex worker, while on a business trip in Los Angeles.
The pair falls in love, and the movie’s final scene ends with a kiss to Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love.”
Looking back at the rom-com, Gere said on The Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast in December, “I’m so proud of that movie and proud of the work process that we did to create that movie.”
“And I’m not only proud,” he gushed, “I’m thankful for that movie because it allowed me to do a lot of other things too.”
Taking a moment to dissect playing the suave businessman, the Spain resident recalled, “There was no character.”
“So, I read this thing, and I said, ‘It’s not for me.”
Gere felt Edward was “just a suit,” but Marshall assured the star that, along with Roberts, 57, they would “find” the character.
“We ended up, you know, really trying to find a character there that made sense within the structure and, you know, the essence of what that piece was,” Gere explained. “To make it heartfelt, to make it charming, make it fun, make it sexy, you know? And we all loved each other. Great trust, we had a wonderful time, and we had no idea that it was gonna be what it was.”
In 2024, the “Longing” star also revealed that his and Roberts’ “Pretty Woman” piano scene was improvised after a conversation with Marshall.
“I haven’t seen that in a long time, too. It was a sexy, sexy scene,” he said, per The Hollywood Reporter.
“This was never in the script,” he admitted. “We didn’t know how we would use it later. It ended up being integral to the film.”
In the infamous scene, Edward played the piano at their hotel in the middle of the night while Vivian walked in wearing a bathrobe. He then asked the staff to leave them be as they made out on the piano.
“Garry said to me, ‘What do you do late at night in a hotel?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m usually jet lagged, [that] would be the time I’m in a hotel. So I’m up all night and usually there’s a ballroom somewhere or a bar, and I’ll find a piano and I’ll play the piano,’” Gere recounted. “He said: ‘Well, let’s do something with that.’ “
Alas came the makeout between Edward and Vivian.
“So we just basically improvised this scene, and he said: ‘Play something moody,’ ” Gere remembered. “I just started playing something moody that was this character’s interior life.”
But as fond as the cast — which also included Laura San Giacomo and Héctor Elizondo — is of their cult classic film, Roberts admitted that she doesn’t think the movie would be made in the modern day.
“A lot has changed in the industry…I don’t really think you could make that movie now, right?” Roberts told The Guardian in 2018. “So many things you could poke a hole in, but I don’t think it takes away from people being able to enjoy it. It really is not a measure of talent, particularly in the beginning. It’s a measure of good fortune – and being able to have your wits about you enough to make something out of that good fortune.”
None of the cast knew that the decades-old film would stand the test of time.
“It’s a 30-year-old movie,” Roberts told Grazia in 2018. “I think anytime you’re going to reach back to bring something into the present, there’s going to be trouble making the connection for a variety of reasons. They could be political, cultural – they could be just dated clothing – so I don’t think it’s a reasonable testament to challenge the question of now, to use that as a template of ‘Would that work now?’. We have no way of knowing that.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
