At 61, Meg Ryan is the lead in a new rom-com. That shouldn’t be such a rare thing.
It’s hard to overstate how much we missed Meg Ryan.
The effervescent actress led some of the most indelible romantic comedies of the 1980s and ‘90s, from Nora Ephron-penned classics “When Harry Met Sally,” “You’ve Got Mail” and “Sleepless in Seattle” to quirkier outings like “Joe Versus the Volcano.”
Now, at 61, she's back in her beloved genre with "What Happens Later," co-starring the similarly treasured David Duchovny, 63. It's the rare rom-com headlined by two sexagenarians, centering on a former couple as they hash out their differences while stranded at an airport.
When the trailer for “What Happens Later” (in theaters Oct. 13) premiered Wednesday, movie fans on X (formerly Twitter) effusively celebrated her return. “Almost cried seeing Meg Ryan,” said one user. “A new Meg Ryan rom-com will fix everything,” proclaimed another.
With her shaggy blond tresses and mischievous grin, Ryan has long been one of our most compelling actors. In "You've Got Mail," she delivers one of the finest rom-com performances ever, bringing gumption and vulnerability to Kathleen, an independent bookseller who's hopelessly hanging onto her late mother's storefront. "Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal," Kathleen says at one point, which aptly describes Ryan's inquisitive and open-hearted approach to acting.
The charming trailer for "What Happens Later," Ryan's second movie as a director, reminds us just how lucky we are to have her back after an eight-year acting hiatus. It's also yet another a reminder that Hollywood needs to invest in more movies starring women over 40.
In quotes provided to Entertainment Weekly before the actors' strike, Ryan said the film "evolves the rom-com genre just a little bit. It's also about old people, and it's still romantic and sexy."
Watch the trailer:Meg Ryan returns to rom-coms with 'What Happens Later' alongside David Duchovny
According to an analysis released in March by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, 36% of films released last year included a speaking female character in her 30s. But that number sharply decreased as women got into their 40s (16%), 50s (8%) and 60s (7%).
By comparison, the numbers were nearly double for male characters in their 40s (29%) and 50s (15%), while 9% of films featured men over 60.
From a box-office standpoint, audiences clearly want to see movies with women over 40. Ryan's 1990s rom-com contemporaries Julia Roberts (“Ticket to Paradise”) and Sandra Bullock (“The Lost City”) both recently cleared $150 million globally with their respective films. “80 for Brady,” with an A-list female cast whose ages ranged from 76 to 91, made a respectable $40 million worldwide earlier this year.
And on streaming, Reese Witherspoon's "Your Place or Mine" and Jennifer Lopez's "Shotgun Wedding" were major hits when they debuted on Netflix and Amazon, respectively, at the start of 2023. Clearly, there's an appetite for all kinds of women's stories, as long as Hollywood is willing to tell them.
Narratives about aging – and how people and relationships grow along with it – are important to see on the big and small screen.
They "can help shape our perceptions of what it might look like to age in the current world as it is," Katherine Pieper, program director at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, told USA TODAY earlier this year. "The more that we can see authentic portrayals of what it means to grow older in society … that might be very important for how people think about their own life trajectory."
So instead of headlines about Ryan's appearance, as we saw earlier this summer, let's get back to what really matters: the work itself.
"There are more important conversations than how women look and how they are aging," Ryan told Net-A-Porter magazine in 2015. "I love my age. I love my life right now. I love what I know about. I love the person I've become, the one I've evolved into."
To paraphrase another Ephron favorite: We'll have what she's having.
Contributing: Erin Jensen