Hugh Grant doesn’t hold back with comments about Drew Barrymore and ‘Notting Hill’ ending

Hugh Grant is certainly not keeping himself in the last few days, and if he didn’t say some things with a wink, you’d almost think he’s on the warpath. In a recent interview with Wired, he mentions co-star Drew Barrymore’s singing Music and Lyrics (2007) ‘terrible’, and turns out to be the end of a rom-com classic Notting Hill (1999) nauseating.

A conversation

Grant was discredited after the Oscars when footage of an awkward red carpet interview with Ashley Graham was widely shared. During the ceremony itself, he didn’t show his most charming side either, by his own head in the presence of co-presenter Andie MacDowell (with whom he once starred in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)) with a scrotum.

Maybe it’s playful Paddington 2 (2017) secretly a fitting indication of the shadow sides of the British actor, who we mainly know as ‘gentleman’ from Love Actually (2003) and the other romcom classic, Notting Hill (1999).

Still ‘Notting Hill’ via TMDb

Inside joke

Many film buffs immediately ring a bell when they hear these titles, but the popularity of the two romcoms does not seem to guarantee that the protagonists will still think back positively about them. Grant even appears to find the end of Notting Hill ‘sickening’:

In that sickening moment on the bench at the end, I read the book Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières, and that would be his (director Roger Michell, ed.) next film. So it is an inside joke from Michell, God rest his soul (the director died in 2021, ed.)

Hugh Grant

Not to hear

In the same interview, Grant also got a question about the romantic comedy Music and Lyrics (2007), in which the actor has to write a duet for him and Drew Barrymore. When the reporter on duty asks him if he ‘really’ sings in the film, Grant replies that “autotune was used, but not as much as on some of the other recordings”. The actor laughingly adds that Barrymore wouldn’t mind if he called her singing in the movie “terrible”:

I have heard dogs bark more beautifully than she sings. (…) But when she turned on her autotune, she sounded much better than me because she has rock ‘n’ roll and feeling in her voice, where I sounded like Julie Andrews while I tried to sing like Barrymore

Still ‘Music and Lyrics’ via TMDb

Playful response

Fortunately, Barrymore indeed turned out to be able to laugh at her co-star’s unflattering remarks. On an Instagram video, she invited Grant to sing along with her:

Romcom classics

Check the movie pages above to see where you can watch the romcom classics mentioned again.

Beeld: Still ‘Music and Lyrics’ via TMDb