Emma Thompson won’t be reprising her role as Karen in the upcoming Love Actually reunion. The British actress revealed why during an interview with the Press Association, which was published on Friday, February 24.
“Richard [Curtis, the writer] wrote to me and said, ‘Darling, we can’t write anything for you because of Alan [Rickman].’ And I said, ‘No, of course, it would be sad, too sad,'” Thompson, 57, recalled.
Rickman died at the age of 69 in January 2016, following a battle with cancer . The Harry Potter actor played Thompson’s husband, Harry, in the beloved 2003 romantic comedy. (Thompson also costarred with Rickman in the Harry Potter franchise, as Professor Sybil Trelawney.)
As previously reported, some of the cast recently got together to shoot a 10-minute short for Red Nose Day to raise money for the Comic Relief charity.
For Thompson, taking part was just “too soon” following Rickman’s passing. “It’s absolutely right because it’s supposed to be for Comic Relief, but there isn’t much comic relief in the loss of our dear friend really, only just over a year ago,” Thompson continued to the PA. “We thought and thought but it just seemed wrong, but to revisit the wonderful fun characters of Bill Nighy and Hugh Grant and Liam [Neeson] and all of that, that’s fantastic, but obviously what would [Curtis] have done?”
In the film, Harry — in a moment of bad judgment — buys his assistant a gold heart necklace for Christmas. Karen, who found the piece of jewelry before it was wrapped, figured out that he gave it to another woman when she opened her present, a Joni Mitchell album.
Back in 2015, Curtis’s wife, Emma Freud, tweeted what happened to the couple following the affair. (Freud was a script editor on the movie.) “They stay together, but home isn’t as happy as it once was,” she wrote.
