Oscar winner Mira Sorvino is looking to revive one of her most beloved past roles with a sequel film almost three decades later.
Sorvino confirmed that the highly-anticipated follow-up to “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” is officially in the works, telling Us Weekly that both she and costar Lisa Kudrow will executive produce the sequel. Screenwriter Robin Schiff, who penned the 1988 play “Ladies Room” on which the 1997 movie is based on, will also return.
“She’s currently working on ‘Emily in Paris,’ so she’s finishing up her draft to present to the studio,” Sorvino said of Schiff’s sequel script. “Lisa [Kudrow] and I are wrapping up our deals as executive producers on it with the studio. We’re full force ahead.”
“Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” centers on two best friends, played by Sorvino and Kudrow, who return to their hometown for their reunion. Their road trip is rife with reliving their teen years as the duo mentally prepare to see their former classmates. Janeane Garofalo, Alan Cumming, Julia Campbell, Vincent Ventresca, Elaine Hendrix, Justin Theroux, and Camryn Manheim also star.
Sorvino said of the pending sequel that she hopes the characters Romy and Michele are just as quirky in the new script.
“I just still want them to be as relatable, but also as dumb and lovable as they ever were,” Sorvino said. “Like, I don’t think they’ve learned that much in the time in between, but they still have that unstoppable spirit and that friendship and that idiocy that makes everybody kind of love them. And so, that essential nature of them and the heart that’s at the center of that, that heart has to stay there.”
She also emphasized that the “crazy fashion” the original film is known for will continue as it showed a “real commitment to just being their authentic selves, even though they wrestle with the world’s opinion of them, but ultimately come back to themselves.”
The actress previously teased during the “Today” show in June 2022 that “something might be in the works” with a sequel. “There’s nothing official to report,” she said at the time, “but I can unofficially hint that we’re closer than we’ve ever been to getting something to happen.”
Sorvino’s costar Cumming, who currently hosts viral competition reality series “The Traitors,” told The A.V. Club in 2023 that “the fact that there hasn’t been [a ‘Romy and Michele] sequel] is a really big example of the misogyny of Hollywood.”
He continued, “You know, I think that the things I’ve heard about why, sort of like, ‘Oh, you know, they’re getting on a bit, older women, blah blah blah.’ Terrible. It’s such a popular film. If it was two men in that, you know, two men successful film, we would’ve had six by now.”
As for joining the sequel, Cumming said, “I’d be very in for it. You know, I have such fond memories of that film. And obviously it’s sort of this cultural iconic thing, and everybody of a certain generation, it’s really a special thing for them.”
