Kate Hudsoncan dream of being Ben’s partner once more.
After all, the Oscarnomineehas signed on as a producer for a sequel to her andMatthew McConaughey’s 2003 romcom classicHow to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,according tomultipleoutlets.
No information has beenconfirmedabout the plotor castof the sequel,although filmmakers are reportedly planning for both Hudson and McConaughey to reprisetheir respective roles as magazine writer Andie and ad executive Ben, who first crossed paths whenAndyaimed to drive Ben away for a magazine article, while he made a betwith friendsto make her fall in love with him in 10 days.
And while the chemistry between Hudson and McConaugheybloomed more than a love fern ever could, Hudsonoriginallyhad to fight for the Oscar winner to be cast in the role.
“We just kept hitting our heads against the wall,” she shared during a 2022 Life In Pictures talk at BAFTA in London, perVariety, “and the studio and I weren’t agreeing.”
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See Matthew McConaughey and Wife Camila Recreate His How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days Look
“We had an energy together, I wanted to play with him,” Hudson added of McConaughey. “It felt kinetic. We both have a competitive spirit, we’re both super athletic. We like to push each other and I just love Matthew’s commitment to everything; he’s razor-focused. What you think he is, is.”
And McConaughey certainly lucked out from Hudson’spersistence,as he recently revealed the film still pays him the most residualsof any of his movies“by far.”
Michael Gibson/Paramount/Kobal/
“How to Lose a Guy in 10 Daysis the gift that keeps on giving,” he told hostJoshHorowitzon the Aug. 13 episode of theHappy Sad Confusedpodcast. “I think it’s probably my favorite romcom I’ve done. A lot of people love that romcom.”
“It still pays the best mailbox money of any film I’ve ever done,” he added. “Every March I’d get a big check because Valentine’s Day.”
For her part, Hudson didn’t need couple’s therapy to verify how much she loves be associated with the film.
“How to Lose a Guyfeels like a classic at this point,” she shared withHarper’s Bazaarin April. “New generations keep finding it. It’s really nice to be in a movie that’s like that.”
For all the behind-the-scenes secrets aboutHow to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, keep reading.
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2. Kate Hudson’s star-making turn in Almost Famous, which netted her a Golden Globe, landed her the part of Andie Anderson and she was already cast when Donald Petrie signed on as director. But it wasn’t such an easy task to find her leading man, with Petrie telling E! News casting Benjamin Barry was “the most difficult part” of the movie.
“Because in some ways and in every iteration of the script, it’s her movie,” he explained. “Usually, a big star doesn’t want to be second fiddle to the girl. That’s just fact. Kate was there through the casting, she read with everybody. And a lot of it was not just the reading, but, ‘Okay, how are you getting along in the room? Is this somebody you’re going to want to be on a set with for all this time? And is this somebody you think is going to give as much as they get?’ Because it’s a joust.”
“Are he and Kate going to have romance? Is there going to be a physical attraction there?” he recalled wondering. “And at the end of that, when we all watched the results with Paramount, they were like, ‘Oh okay, we can do that!’ And we went, ‘Really? It just kind of lays there.'”
4. So how did Matthew McConaughey ultimately land the part? Hudson advocated for him in a meeting with the studio, who was still championing the other actor (one Petrie declined to name).
“I will never forget it because Kate was wonderful and gave a very erudite and yet heartfelt argument why that was the wrong choice,” Petrie recalled. “And even then, the studio put up, ‘Well, I guess we’ll just forget about this picture. We’ll do something else instead,’ thinking Kate would blink. Kate didn’t blink. She went, ‘You’re right, we’ll just do something else.'”
Finally, when the studio executive asked Hudson who she believed should be cast, “we pulled out the old list,” Petrie explained, “and Kate went right to Matthew McConaughey. The rest is history.”
And there was one other concern regarding the native Texan playing a hot-shot New York advertising executive, Petrie explained, “so I immediately had them write into the script that his father was in the Navy, his mother was Southern and they moved around a lot.”
6. Hudson spent a day shadowing Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour after landing the role of an ambitious magazine columnist. “I tore out all of these how-tos in Cosmo and Glamour,” Hudson detailed to EW of preparing to play Andie. “Those are the kind of things that I skip over.”
7. The movie is based on a short cartoon book of the same name by Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long. And Andie’s two work BFFs Michele and Jeannie, played by Kathryn Hahn and Annie Parisse, were named after the authors.
“Everybody on the set went, ‘Wow!'” he recalled. “Seeing that the back had that scoop, I said to Kate, ‘When he first sees you, you have to do the full turn,’ which she does at the top of the steps. It’s such an absolutely marvelous dress.”
9. That necklace, the “Isadora Diamond” named after Isadora Duncan and housing an 80-carat yellow diamond in its center, was designed by Harry Winston and is worth $6 million. “It was yummy,” Hudson told E! News of rocking that, well, rock. “It was gorgeous. Also, it was terrifying!”
11. Explaining that he “loves to work in sneaky ways to keep things fresh and in the moment,” Petrie was a big advocate of his actors improvising in scenes.
“I’m going to Kate and saying, ‘Hey, see if you can get him to do this?'” he shared. “And I’m going to Matthew and telling him, ‘See if you can get her to do that,’ but you’re in opposites, so they are each given an intention that the other one is going to thwart.”
One shining example can be found in the scene where Andie surprised Benjamin by bringing a dog to his office. “I was standing with Kate and saw Matthew across the room looking at his reflection and fixing his hair,” Petrie recalled. “I turned to Kate and said, ‘Hey, it’s not in the script, but somewhere in the scene just start kissing him and try to mess his hair up as much as you can.’ And immediately Kate’s so excited about the scene, she’s got this secret.”
Rather than call cut over the unexpected gesture, McConaughey “went with it and I knew that at any given time that I could throw stuff at these two actors and they would just go with it,” Petrie said.
13. Speaking of the iconic love fern, the plant played a special role at Petrie’s daughter’s wedding in November 2022. “Instead of the bouquet to throw, they brought a love fern!” he said with a laugh. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if on Valentine’s Day fern sales go way up!”
“You never cast the first person. You have to say, ‘Okay, that set the bar, let’s see who else is out there,'” Petrie said of the WandaVision star. “And three weeks later, we hadn’t found anyone to beat Kathryn Hahn and we went right back to the beginning.”
15. Hahn reflected on the casting process in an interview with EW, detailing her final audition with Hudson in front of Petrie and the studio. “I was so nervous, I remember I broke the ice by joking about the horny summers at this theater camp we had both been to when we were kids,” the Bad Moms actress revealed of her first meeting with Hudson.
17. McConaughey really rode away with one detail from the film. “That’s why I got a motorcycle, because of this script,” McConaughey revealed to E! News. “I wanted to get comfortable…because I’ve seen too many people ride motorcycles or ride a horse in films and I’m like, ‘You don’t really ride a horse. You don’t really ride a motorcycle.'”
“It’s known within the industry that 55 percent is average,” he explained. “In this case, I believe we got a 94 percent.” While he knew women of all ages would be drawn to the rom-com (which they were, the flick earning a 99 rating from female audience members), it was the score from men that “was the crazy thing,” Petrie said.
“Men of all ages gave it an 89, averaging out to the 94,” he continued. “So one of the things that I like the most about the outcome of this movie is it’s the ultimate chick flick for guys.”
20. In fact, in 2019, it was reported that a TV adaptation was in the works at Quibi. Alas, the mobile-focused streaming platform shut down seven months after its debut in April 2020.
