Q&A Hollywood
Q: Can you help me find the name of the Meg Ryan rom-com where she goes to France? It's driving me nuts trying to remember.
A:You might be struggling to remember the name of the movie because it’s a little too obvious. This 1995 romantic comedy, about a woman who gets into a love triangle while on a trip to France, was called “French Kiss.”
Hopefully just learning the name settles your curiosity, because actually watching the movie would be a tougher challenge.
“French Kiss” is not available on any of the million or so streaming platforms that are out there, and it doesn’t appear in reruns very often. If you go looking, you can find it for sale on DVD, but that’s just about it.
To be honest, that’s a little strange. It was a big hit at the time, ultimately more than doubling its budget at the box office.
More importantly, it’s often cited as one of the key works by Meg Ryan, queen of the rom-coms. It was released smack in the middle of her peak period, between “When Harry Met Sally” (1989) and “You’ve Got Mail” (1998).
And people loved the chemistry she had with co-star Kevin Kline (“A Fish Called Wanda,” 1988) almost as much as what she had with her other leading men — though, of course, nothing could hope to match what she had with “You’ve Got Mail” co-star Tom Hanks (“Cast Away,” 2000).
A somewhat uninspiring title can’t be enough to undo all of that.
Q: Has Pam done anything since “The Office?
A: More than (almost) all the other folks who starred in the modern-day classic NBC sitcom “The Office,” Jenna Fischer would be perfectly happy to still be called Pam 11 years after the show ended.
That’s because one of the things she’s busiest with is her hugely successful podcast “Office Ladies,” in which she and co-star Angela Kinsey (“Never Have I Ever”), who played Angela from accounting, lean into ongoing nostalgia for the show.
“Office Ladies” has won multiple podcasting awards, and was even turned (briefly) into an animated series on Comedy Central.
But Fischer is far from being a one-trick Pammy (superfans around the country are currently shouting “Don’t call her Pammy” right now, which is a quote from Season 3).
Earlier this year she appeared in the high-profile hit “Mean Girls,” a remake of the 2004 high school classic. She played Ms. Heron, mother to the main character, Cady (Angourie Rice, “The Nice Guys”).
That’s just the latest stuff. In between, she tried to recreate her sitcom success by toplining a couple of others. The first, “You, Me and the Apocalypse,” put her back on NBC’s prime time schedule, but it was canceled after one 10-episode season. The second one lasted a little longer: “Splitting Up Together” aired two seasons on ABC from 2018 to 2019.
And “Mean Girls” wasn’t her only big-screen foray, either. She previously appeared in the super-prestigious 2018 drama “The 15:17 to Paris,” directed by the super-prestigious Clint Eastwood (“Million Dollar Baby,” 2004).
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