Anne Hathaway lobbied hard to bring Julie Andrews back into Genovia’s royal family for “The Princess Diaries 3,” but the effort fell short, and Hathaway says she has made peace with the outcome.
Speaking with Entertainment Tonight after receiving her Disney Legends honor at the D23 Expo, Hathaway confirmed what many fans suspected: the production team pushed Andrews to reprise her role as Queen Clarisse Renaldi before accepting her decision to stay away from the camera. “We did push really hard to see if she would want to do it,” Hathaway said. Still, she left room for a reversal. “If she has a change of heart, we’re down,” she added. “Just anything, really.”
Andrews explained her thinking in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month, framing the choice as less about the franchise and more about where her career stands now. “I think the absolute truth is that I think I’m really past all that now,” she said, noting that her current work centers on writing, podcast recordings and voiceover projects rather than on-camera roles. She stopped short of ruling out involvement entirely but made clear she doesn’t see herself stepping back into the role.
Hathaway, who is reprising Mia Thermopolis as the character transitions into her own reign as Queen of Genovia, described Andrews in reverent terms during her D23 remarks, calling her a steadying presence who taught her about kindness and hard work from their first read-through together at age 17. She said she’d miss Andrews’s humor most on set, describing her former co-star as someone who makes people “feel so safe loving her.”
The film remains in early development at Disney, with Adele Lim directing and a script that has gone through substantial revisions since the project was first announced. Details about plot and additional casting remain closely guarded, though Chris Pine and Robert Schwartzman are expected to reprise their roles as Mia’s love interests from the earlier films. Andrews starred alongside Hathaway in both the 2001 original and its 2004 sequel, a pairing widely credited with anchoring the franchise’s appeal.
