Meg Ryan plotted Hollywood return during Covid-19 pandemic

Meg Ryan is returning to the big screen. Photo / Getty Images

Meg Ryan plotted her return to Hollywood after being sent the script for What Happens Later during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Sleepless In Seattle star is returning to the big screen for the first time in eight years with the new movie about two former lovers trapped in an airport with the actor starring opposite David Duchovny and also directing the picture - and she’s revealed it all came about while she was stuck at home in 2020.

In a chat with Interview magazine - believed to have been given before the Hollywood actors’ strike - Ryan explained: “They sent me the script, which was a first or second draft by the playwright [Steven Dietz], based on a play called Shooting Star. I had just moved to California at the beginning of the pandemic and it was this big collective pause, so that script got me thinking about what was happening in the world, how we were all kind of put under a glass.

“I started working on it and over the course of a year-and-a-half, the script evolved and David came on. We got to know each other over these Zoom calls and some of those conversations found their way into the script, too.”

She added of her co-star Duchovny: “I didn’t really know him before. We’d only met a couple of times, maybe 20 years ago. But I remembered, more than all of his other amazing work like The X-Files and Californication, him on The Larry Sanders Show.

“He’s really smart and he’s such a unique kind of funny that we all thought he would be so perfect [in the role].”

Ryan’s last movie was the 2015 drama Ithaca, which she also directed, and she insists she wants to continue directing more films.

She added: “I want to direct again just so I can sit in the chair, because I’m sure there’s a lot of things I missed. I hadn’t done a role in a really long time, but it was fun with David. A lot of it was done in two shots. I’m proud of that. I set up everything beforehand so that once we were there, it was just David and I trying to tell the truth.”