‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ is Way More Than a Frothy Rom-Com for Its Stars

Hulu’s Four Weddings and a Funeral begins in much the same way as the 1994 original, with its star waking up and yelling the f-bomb. And much like the film, Mindy Kaling‘s new series follows how a beguiling American woman’s journey to the UK upends the status quo within a tight-knit friend group there. However, for all its Richard Curtis references, the new Four Weddings and a Funeral is still trying to be its own thing. Set in the diverse metropolitan of London, we now see a ensemble cast of all sorts of stymied lovers trying to find themselves, as well as their one and only.

Rebecca Rittenhouse plays Ainsley, a gorgeous American expat who finds her picture perfect life falling apart by the end of Episode 1. She told Decider during Summer TCA press tour that it’s the show’s diversity that lends its storytelling its potency. In fact, when asked if romantic comedies can lead people astray from what real love looks like, Rittenhouse said, “I think what’s nice about the original and what we see in this is that we’re seeing more different types of relationships, interracial relationships, queer relationships, and so I think that happens less and less.”

“I also think that it’s not necessarily always a negative to show people being in love and just enjoying each other’s company and doing crazy romantic things. We all kind of live for that. We live for love. But I think the nice thing about Four Weddings [and a Funeral] is that it tries to show that in a more diverse way and in a more diverse setting,” Rittenhouse added.

Four Weddings and a Funeral is indeed striving to reclaim and resuscitate the romantic comedy for a new generation. “It’s kind of gone away,” star Nathalie Emmanuel, who plays Maya, told Decider when asked about the genre. “And I love the fact that Mindy saw that kind of gap and was like, ‘We need to do that.'”

Kaling didn’t just want to make a standard reboot of Richard Curtis’s classic film. As she told a room full of journalists at TCA, “I was thinking, ‘Well, what would make it worth it would be to probably show a love story through the lens that I would like to see a love story, which is an African-American woman and a British-Pakistani man falling in love.'” To wit, Maya is an African-American woman rebounding from a disastrous affair and her love interest, Kash (Nikesh Patel) is a British-Pakastani man from Hounslow struggling to find his own path in life.

Emmanuel told Decider, “I think there was also something to be said about women reclaiming the rom-com and writing for women in rom-coms because it’s usually so problematic or disappointing, especially [for] women of color, who aren’t shown a lot of love in this rom-com [genre]. So the fact that Mindy was like, ‘I’m going to do that,’ like it’s fantastic.”

Patel concurred. “Mindy said something really interesting I remember — this is way before we met. I think she was working on A Wrinkle In Time and she was talking about fantasy and she said, ‘As a kid I grew up loving this genre, and it didn’t show me a lot of love back,'” Patel said. “I feel like that resonates a lot if you’re a person of color growing up watching these iconic, celebrated films. It’s why representation is so important. You watch it and they don’t always show you a lot of love back, whereas I think this version of the show shows a lot of love.”

“And she’s written a lot of these great female characters and you can see that through the piece,” Emmanuel added. “Like she really cares about representation with the diversity of the cast, but also just female friendship and how brilliant and fun that can be, the complexities of it, and all of that because you rarely see it on the screen.”

By the end of the first episode of Four Weddings and a Funeral, it’s not Kash and Ainsley who have a swoon-worthy romantic ending, or even Maya and Kash. The truly loving moment is when Ainsley greets a heartbroken Maya at Heathrow Airport with a Love Actually-esque poster board message.

Besides the attention put on friendship, Four Weddings and a Funeral is also trying to say something slightly more modern about romance itself. Kash and Maya don’t necessarily hit it off immediately because of raw chemistry, but a shared anxiety that’s they’ve gone down the wrong path and it’s too late to course correct.

Patel said, “I think that’s a very universal dilemma for people of our…well anyone, but particularly for millennials. And I think there’s something culturally that comes in as well about this sense, rightly or wrongly, [Kash] perceives himself to be bound by a sense of duty to be the breadwinner and the good son. And something happens where he just goes, in kind of a self-destructive way, ‘I can’t do this.'”

Similarly, we watch as Maya just about blows up her own life in New York City, where she’s having an affair with the politician whose campaign she manages, in order to move forward. Nevertheless, the cast of Four Weddings and a Funeral want the general takeaway to be one of joy, not anxiety — because they think we need it right now.

“I think the world needs a bit of light love right now, some warm, fuzzy feelings,” Emmanuel said.

“We don’t need the other thing,” said Patel.

“Yeah, we’ve got enough of the other thing,” said Emmanuel. “So I think it’s a very timely piece about the kind of good stuff in life, and the bad stuff, but how when you have the right friendships, the right people around you, you can hopefully just find your way back to the good stuff eventually.”

The first four episodes of Four Weddings and a Funeral are now available to stream on Hulu. New episodes premiere on Wednesdays. 

Watch Four Weddings and a Funeral on Hulu