Love Actually stars Joanna Page and Martin Freeman enjoy a surprise reunion on The One Show – 22 YEARS after starring in the iconic film

by

Martin Freeman and Joanna Page, who famously appeared in the movie Love Actually, had a heartwarming reunion on Tuesday’s episode of The One Show, more than two decades after filming the beloved film.

The pair famously starred as film stand-ins John and Judy who started a shy romance together. 

Martin, 54, and Joanna, 49, recently appeared together on The One Show and revealed it had been more than 20 years since they last met.

In the 2003 film, they acted alongside a large cast featuring stars like Martin McCutcheon, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy, and Alan Rickman.

As the show began, host Alex Jones acknowledged it was a special occasion, specifically a reunion of the cast of ‘Love Actually’.

We’re not going to talk about how the couple met, or the roles you both played. But it’s lovely to see Martin relaxing on the sofa with Joanna, isn’t it?

Martin started to say they hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and Joanna finished his thought, estimating it had been around twenty years.

‘Probably 20 odd years. We filmed it in 2002/2003,’ the Sherlock star said.

Joanna explained that she was getting married in 2003 and therefore couldn’t attend the film’s premiere. She hadn’t seen it when it was first released, about twenty years ago.

Gavin and Stacey’s Martin joked that they hadn’t aged a bit, and then playfully suggested they’d actually gotten younger.

Joanna was talking about her new BBC show, Shift the Thrift, while Martin chatted with his co-star, Molly Belle Wright, about their new murder mystery movie, Flavia.

That heartwarming movie from 2003, which weaves together multiple stories that all connect during the holidays, has become a beloved Christmas tradition.

Director Richard Curtis explained that he cut two scenes from the film – one showing a lesbian couple and another taking place in Kenya – because they didn’t quite work with the overall story and were making the movie too long.

A poignant scene, unfortunately cut from the final version, showed the strict headmistress, portrayed by Anne Reid, arriving home to care for her partner, Geraldine (played by Frances de la Tour), who was seriously ill.

This couple has a connection to Karen, a character played by Emma Thompson, because her son went to the same school where Anne Reid’s character was employed.

Recently, Richard revealed that he thought Love Actually was a disaster after he finished filming.

The 68-year-old director admitted he doubted the film would succeed and nearly stopped editing it, fearing it just wasn’t coming together.

The creator of Four Weddings and a Funeral recently shared with Radio Times that the team believed Love Actually was a failed project for several months during the editing process.

The director explained that the idea of setting ‘Love Actually’ at Christmas didn’t come to him until about halfway through writing the script. He was trying to figure out a way to bring all the different storylines together at the same moment.

Richard admitted he now finds it funny how passionately people feel about one of his well-known movies.

He shared that in his new animated movie, That Christmas on Netflix, there’s a funny scene where kids complain about being forced to watch a dull Christmas movie—and it’s revealed to be Love Actually.

He explained that he expected the film to include a scene from a classic, old American movie, possibly something like ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ from the 1940s or 50s.

I arrived that day and found the children were watching what everyone calls the ‘boring Christmas movie’ – they were actually watching ‘Love Actually’.

After finishing his recent film, Richard realized a pattern: all his movies are surprisingly similar. He was taken aback when he started seeing the connections between some of his biggest works.

Read More

2026-04-07 23:06