“You know the easiest way to burn the most calories, right, girls?”
My best friend’s mom, whom we called Mary Therese, leaned against the doorframe and didn’t wait for an answer.
My 9-year-old eyes shot up from the Monopoly game board.
“You can burn up to 1500,” she continued.
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“Really?” I inquired, the whole idea going mostly over my head, but nevertheless, I was intrigued.
“You should tell your mother,” Mary Therese nudged.
My mother did what other mothers did ― went to Weight Watchers. And she didn’t talk about sex.
Regina grabbed my hand, her eyes wide with horror.
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“Let’s … go swimming.”
Courtesy of Kerith Mickelson
The author (right) and Regina in the pool in Phoenix in 1978.
Mary Therese was born in 1940 and died in 2022. I just found her funeral card tucked in the back of my underwear drawer.
If Regina was embarrassed about her mom, she didn’t need to be. I thought Mary Therese walked on water, even though she sometimes didn’t get out of bed during the day, and one time she went to the hospital because she’d gotten too sad.
That afternoon at the Monopoly board was in 1978. There was an awesome rhythm to our lives then. It was the middle of a summer filled with Marco Polo, bike rides to Circle K, playing Spit, and trying out the newest gadget on the block ― the microwave. Regina and I took turns spending the night at each other’s houses, oblivious to the idea that accidents could happen and that days that were entirely predictable could, in an afternoon, explode into shards.
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One Saturday, Regina’s dad left to give a flying lesson in his small plane, and he didn’t come back. They crashed into North Mountain, just down the street from our neighborhood.
How could that be? I wondered. We were just playing. We were just feeding peanut butter to Regina’s dog, Rags.
Courtesy of Kerith Mickelson
Mary Therese Doyle in 1958.
Mary Therese — suddenly a widow at 38 and a little shaky as it was — was left to raise four children under 14 on her own. She decided to move the family to Ohio, and I was devastated as I watched Regina’s bed and dresser and bathing suits and board games being loaded into a moving van.
My childhood was over in an instant. For a year, Regina and I wrote a million letters back and forth.
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Then we didn’t. Years passed.
Two decades later, I was living in Uzbekistan, teaching English and fixing my heart, which had been broken by a divorce. My two-year stint there was almost over and my future was cloudier than when I’d arrived. I had nothing to go home to. I’d burned bridges.
One night after dinner, I saw a bright green line flash across my computer screen.
Ker! It’s me, Regina! Where are you? I moved back to Phoenix. Mary Therese is here too. I’m married and I have a baby. I need a friend!
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Memories blew in like a monsoon. I saw two little girls rollerskating in matching red, white and blue swimsuits in the Mormon church parking lot. I saw them humming songs underwater, attempting “Name That Tune” until they ran out of breath and had to race to the pool’s surface. I saw them playing softball under bright lights ― me as the catcher and Reg on second, hoping to get somebody out on the steal. I don’t think we ever did.
The heart of 9-year-old me tugged in my chest.
Regina was looking for me.
Courtesy of Kerith Mickelson
The author (left) and Regina at Disneyland in 1978.
I started to count the days until we’d be reunited.
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Three months later, I was sweating on the doorstep of the address Regina had sent me.
Do I ring the bell? Will I recognize her? How old is Mary Therese?
A dog barked. Then another dog. I heard a small child. Fumbling. Female voices. Bee Gees on the TV.
Regina swung open the door.
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“Ker!” she exclaimed with a plump little toddler balanced neatly on her hip.
We giggled, looking around, when in sailed Mary Therese, white haired and lovely looking.
“Little Keri Dresser. Now let me get a look at you,” she said.
Wine glasses appeared, and within two minutes, 20 years vanished as we plotted out the next 20 ― which Regina and Mary Therese determined would include a great man for me.
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“Time to start burning calories,” Regina winked. We all laughed.
I blushed under their attentive eyes.
Regina insisted on helping me with reentry into American culture. She patiently drove us around and listened to my complaints about there being too many SUVs and too much to choose from on the store shelves. We celebrated her new pregnancy.
Courtesy of Kerith Mickelson
Mary Therese at her favorite restaurant in Cave Creek, Arizona, in 2017.
When my savings ran out, I found a job teaching at a small charter school in the desert. I fell in love with the first and second graders. After just two years there, they made me the principal. I was totally overwhelmed.
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I discussed it over wine with Mary Therese and Regina one evening.
“It sounds like you need a good secretary,” Mary Therese said, smiling mischievously. “I’ll do it.”
“Really?” I gulped. Was she up to it? Little charter schools come with their own breed of large problems. Still, I loved Mary Therese, and the thought of her working alongside me was exciting.
When her mom left, Regina sat across from me, face ashen.
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“Are you sure about this, Ker?”
I bit my thumbnail. “To be honest, I could use the support.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I wonder if it’s meant to be.”
Ever practical, Regina rolled her eyes.
A month before school started, Mary Therese showed up sporting beautifully done hair and gorgeous pink lipstick. She arrived early, stayed late, whipped the upside-down filing system into shape and color-coded our crumbling trailer. Mary Therese also tackled forms, answered phone calls, learned state mandates, and comforted worried parents. And that was just the first day.
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I didn’t realize I’d been handed a pro.
She made me feel like I might just be able to do this job.
Courtesy of Kerith Mickelson
Mary Therese pretending to surf at Mission Beach in San Diego in 2010.
I called Regina because I couldn’t hold it in. Before I could say a word, she blurted out, “Oh, God, did she not show up?”
“Shit. Was she dressed?”
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“Looked like a million.”
“She’s amazing!” I told Regina. “She’s having so much fun. Meeting all the families — and then the president of the board walked in — you know, Carolyn —”
“Carolyn deDragonlady?”
There was silence on the other end.
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“Your mother’s a miracle, Reg.”
What does someone say when the person who broke once — who crumbled to dust when you were 9 years old and has spent a lifetime trying to pick up the pieces for you — becomes the strongest one in the room at age 70?
“Phew,” is what Regina said, and then went on to proudly tell me about her mom’s employment at University of Ohio’s medical clinic, one of the leading research and practice institutions during the ’80s. Once Mary Therese had gotten her bearings after Hank’s death, she’d simultaneously served as the clinic’s office manager, director’s secretary, human relations go-to, and staff social worker.
I hung up the phone and lifted my eyes to the water stains and blinking lights in the cracked ceiling above me. All I saw was grace. Mary Therese had given me this huge gift and asked for nothing in return.
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Courtesy of Kerith Mickelson
The author (right) and Regina at Mary Therese’s funeral.
The rest of the year unfolded in amazing ways. Enrollment grew. The kids were loved by the best school secretary/nurse in the world.
A couple of years later, Mary Therese and I both left school administration. She went traveling. I got married to a man she and Regina manifested.
I don’t pretend to know what the afterlife may hold. All I can say is this: If there is any sense in creation, Mary Therese is decluttering heaven while holding hands tightly with Regina’s dad — never having to let go again. And she’s holding the rest of us steady — with love. And perfect hair and pink lipstick.
Kerith Mickelson is a freelance writer and high school English teacher. When she’s not playing darts and cooking with her three kids and husband, she leads yoga and tai chi classes. On weekends, she coordinates skateboard events for foster kids. She writes about memory, motherhood, illness, and faith, sometimes rooted in Catholic ideas, sometimes Buddhist, sometimes drawing on images of everyday beauty in family and the fragility that comes with loving deeply. Her writing is featured in Notre Dame Magazine and Her View From Home. Her work also earned honorable mention in the 2024 Writer’s Digest Writing Contest in the spiritual writing category. Connect with her on her website.
When Brandon Herrera ran for Congress in 2024, the Republican Jewish Coalition called him “a goose-stepping extremist” and spent big to take him down. Two years later, he’s the presumptive GOP nominee — and his former foes are staying home as the GOP establishment moves to embrace him.
But now, a scandal forced Gonzales to drop out of the runoff, and Herrera is the GOP nominee in the sprawling, GOP-leaning Texas border district, which President Donald Trump carried by a 17-point margin in 2024.
AIPAC, which backs both Democratic and Republican pro-Israel candidates and usually focuses its efforts in primaries, has not endorsed in the race. AIPAC spokesperson Deryn Sousa said in a statement only that the group would “continue to assess where candidates across the country stand on issues that affect the U.S.-Israel partnership.”
And the RJC, which only supports Republican candidates, won’t get involved. “The RJC has a longstanding policy of speaking out against those who traffic in Nazi ideology, and this is another case,” said RJC political director and spokesperson Sam Markstein. “The RJC opposed Mr. Herrera in 2024, and he will not get our support now.”
But Markstein made clear it was likely they would sit the race out rather than oppose him in the general election. “We’ve never supported a Democrat, so that should tell you everything you need to know,” he said.
In the weeks since Herrera finished as the top vote-getter in Texas’ March 4 primary and Gonzales dropped out, the GOP establishment has largely embraced Herrera.
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Last week, as lawmakers and donors socialized during a glitzy Mar-a-Lago fundraiser for the House Freedom Caucus, which backed him in the primary, Herrera made a triumphant appearance, according to an attendee granted anonymity to detail a private event and another attendee’s post on social media. Trump announced his endorsement on social media the same night.
“Brandon is strongly supported by many Highly Respected MAGA Warriors in Texas, and Republicans in the US House,” Trump wrote. “HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
Speaker Mike Johnson and House GOP leadership followed a week later, calling him an “America First grassroots leader” in a joint statement Thursday.
Trump’s endorsement brings “a little bit of comfort” to pro-Israel GOP donors who view Trump as a loyal ally, said Gabriel Groisman, a Florida-based GOP donor active in pro-Israel circles. “We trust the president and his team in their vetting of congressional candidates,” Groisman said. “But it doesn’t mean we don’t ask questions and we don’t dig further.”And Groisman said that the “ugly truth about politics” is Jewish Republican donors are now faced with the option of him or a Democrat, rather than another Republican. “So the question is whether it’s better to have him in [office], or not. That’s a very, very difficult question to answer.”
He has also been critical of U.S. policy toward Israel, arguing American taxpayers should not have to pay for military aid to Israel. We shouldn’t be spending a cent of taxpayer dollars on anything that is not either an investment or right here in the United States,” he said in a speech, Israel National News reported. “I don’t hate my neighbor just because I don’t want to pay his power bill. If they want to buy rockets from us, let’s sell to them.”
Republicans’ embrace of Herrera shows how seriously the GOP values maintaining control of the House this cycle, even as some Republicans warn of growing antisemitism within their own ranks.
“The accusations against Brandon were bizarre and false, manufactured by a desperate political opponent who misleadingly cut and pasted together disparate video clips,” Herrera campaign manager Kimmie Gonzalez said in a statement.
Groisman, the Florida-based donor, said Herrera’s allies are working to assuage concerns about his past statements through outreach to Jewish and pro-Israel donors in Texas and beyond.
“They’re trying to send them what he has actually said, versus what people say he said, which they seem to claim that there’s a big delta there,” Groisman said. “The concern is, are we, as a Republican Party, allowing in another potential Thomas Massie-type figure? Nobody knows the answer to that question.” Massie, a Republican member of the House from Kentucky, has been an outspoken critic of Trump and Israel.
Herrera’s campaign confirmed he is looking for dialogue with those same groups that have attacked him for years — including the RJC.
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Katie Padilla Stout, the Democratic nominee in the district, has said that Herrera has “consistently been on the wrong side of history,” citing content from his YouTube videos that mocked veterans and another video in which he tested Nazi weaponry. Padilla Stout has started to make allegations of antisemitism core to her attacks on her Republican opponent, as outside Democratic groups — like the House Majority PAC — use his past videos as attacks.
“Given his documented history of apparent anti-semitism, it’s no surprise our campaign has received an outpouring of support from people from all across the district and from both sides of the aisle, including support from the Jewish community,” Padilla Stout’s campaign manager, Yolitzma Aguirre, said in a statement.
Some of the Republican officeholders who have warned loudly about growing antisemitism within their party dodged when asked about Herrera.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who denounced podcaster Nick Fuentes as a “goose-stepping Nazi” during a speech last week, has stayed out of the primary, even as he endorsed in other U.S. House races in his state. He said questions about Herrera’s statements or actions should be directed to Herrera himself.
“I haven’t seen the video you’re discussing, and so you’re welcome to ask him those questions,” Cruz said in a brief interview last week.
When asked how he would advise Texas voters to cast their ballot in Herrera’s race, Cruz refused to answer. “Those are the exact same questions a Democrat tracker would ask,” Cruz said before walking away. His office declined to elaborate on his answers.
While Republicans circle the wagons or duck the topic, a Jewish Democratic group that rarely plays in districts like this is thinking about investing in trying to defeat Herrera.
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The Jewish Democratic Council of America is considering getting involved in the heavily Republican district, which would deviate from their norm of engaging only in districts with significant Jewish voter populations.
“If there was ever a chance that a Democrat could win a seat like this, maybe it’s in these midterms,” said JDCA president Hailie Soifer. “So it is something we’re looking at. Certainly it is a priority for us to defeat Trump-endorsed neo-Nazis, like this candidate.”
When I was 14 years old, I wrote my first letter to My Future Husband. Over the course of six years, I wrote more than 100 similar letters, with the intent of one day sharing them with my God-ordained groom.
While perhaps an overachiever in this endeavour, I was certainly not alone. Many young women raised in evangelical Christianity in the 90s and 2000s were heavily influenced by “purity culture”, an evangelical movement promoting sexual abstinence until marriage, modesty and traditional gender roles.
Purity Culture mandated a shift away from casual dating and toward dating with the express intention of a swift and Christ-centred marriage, especially for girls.
I absorbed the high value placed on my role as a future bride, and I tasked myself with fulfilling that role as quickly and expertly as possible.
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When I was a little girl, my grandmother sewed me a child-sized wedding dress. It was white with a train, lace trim, pearls and a veil with a blusher.
With the perfect costume, I spent hours playing Bride in the living room: walking down the aisle, standing by the hearth and kissing an imaginary man the way I secretly spied women kissing men on daytime soaps when my mum didn’t know I was looking.
I would run around in the back yard making up songs about being a woman, being a bride, having a wedding day. I even wore the dress as a Halloween costume a couple of times, much to my little brother’s dismay – what if people mistook him as the groom?!
It’s not out of the ordinary for a kid to engage in imaginary play, whether that’s dressing up as a princess or teaching math to a class of stuffed animals. But, for me, the fantasy was more than playing dress up. As the white polyblend zipped up over my shoulders, I felt I was accepting a mantle of great power.
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In my imagination, being a bride was synonymous with being visible, honoured and adored. If I were a bride, I would have acrylic French tips like my mum, a 1.5-inch curling iron like my big sister and a man who would look at me the way Captain Von Trapp looks at Maria in the gazebo. (This is still the epitome of romance to me.)
On the wide spectrum of childhoods, I had a pretty good one. I had parents who loved me and did their best with the tools available to them. Some parts of my story are pretty standard-issue teen stuff. As a chubby preteen of the aughts, I shopped in the Dillard’s women’s section, mowed my unibrow with a disposable razor twice a week, and struggled against my naturally curly hair with a Wet 2 Straight hair straightener. I can still hear and smell the sizzle of the iron on my damp, Pantene-scented curls.
But other parts of my story, while also common, are less relatable to a lot of people. For instance, for the first 18 years of my life, I was at church no less than three days per week learning that it was my personal responsibility to rescue my non-Christian classmates from the jaws of hell due to an unseen spiritual war that was *literally* being waged all around me.
Still another part of my story is, thankfully, relatable to very few. When I was five years old, my little brother nearly died of liver failure, kickstarting a lifetime of physical, mental and emotional health crises that ricocheted throughout my family, shaped my childhood and still echo in the present.
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I outgrew the little white dress, but not the fantasy of marriage. This fantasy was reinforced by religious teachings that emphasised the importance of marriage, purity and obedience to God and to one’s husband.
I was trying to manage many things that were fully out of my control, within the context of a high-control, patriarchal religion, which left me feeling powerless and afraid and in need of an escape. And in my world, marriage was power. Marriage was purpose. At least for girls, marriage was agency.
As far as fantasies go, this was an achievable one! Most of the adults I knew were married, so why not me? This was surely my calling. This would surely be the end to the chaos, the uncertainty, the victimhood.
So, when I was 14, I wrote my first letter to My Future Husband. It was intended to be read by the lucky man on our wedding night. Predictably, I waxed on about my virginal purity and the “special gift” I’d been saving for him. It is extremely cringeworthy.
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The 14-year-old version of me then continued to write an obsessive amount of letters to her Future Husband over six years. Eventually, I stopped writing the letters, put them in storage, and largely forgot about them.
Until 16 years later when, married but no longer an Evangelical Christian, I started reading them out loud to my actual husband – along with an audience of strangers on the internet.
Photo Courtesy Of Abigail Freshley
Abigail and Zach, married June 2024
At 30 – after a decade of faith deconstruction and much-needed therapy – I am married to a great man. Though the 14-year-old version of myself would be disappointed to know that my actual wedding night with my husband, Zach, was spent counting the cash from our wedding cards, eating some chocolate strawberries and promptly passing out.
No one’s hymen was broken. No purity was “given”. We simply snuggled into the deep, dreamless sleep of two people who loved each other deeply and had already shared a bed together for years.
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When Zach and I found the letters in an old box of my things at my parents’ home, I knew we had to do something with them. After reading one or two on our own, I had the idea to record myself reading one of the letters to Zach for the first time and post it on TikTok.
So far, I’ve read 38 letters online, which has been equal parts excruciating and liberating. The content ranges from salacious gossip about my friends, to opining about my lonely condition as a single 15-year-old, to writing veritable fanfiction about a young couple at my church.
Inspired by a particular scene of Cory and Topanga from one of the later seasons of Boy Meets World, I imagined a young couple at my church to be poverty-stricken but in love – reduced to “eating chicken salad sandwiches on the floor of their living room”.
I finish my story with the declaration: “Fast forward 10 years … that will be us.” This had Zach and I both doubled over and gasping for air.
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I figured the goofy letters might resonate with some folks online, but I had no idea how much. Countless women in the comments of my videos have shared similar stories and experiences. I was shocked to find out just how many people burn their old journals and husband letters.
Burning seems excessive to me, but hey – your letters, your choice to perform a sacramental bonfire, am I right?
Many followers have thanked me for the “bravery” of sharing a bit of my story. While I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t actually think reading the letters online is all that brave. I think the brave person in this story is the teenager who found a way to survive far more than she should have had to handle, and who survived deconstructing a belief system that supported her entire identity and worldview. The bravest thing I’ve ever done is heal.
And every time we share a letter online, a little bit more healing happens. We laugh until our stomachs hurt and we gasp at the melodramatic high school tales I’ve gifted myself from the past. The sweetest irony is that I originally meant these letters to be a way for me to connect with My Future Husband … and they are! Just not remotely in the way I imagined.
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In retrospect, the letters were misguided, but this journey has given me deep compassion and empathy for the young woman who wrote them.
She grew from a teenage girl whose wildest fantasy for her future was having a husband to obey to a woman who knows that being a wife is the least interesting thing about her.
If you grew up anything like me, especially if you’re working to deconstruct your harmful internalised beliefs – I hope this series also reminds you that there’s so much more power, agency and purpose in life than being someone’s wife.
I initially shared my letters to My Future Husband online because I was hoping to make you laugh, but the best outcome I could hope for is to also help you heal.
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Abigail Freshley is a writer, reader, podcast host and social media over-sharer based in Los Angeles. She reflects on her evangelical upbringing, love of books and obsession with her dog, Bonnie, on Instagram and TikTok.
A former senior US government official has said Donald Trump is “in a panic” because the Iran war is not progressing as he had hoped.
Karen von Hippel, who spent nearly six years as a senior adviser in the Department of State’s bureau on counter-terrorism, spoke out after Trump threatened to “obliterate” Iranian power plants if the Strait of Hormuz is not re-opened within 48 hours.
That came barely a day after he said America was preparing to “wind down” its operations in the region.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show, von Hippel cast doubt on whether the US president would actually go through with his latest threat.
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She said: “It’s certainly not the first time we’ve heard him make ultimatums that he doesn’t act on. We’ve heard that throughout this entire term so far.
“I think he’s in a bit of a panic because he thought the war would go better than it has.
“Just as he said ‘we’re winding it down’, they’re sending thousands of Marines over and the Israelis say they’re going to ramp it up over the next few weeks, so it’s hard to know what’s going on.”
Around one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran has been attacking tankers trying to use it since the war began three weeks ago.
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That has led to a spike in the price of oil, triggering a potential global economic crisis as energy costs soar.
In a pist on Truth Social, Trump said: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”
Communities secretary Steve Reed refused to be drawn on whether the UK government agreed with the president.
He told Sky News: “I think you need to ask President Trump about the things that President Trump is talking about.”
And this week, sexologist and therapist Sofie Roos has shared the concerns menopausal women most often bring to her.
1) Reduced sexual desire
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“Almost all menopausal women I meet during sex therapy bring up their changed lust and/or decreased interest in sex,” Roos told us.
That’s partly because of the hormonal changes that happen during the life stage, including decreases in oestrogen and testosterone.
Then, there are factors like “stress, tiredness, worse sleep quality, and a changed life situation, such as children moving out,” which Roos says are common in menopause.
For some women, that makes “lust less intense, and it can feel difficult to get as turned on as before”. And for others, it can create a general loss of desire.
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2) Vaginal dryness and discomfort
Vaginal dryness is a common symptom of menopause. It can make penetrative sex “uncomfortable and, for some, even painful,” the sexologist shared.
“Decreased oestrogen levels additionally affect vaginal tissue, [which] gets thinner and less elastic, which also can lead to discomfort.”
That can create a fear of sex, which, in turn, decreases drive further, she added.
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3) Changes in body image and self-esteem
Often, menopause changes people’s body composition. Roos said that the people she speaks to about menopause often notice changes to their self-esteem and body image as a result.
This “tends to lead to women feeling less attractive and less sensual, which often negatively affects how we feel in intimate situations, leading to one avoiding sex.”
4) Difficulty getting aroused and orgasming
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Hormone changes in menopause might mean some people take longer to “get going” in the bedroom, as their levels of sensitivity change.
Roos has noticed this among her clients. “Some women find themselves in a situation where it takes longer to get turned on, or that [orgasm] feels far away and hard to get, or that it’s less intense than previously,” she shared.
“These are also all normal effects of hormonal changes and reduced blood flow to the genital area, and while it’s completely natural, it can still feel extremely frustrating, especially if you don’t understand why it’s happening.”
5) Relationship changes
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In Roos’ experience, “menopause often happens at the same time as other big life-changing moments.
“Couples who have been together for a long time often face intimacy issues, identity challenges are common, and on top of this, many families go from living with their kids to just being the parents left in the household – all things that already affect their [relationship to] sex.”
What advice does a sexologist have for women in menopause?
Roos said, “My best advice is to normalise what’s happening, and to openly talk about it with your partner”.
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That way, you can largely skip past “shame, misunderstandings and pressure,” and help you to find new solutions.
“Sex during and after menopause tends to need new kinds of physical and emotional stimulation as well as more time than before, so be open to discovering new things and be responsive to how it feels,” she added.
That could mean exploring different kinds of emotional connection, extending foreplay, and/or giving new toys and positions a go.
“A great lube can be a real game changer when experiencing vaginal dryness, and a good vibrator can be what’s needed to be able to orgasm again,” the sexologist continued.
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Then, there’s the “boring” stuff: investing in your relationship, eating healthily, and reducing stress where possible, while exercise “benefits blood flow to the vaginal area, but also improves mood, energy and sleep, which all boost your desire.
“Many women eventually realise that the menopause is a chance [to develop] a more relaxed, easy-going and interesting relationship with sex,” Roos ended.
“The sooner you start seeing the menopause as a chance to make the intimacy something new, the sooner you’ll be able to work [towards having] the best sex of your life after 50!”
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Spring is here at last – the birds are chirping, the bees are buzzing and the sun is just starting to peek through the clouds, teasing us with what’s to come during the summer.
But during this tricky, barely-warming-up time of year, getting your transitional dressing right can be such a pain. And that goes double for your fitness gear, which needs to see you through not just rain or shine, but sweat too.
Whether you’re prepping for April’s showers or May’s flowers, give these fashionable fitness ’fits a look in.
Rugby league is cherished by many of the ‘left behind’ towns that become central to Britain’s electoral politics. But now community clubs are fighting to stay afloat, reports Adam Payne
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In the run-up to Boris Johnson’s red wall landslide in 2019, rugby league found itself in a peculiar position. Its fans, based mostly in northern England, generally regard the London class, its politicians and media, as having little interest in their sport.
To generations of supporters, it is an ignored and underappreciated game, played a long way from the corridors of Westminster in mileage and in mind, in the towns of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria.
“Rugby union has always been the sport of the establishment, the media, Westminster, big businesses, even the Royal Family. Rugby league, like most things in the North, it had to fight just to be heard,” says Anthony Broxton, author of Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher’s Britain.
Naturally, then, there was some bemusement when, in autumn 2019, the spotlight of British politics landed on the Cumbrian coast. Onward, the centre-right think tank with close links to the Conservative Party, had declared rugby league towns to be pivotal to that year’s general election. A new voter archetype had been born: Workington Man.
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Will Tanner, one of the brains behind the analysis, who was later chief of staff to Rishi Sunak in No 10, recalls when he and Onward colleague Nick Faith realised that rugby league towns were where key swing voters were hiding.
“When I was listing constituencies we thought would be most important, [Faith] was the one who said nearly all of them are rugby league towns. That was the common denominator, and it was something incredibly resonant and powerful,” Tanner tells The House.
Featherstone Rovers in Yorkshire were not allowed to take part in this season’s competition after falling into administration (Alamy)
Workington Man, set out in Onward’s subsequent report, The Politics of Belonging, was, generally speaking, a retired, non-university-educated male who backed Brexit and valued local pride and security in a fast-changing world. Johnson went on to turn swathes of rugby league towns from Labour red to Conservative blue. Trudy Harrison, the then newly elected Tory MP for Workington’s local rival, Whitehaven, was made his parliamentary private secretary.
Fast forward a few years, and rugby league certainly feels more relevant in Westminster. In Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, the game has a genuine fan in Keir Starmer’s Cabinet; the Wigan MP tells The House it is “very close to my heart”. The same is true of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle.
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The knighting last year of legend Sir Billy Boston sparked tentative hope within the game that rugby league would finally play a bigger part in the national story, and there is optimism that Kevin Sinfield will soon be a knight of the realm after raising millions for Motor Neurone Disease research in memory of his former teammate, Rob Burrow. At Labour Conference in Liverpool in September, MPs and ex-players booted up for a tag war of the roses.
Community and belonging, through those rugby league clubs, was fundamental to how people were thinking
But up in the sport’s traditional heartlands, all is not well.
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At the heart of the Workington Man analysis was voters in rugby league towns feeling that their local areas were crumbling – their high streets, post offices, pubs – leaving them feeling disheartened and disconnected. And perhaps nothing better captures that sense of community identity than the local rugby league club.
“Community and belonging, through those rugby league clubs, were fundamental to how people were thinking,” reflects Tanner.
The liquidation of Halifax in February stunned the town and disturbed the wider game. How could a 153-year-old club, a cherished community asset, simply cease to exist?
“There was so much shock across the community,” says Kate Dearden, Labour MP for Halifax. “To not have rugby in the town was unthinkable for lots of people.”
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Halifax has since returned to the second division under new ownership, albeit with a 12-point deduction, after two weeks of frantic negotiations. It was a “huge, huge relief”, adds Dearden, who says people “travelled miles” to be at the club’s return to the pitch at the start of March.
“It made us sit back and reflect on the importance of rugby league to the town. When you’re so close to losing it – the emotional impact of that on people.”
the town has lost a part of its soul
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Lower league sides like your author’s hometown club, Barrow, have recently been forced to crowdfund to stay afloat due to a lack of home fixtures, while Featherstone has been blocked from entering this season’s competition after falling into administration, leaving the West Yorkshire town without a rugby league team until at least 2027.
“The closure of the club has been really, really bad for morale in the area. Even people who don’t necessarily go to watch the match still think Featherstone Rovers is part of their identity,” says Jon Trickett, Labour MP for Normanton and Hemsworth. “At the moment, the town has lost a part of its soul.”
A local crowdfunding effort, led by the True Blue Revival Group, has raised thousands of pounds in a bid to put the club in a position to enter next season under new ownership. “For some people, [the club] is their whole life,” organisers Gareth Dyas and Jock Higgins recently told the BBC.
Why are heartlands club struggling? David Baines, Labour MP for St Helens North and chair of the Rugby League All-Party Parliamentary Group, says falling crowd numbers, driven in part by cost-of-living pressures, are an important factor.
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“The communities that they represent, smaller towns in the North of England, are struggling areas. They have less money in their pockets to spend,” he explains.
“People have got difficult choices about where their money goes,” he continues. “Twenty years ago, Netflix didn’t exist, Amazon Prime didn’t exist, Apple TV didn’t exist. Plus WiFi, mobile phone costs…. entertainment that isn’t sport, that isn’t leaving the house. Traditional sports, like rugby league, are competing with that.”
Baines also believes the game has struggled in the face of football, which “dominates absolutely everything”, particularly for younger generations.
There is hope that former rugby league player Kevin Sinfield will be knighted after raising millions for MND research (Alamy)
The Labour MP hopes that the government will be persuaded to look again at loans that were granted to rugby league clubs via the Rugby Football League (RFL) to help them survive the pandemic. Of the near £3m owed by Featherstone when it was put into administration, reportedly around £320,000 was Covid loan repayments owed to the Treasury.
“It’s something I’ve heard from clubs and raised with ministers, with Lisa Nandy and Steph Peacock. The APPG has discussed it. It’s something I’d definitely like the government to look at,” he says, floating the idea, for example, of extending the repayment period to ease the financial strain on clubs.
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The RFL’s interim chief executive, Abi Ekoku, says the body was “fully committed to its fiscal responsibility to government” but had suggested to ministers ways “of how best we might balance Covid loan repayment obligations with the need to preserve and upgrade rugby league’s vital community infrastructure”.
He tells The House: “Grassroots rugby league plays a significant anchoring role in many of the UK’s most economically challenged areas. The sport’s social dividend is a very well-known and highly regarded part of Northern England’s social fabric. As such, we are keen to see Covid loan repayments redirected into facilities that help to deliver stability and purpose for the volunteer-led and resource-poor community game”.
Nandy acknowledges that the debt is adding to the problems facing rugby league clubs on “multiple fronts” but says that writing it off altogether is “off the agenda” as government would “have to do it” for other sports. “Forgiving the debt would open the floodgates for other stressed sports,” she says.
In terms of where ministers can help rugby league, Nandy says it must ensure it has “proper systems and governance in place going forwards, that they can act as a cohesive unit and that they can maximise the broadcast revenue that is available”.
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She adds that she has been “working closely with a number of the clubs” and talking regularly to the figures in the game to support a plan to “pool their resources so that they get better broadcasters”. The amount of Sky TV money that goes to rugby league clubs has fallen significantly in recent years.
Speaking to The House in a personal capacity, pundit and former player Brian Carney said there had to be stronger checks and balances on rugby league club owners (Alamy)
Brian Carney, TV pundit and former player, is one of the game’s most vocal proponents of reform. Speaking to The House in a personal capacity, he says the RFL governing body ought to shoulder blame for not stepping in earlier to stop “avoidable” club disasters.
“What I’d like to see is them [the RFL] getting ahead of these problems, because some of them you can see galloping at you, clear as day,” he says, pointing to players being paid salaries that clubs cannot afford.
Salford recently had to be revived under a new name after being wound up late last year with debts of over £700,000. Carney argues there needs to be stronger checks and balances, whether it be a more proactive RFL or greater government involvement, to address problems before they escalate rather than “after the fact”.
He suggests that English rugby league may ultimately require oversight like the new football regulator to protect the long-term sustainability of clubs. Reckless owners must take some blame when clubs fall into crisis, he says, but “they needed to have harnesses put on them as, otherwise, as in any other sport, they’ll just run amok, and true fans will be left to pick up the pieces”.
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I’ve lived through a dozen or so so-called apocalypses facing the game
Despite the challenges, the rugby league community is defiant. “Featherstone will rise again,” declares Trickett.
Baines says: “I’ve lived through a dozen or so so-called apocalypses facing the game. These headlines have been written a lot since 1895 [when rugby league was founded] by people who want to see the game fail… It is facing challenges, but so does every sport in this country.”
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He adds: “Rugby league will still be here in 50 years, 100 years. It will always survive because it’s a great sport to watch, to play, and it’s embedded in communities and loved by hundreds of thousands of people up and down the country.”
Dearden says the speed at which her local community was able to bring Halifax back to life demonstrated the resilience of rugby league fans: “From the get-go, as soon as the news was announced, it was, ‘How do we save our club?’”
Hull KR recently defeated Australia’s Brisbane Broncos to become world champions (Alamy)
There are other reasons for optimism. Crowds are up in the game’s premier division, the Super League, and the early success of York, Bradford and Toulouse’s admission to the league suggests that the contentious franchise model, which determines who plays in the game’s highest bracket, may be starting to bear fruit. Hull, home to the league and world champions, Hull KR, is a fervent rugby league city. KR, Leeds, Warrington and Wigan have played to large crowds in Las Vegas this year and last.
But there is also widespread recognition that if the game is to survive at its lower echelons, then things cannot continue as they are. “There needs to be some deep thinking about how we build community clubs that have a sustainable future. Government should be thinking about this,” says Trickett.
Does the answer lie overseas? There are talks over Australian investment in the English game, which advocates in the northern hemisphere say would bring not just desperately needed cash but expertise that is sorely lacking. While rugby league struggles for national profile in Britain, it is one of the biggest sports in Australia, centred on the National Rugby League (NRL) – brutally demonstrated in Australia’s demolition of England last year.
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Peter V’landys, NRL head, has claimed in rather Trumpian terms that the English game is “heading for a train crash” without new money. “The answers don’t presently lie within,” says Carney. He believes that, ultimately, rugby league heartlands will only be lifted out of their struggles when the sport as a whole is more popular.
“It’s not relevant enough for enough people,” he puts it bluntly. “You can send development officers into schools anywhere in the world to promote a particular sport, but unless those kids are seeing it week in, week out, day in, day out, on TV, on billboards, on magazines, online, [players] modelling clothes or boots, it’s irrelevant. If we can raise the profile of the elite-level competition, all those people working at the grassroots level have an easier job selling the game.”
Baines says the English game would “be daft not to want to explore how we can work together” with Australia, but stresses that it would have to be for “the whole health of the game, from the community game upwards”. According to Broxton, rugby league must be better at telling its story: resistance, survival, “doing things differently”.
“In an age where authenticity is everything, rugby league already has the most powerful asset in sport – a genuine story. All it has to do is own it.”
Given the overwhelming amount of sleep advice out there, it can be hard to define what “good” sleep actually means, never mind how to achieve it.
But a white paper from Vitality and The London School of Economics and Political Science has suggested that two numbers – “7-1” – provide a way to “distil the science into a simple rule of thumb”.
What is the “7-1” rule?
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The approach, which they estimate could add up to four years to your life and boost the economy, is simple: “aim for seven hours of sleep per night, anchored to a consistent bedtime and falling asleep within a one-hour window (half an hour on either side)”.
Though not included in the name, they added, sticking to this rule at least five nights a week is key to seeing the benefits.
Some previous research has found that sleep consistency is a better indicator of mortality risk than sleep duration. This paper said that falling asleep consistently within a one-hour window lowers mortality risk by 31% and in-hospital admissions by 9%.
Meanwhile, seven hours of sleep is linked to better cognitive performance and mental health among older and middle-aged adults.
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Currently, the paper adds, only about 10% of us are believed to meet this standard, which they linked to four additional years of life and “a higher quality of health” throughout.
“Even if one in four poor sleepers were to shift to this sleep pattern, the potential gains would be substantial: reduced healthcare utilisation and costs, improved workplace productivity, and a measurable reduction in premature mortality.”
Donald Trump has warned Iran the United States will “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz is re-opened within 48 hours.
The US president issued the ultimatum in an angry post on Truth Social.
Around one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran has been attacking tankers trying to use it since the war began three weeks ago.
That has led to a spike in the price of oil, triggering a potential global economic crisis as energy costs soar.
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Trump said: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”
It came just a day after Trump said America was preparing to “wind down” its operations in Iran.
In another Truth Social post on Friday, he said: “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran.”
He said the Strait of Hormuz “will have to be guarded and policed”, but said that responsibility would fall on other countries which rely on it for their oil supply.
Iranian long-range missiles now have the capability of hitting London, Keir Starmer has been warned.
It comes after Tehran targeted Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands, 3,800 kilometres from Iran’s capital, with two missiles.
One was intercepted by a US warship, with the other failing in flight.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said that showed Iran is now able to target major European capitals
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“We have been saying it: the Iranian terrorist regime poses a global threat,” they said. “Now, with missiles that can reach London, Paris or Berlin.”
Diego Garcia houses a joint UK-US military base, and has has been used as a launchpad for American operations in the Middle East for years.
It has a large airfield, major fuel storage facilities, radar installations and a deep-water port and is home to about 2,500 mostly American personnel.
Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper condemned the “reckless” Iranian attack, but insisted the UK was not involved in America’s “offensive” strikes on Tehran.
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She said: “We want to see as swift as possible a resolution to this conflict. Our approach to this conflict has been the same throughout.
“We were not and continue not to be involved in offensive action, and we’ve taken a different view from the US and Israel on this.
“But we are supporting defensive action to support our interests. That includes recognising Iran’s escalating threats to international shipping, as well as their threats to our Gulf partners.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said it was time for Starmer to “come clean”.
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She said: “Now we find out, from the media and not the prime minister, that the British base on Diego Garcia has been the target of Iranian missile attacks.
“As we saw with Peter Mandelson, Starmer’s first instinct is always to cover up the truth.
“On Wednesday he attacked me at PMQs for calling for the proper defence of our bases, now we learn that as he did so our base in the Chagos Islands was being targeted by Iran.
“The prime minister needs to immediately come clean about the details of this latest attack on British troops and explain why the public weren’t informed sooner.”
This time 15 years ago, some sceptics were seriously still carrying on that tiresome debate about whether a female-led comedy would actually be funny when Bridesmaids arrived on the scene.
Naysayers were more than proven wrong when the comedy came out, and not only made audiences around the world howl with laughter, but became producer Judd Apatow’s highest-grossing film, taking more than £220 million at the box office.
But it wasn’t just the audiences that were won over by the tale of enduring female friendship (and bodily functions). Bridesmaids was also nominated for the Best Musical Or Comedy prize at the Golden Globes, and even earned two Oscar nods, for Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s writing and Melissa McCarthy’s performance.
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To mark the movie’s 15th anniversary, the cast (minus Wendy McLendon-Covey, sadly) reunited at the 2026 Academy Awards, giving Bridesmaids fans the world over the urge to rewatch our favourite messy comedy – and sing along to Hold On with Annie and pals.
As many of us revisit the hit movie, we’re taking a peek behind the scenes, and it sounds like it was about as much fun to make as it is to watch.
Here are 23 facts you might not have known about how Bridesmaids came together…
It took five years for Bridesmaids to make it off the page and onto the screen
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Bridesmaids celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2026
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Getting Bridesmaids to the big screen was certainly not a quick and easy task.
The first table read took place in 2007, with Bridesmaids finally appearing on director Paul Feig’s desk five years after he first heard about it. As he put it, the film saved his career.
“In 2010, I was at a low point,” he told Luxury London. “I was directing internet commercials for Macy’s. I was thinking ‘what am I doing with my career?’. Then I got a call out of the blue saying ‘that wedding movie’ is going to happen.”
Paul cites the film as a “game changer” in terms of his filmmaking, because it took him out of movie jail after the commercial failures of I Am David and Unaccompanied Minors.
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Bridesmaids almost had a very different title
Producer Judd Apatow wasn’t originally sold on the film’s title, worried it would put off male cinemagoers.
“To get guys in, we were just going to call it Naked Boobs And Guns, but we didn’t have either one of those things, so we changed it,” Kristen joked to Collider. “We actually had a really hard time, trying to think of the title, to be honest. It was hard.”
In fact, it was nearly called Maid Of Honour, until one of the producers’ friends named his own film that title.
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Director Paul Feig and producer Judd Apatow behind the scenes of Bridesmaids in the early 2010s
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Several comedy actors almost played Megan, the character who propelled Melissa McCarthy to international fame
It’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else in the role of Melissa McCarthy’s boisterous Megan, but a few different people were also in the frame to take on the character, with Paul Feig even claiming that Megan was the most auditioned-for role in the cast.
Speaking to BuzzFeed in 2012, Busy Phillips revealed she was considered for the role, having previously worked with Judd Apatow on the short-lived show Freaks And Geeks.
“The part wasn’t defined necessarily as one thing [when I auditioned],” she recalled. “I was doing a very specific take on it, and they really liked it. But I think, ultimately, Miss McCarthy is perfect in that movie.”
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As well as Busy, Rebel Wilson also auditioned for the part, although she ultimately landed the role of Annie’s roommate, Brynn.
It was actually Kristen Wiig who pointed Bridesmaids’ director towards her friend Melissa McCarthy, who at the time was still best known for Gilmore Girls and Mike & Molly
Melissa McCarthy earned an Oscar nomination for her stand-out performance as Megan in Bridesmaids
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Paul Feig told Glamour in 2020: “[Megan] came in and her take on the character was so different than anyone else that it took me a good 10 seconds to even realise what she was doing.”
In a 2011 interview, Paul admitted he was initially unsure why she was playing the character as a “lesbian” doing “weird sex stuff”, before realising he was actually watching a genius at work.
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“The mistake a lot of people make in casting is they get so tied to the words and the character they wrote that they don’t see when somebody is better than what they have on the page,” he claimed.
Melissa McCarthy drew inspiration from an unexpected source when putting together her characterisation of Megan in Bridesmaids
She said: “I wanted to do the shirt, the Kangol. Every scene, I would have my glasses on the back of my head.”
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Unfortunately for the actor (and maybe the audience), the production team reined her in, and stopped her from looking too much like the Food Network star.
“I tried for a long time to convince them to let me wear short, white, spiky hair, and they were like, ‘You can’t actually be Guy Fieri’,” she laughed.
Oh, and if you didn’t know – Melissa McCarthy shares the screen with her real-life husband in Bridesmaids
Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy in January 2019
“Air Marshall Jon” is played by Ben Falcone, with whom Melissa has been married since 2005.
He has also made cameos in almost all of Melissa’s films, including Identity Thief, Spy, The Heat and Can You Ever Forgive Me?.
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Bridesmaids was largely improvised by the cast
While Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo put together a hilarious script, with six Groundlings alum on set, there was always going to be some improvisation in the mix, too.
“I’ll be honest, I can’t remember what was scripted and what came out in improv anymore,” Maya Rudolph told Entertainment Weekly. “It all sort of bled together.”
Melissa McCarthy agreed: “In the rehearsal process, you really got to know everyone’s characters before you’re shooting. Even if you didn’t use the specific information, you’d start to build this backstory.
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“We had this history as the characters. You’d get more and more comfortable with how [you were] going to play off of each other. I just remember thinking, ‘If this is what making movies is, this is mind-blowing’.”
Maya added that the director gave the cast “free rein to play”, so that by the time they started filming, they all knew each other’s creative processes.
“There was a stenographer who was typing everything that we were improvising. Then we’d come back, and there’d be new pages,” she recalled.
Rose Byrne learnt a new language for that hilarious toast scene
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Kristen Wiig’s Annie and Rose Byrne’s Helen come face-to-face for the first time at Maya Rudolph’s character Lillian’s engagement bash
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During those engagement party toasts, Paul Feig let Kristen and Rose improvise one-upping each other, with hilarious results.
“It went on forever. I just kept laughing. I remember thinking, “Oh, I’m going to have a hard time getting through this movie without ruining takes,” Melissa remembered.
Rose even pretended to speak Thai in one rehearsal, and the producers loved it so much that they made her learn a portion of Thai for real in the final cut.
Helen shares a home with a superhero
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Bridesmaids is set between Milwaukee and Chicago, but it was actually filmed in Los Angeles – and film and TV fans may recognise one of the sets from an iconic series.
The comedy was filmed in part at the same location used for the 1960s Batman TV series and film.
Helen’s lavish home, where Annie spectacularly flips out at the Parisian-themed bridal show, famously doubled as Wayne Manor in the retro show.
It’s also Eddie Murphy’s palatial home in Bowfinger and the estate of Kenneth Branagh’s conductor character in Dead Again.
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Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson actually became roommates after appearing as siblings in Bridesmaids
Rebel Wilson and Matt Lucas played Kristen Wiig’s character’s hapless roommates in Bridesmaids
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Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson play Annie’s roommates in Bridesmaids, and reality ended up mirroring fiction for the funny duo.
“We played roommates so well in Bridesmaids, we thought, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it for real’,” Rebel explained on Conan O’Brien’s talk show in September 2012. “Except instead of annoying Kristen Wiig, we’re now annoying all the neighbours nearby.”
After the film came out, fans suspected they were siblings, or married, because their chemistry was so effortless.
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“When we met it was like complete synchronicity,” Matt told the BBC in September 2015. “We’re both very laid back and we’re also quite driven professionally and I see that in her and she sees that in me but we’re not competitive because we just enjoy each other’s work.”
The pair lived together in Los Angeles for three years, until Rebel moved out after making the “decision to become a huge movie star and buy a house”.
The film’s co-writer Annie Mumolo originally wanted to play a main role in Bridesmaids, but it didn’t work out in the end
The lengthy wait for the movie to get made meant that co-writer Annie Mumolo couldn’t RSVP for her role as a bridesmaid.
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By the time the movie started filming, Annie was seven months pregnant, and her character was redeveloped for a new actor.
“I was like, I’m living my life and I was having a family,” she told The New York Times in 2021. “So, I got pregnant. [The film] had gotten sort of shelved, and then they called like two weeks later and said, ‘We’re back on!’ And it was like, ‘I’m pregnant. So that’s going to be great’.”
Annie eventually gave birth to her son a week and a half after filming wrapped on Bridesmaids.
Although Annie couldn’t take centre stage in the film, she does appear in the infamous plane scene, playing the woman sitting next to Annie on that turbulent flight to Las Vegas.
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Bridesmaids writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo also got to share a scene in the movie
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That flight scene was actually created as a substitute for another chaotic scene that was axed so Bridesmaids wouldn’t be compared to The Hangover
What happens in Vegas stays on the cutting room floor with Bridesmaids.
The release of 2009’s The Hangover forced the team to scrap a messy Sin City bachelorette party adventure that featured in Bridesmaids’ original script.
“We did not want to be compared to The Hangover,” Paul told Insider in 2021. “We did not want to hear, ’This is the female Hangover. That was our kryptonite.”
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He later told Glamour: ”[The Hangover] was so big and successful and had done Vegas so well that we were kind of like, ‘Why would we do it again?’. I said, ‘They should just not get to Vegas. It should all fall apart on the plane’.”
This Vegas sequence would have included a visit to a male strip club, where Annie would have been pulled up on stage by a dancer dressed as a cowboy.
There was also a scene where the bridal party went to a male strip club and Annie gets pulled on stage by a cowboy stripper.
Recalling what the scene entailed, Paul told Business Insider: “He has her lie down on the dance floor and dances over the top of her, but ball sweat drips into her open mouth as she’s screaming.”
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The Bridesmaids cast pictured ahead of the characters’ ill-fated flight to Las Vegas
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Jon Hamm is uncredited for his work in Bridesmaids
Jon Hamm plays Ted, Annie’s selfish love interest, in Bridesmaids – a role that was both uncredited and mostly improvised.
The Mad Men star’s lack of poster credit was his own request because, at the time, he was better known for his dramatic work, and he worried that his name being attached to the project would mislead audiences into thinking Bridesmaids was not actually a comedy.
He appeared in the film as a favour to Kristen Wiig, with whom he became friends after guest hosting an episode of SNL.
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“I did that movie before there was a part, before there was a script, I said ‘yes’ to it. And [my] agents went, ‘Oh, well, shit. How do we, you know, ask for money?’,” Jon said on SiriusXM in 2022. “And I was like, ‘Don’t worry about it. Just let me let go and have fun with friends’.”
Jon’s most famous moment in Bridesmaids – his sex scene with Kristen – was approached more like a fight sequence than a love scene
Jon Hamm in Bridesmaids
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Paul Feig told Glamour that he thought it would be funnier to make the scene look less like romance, and more like “a professional wrestling scene”.
“It was like this big action scene,” he explained. “There’s nothing sexy about that scene at all, and that’s what made it so fun.”
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A minor Bridesmaids storyline featuring Paul Rudd was left on the cutting room floor
Ant-Man actor Paul Rudd was originally supposed to appear in a scene with Annie, where his and Kristen’s characters go on an ice-skating blind date together.
The date, of course, goes horribly wrong, with Paul’s character falling to the ground and yelling expletives at children.
Paul Feig told Entertainment Weekly that the scene was “one of the funniest things I’ve ever been a witness to,” and was written to highlight Annie’s bad luck with guys. Unfortunately, this moment is cut from the final edit, but the seven-minute sequence was included on the DVD extras, and has since made its way to YouTube.
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Bridesmaids nearly featured another famous cameo – from Matt Damon
Paul Rudd wasn’t the only A-lister who was robbed of an appearance in Bridesmaids. Speaking to Business Insider, Paul Feig revealed in 2021 that Matt Damon was supposed to play himself in a fantasy cameo.
Describing the scene, the director said: “Annie goes in the dressing room to try on this really expensive dress, and suddenly she has a fantasy of what her life could be in this dress.
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“It’s this romance feel with her running through the woods and Matt Damon is shirtless chopping wood.”
This romantic fantasy sequence was totally scrapped from the film by Paul and producer Judd Apatow, because “there needed to be a consequence to Annie’s actions”, and she also needed “to be humiliated in front of Helen and the other bridesmaids”.
“So,” he added. “We came up with the food poisoning from being at a shitty restaurant.”
Certain jokes were edited out of Bridesmaids following the death of Jill Clayburgh
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Jill Clayburgh and Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids
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Bridesmaids, sadly, was Jill Clayburgh’s last performance before her death.
Jill died between filming and the film’s release, which affected some of the jokes that made it into the final cut.
“We took some dirty Jill Clayburgh jokes out because I just thought, ‘that can’t be the last thing she says’,” Judd Apatow told The Playlist, admitting that even if the quips were still “funny” they could be perceived as “questionable”.
Some of these raunchier gags did make the DVD outtake reel, though.
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Paul Feig recalled telling the late performer: “I can’t believe we’re making you say this.”
Her response? “Oh I love it.”
“She was so sincerely happy to be doing this kind of comedy that it’s a special memory for me,” he added.
Chris O’Dowd’s Bridesmaids character wasn’t written as Irish in the script
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Chris O’Dowd told HuffPost in 2013 that he originally auditioned for Bridesmaids with an American accent – but Paul Feig suggested he try it in his own.
“Paul Feig is a huge Anglophile and knew [The IT Crowd] really well and was a big fan of it,” Chris explained. “He said, ‘Hey, why don’t you try it in your own accent?’. And it just kind of went well and we improvised for a good while like that with Kristen – yeah, and it played well.”
Chris O’Dowd played Rhodes, Kristen Wiig’s on-screen love interest, in Bridesmaids
Judd Apatow also approved of having an Irish love interest, believing it would make the love story a little less formulaic and, in Chris’ words, “odd”.
Kristen Wiig is actually not a fan of the infamous food poisoning sequence
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast in 2017, Kristen admitted that all the gross-out humour was added into her script by Judd Apatow.
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“When people say, ‘Oh, we’re gonna give more female-centered movies a chance,’ you’re not reading the fine print, which is, ‘Oh, but, they have to be like this’,” she claimed. “They want to see women acting like guys.
“The scene was not our idea and it was not in the original script and we didn’t love it. It was strongly suggested for us to put that in there. I didn’t want to see people shitting and puking.”
Apparently, all that fake vomit tasted better than it looked
Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy and Wendi McLendon-Covey in Bridesmaids
Another of the most memorable scenes in Bridesmaids is the moment when the women get food poisoning while trying on wedding outfits.
It looked gross, but Paul Feig told Glamour that the “concoction” that made up the faux vomit actually consisted of oatmeal (“for a little bit of texture”), “some chopped up vegetables” and almond milk”.
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That food poisoning scene might feel extreme – but it originally went even further
Paul added that he and the crew made use of a “vomit cannon” at one point.
“There’s a scene that we didn’t put in the movie where Ellie’s character runs in, and Wendi’s like, ‘Get away from me’,” he noted.
“And so she runs down the hall and opens the door and projectile vomits across the room. But when we got in the editing room everyone was immediately like, ‘That’s just too much, we have to take that out.’ We do have some class.”
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Kristen Wiig had no idea how big Bridesmaids would go on to become
Paul Feig and Kristen Wiig on the set of Bridesmaids
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Kristen Wiig admitted recently that she was fairly sure the film would be a box-office failure.
“I remember after opening weekend, they were like, ‘Well, we tried,’” she said on a 2025 episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast.
“We just thought, like, that was it. And then I think just more and more people kept seeing it and then it kind of happened later.”
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Paul Feig also admitted on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s On Me podcast that he felt pressure for the film to succeed, even though it was “predicted to not do well right up until the day of release”.
And no, there’s definitely not going to be a Bridesmaids sequel
Bridesmaids has gone on to become a comedy classic – but we definitely wouldn’t hold out hope for a sequel
Suzanne Hanover/Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock
As the case with almost all hit films, people have been desperate for a sequel. Although many key players – including Paul Feig – are open to the idea, Kristen Wiig has explicitly said she has no interest in revisiting Annie and her friends.
During a 2021 appearance on Andy Cohen’s Sirius XM show, she explained, “I just don’t want it to be translated as a negative thing, because we obviously love the movie [but] we feel like we told that story and we were just so excited to do other things.”
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Bridesmaids is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.
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