Last week’s Heathers oral history in Entertainment Weekly revealed that not only were there plans for a Heathers sequel, but that Winona Ryder actually went so far as to proposition Meryl Streep on the set of The House of the Spirits to co-star in it. Just imagine that bright red bow in Streep’s hair: “It’s Veronica, years later, she’s in Washington. She’s somehow erased her past. And she’s being blackmailed, there’s like men in suits who know about the Westerberg murders … And I remember the First Lady was Meryl Streep.â€
But when Vulture caught up with her at last night’s Cinema Society premiere of the PBS Masterpiece drama Turks & Caicos and mentioned that Meryl was supposed to be there that evening (she didn’t show), Ryder immediately knew where our line of questioning was going. “Oh, don’t bring up the Heathers sequel! That was one of those jokes, like one of those old things. I did this oral history, so me and [Heathers writer] Dan [Waters] were like, ‘Wait — do we have any more good stuff to tell?’ We had to come up with stuff for the 10-year anniversary, the 15-year anniversary, the 20-year anniversary, now it’s 25 … And it’s now, what do you call that, on the internet, ‘Meryl Streep was going to be in Heathers 2!’ But I was pitching it to her when I was like 19 when I was working with her, and she was probably like, ‘Yeah, whatever, please.’â€