Julie Andrews confirms she won’t return for ‘Princess Diaries 3’

Julie Andrews has confirmed she will not be reprising her role as Queen Clarisse in The Princess Diaries 3 alongside Anne Hathaway. 

Telling Today.com in an interview published August 10, she said, “I’m not going to be in it. I think the story is slightly different, and I’m not quite sure how they’re dealing with that. But it’s too late for me to do it. I think the story has to continue in Princess Mia. It’s her story. It’s not really mine.”

In a separate interview with InStyle published the same day, the 90-year-old actress explained she’d been approached repeatedly about returning but ultimately passed. 

“I think I probably passed… I think I’m retired, really, would be about the best description for that,” she said. 

“[The film’s creative team] asked me all last year if I would be keen to do it. It was very very hard to say ‘no,’ but I did because I thought I had a wonderful ride, and this one I felt would flourish very well and wouldn’t need Granny going in there at my age.” 

She added that she keeps busy these days mostly through writing books and recording podcasts and voiceovers, saying she does it “mostly to keep my brain alive.”

The Princess Diaries 3 will serve as a long-awaited follow-up to 2001’s original film and 2004’s Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, continuing the story of Hathaway’s Mia Thermopolis, now queen of Genovia.