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Selena Gomez & Joey King Bond: E! News Rewind
Meet Ramona the pest and Beezus, her perpetually annoyed but supportive older sister. Better yet, meet the movie about the two of them that assembled an impressively all-star cast to bring Beverly Cleary‘s classic children’s novels to life.
The 2010 film Ramona and Beezus takes quite a few liberties with Cleary’s 1970s-era universe, which featured the middle-class Quimby family, friends and relatives dealing with life’s everyday challenges in Portland, Ore. Namely, it updates the setting to the 21st century and the social mores of the day aren’t quite so old-fashioned.
But the heart of the stories, about family and sticking together when times are tough and the egg you pulled out of the fridge was raw instead of hard-boiled, translated perfectly.
“The whole point of the movie, in my eyes, is kind of showing the world that there’s not always a perfect family,” a 16-year-old Selena Gomez, who played Beatrice “Beezus” Quimby, told Hollywood.com at the time. “People do struggle with financial problems and family problems, and you kind of need your family the most when you’re in situations like that.”
Ramona and Beezus opened in theaters on July 23, 2010, so in honor of its 10th anniversary, it’s time to check in on the cast, including all of the interesting coincidences and the ways their paths intersected before and after they came together for this sweet film:
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Selena Gomez
What a decade it’s been for the singer and actress, who was a 16-year-old alumna of Barney & Friends, the star of Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place and the future girlfriend of Justin Bieber when she signed up to make her big-screen debut playing Beezus Quimby.
After Wizards wrapped up in 2012, Gomez sought to shed her child-actor image with roles in the likes of the indie crime drama Spring Breakers and the action movie Getaway, and she adulted up her music too with the release of her debut solo album, Stars Dance.
While health issues and her off-and-on relationship with Bieber dominated half of her headlines through the ensuing years, the multitalented Texan persevered, continuing to act, make music and tour (she was Billboard Woman of the Year in 2017, with 7 million records sold), date other guys and amass fans, at one point becoming the most-followed person on Instagram. Gomez has also been busy using her lucrative platform, which includes 183 million followers on Instagram and 61.6 million on Twitter, to advocate for mental health awareness and stand up for racial equality and other important causes.
In recent years, she has branched out behind the camera as well, as an executive producer of 13 Reasons Why and the documentary Living Undocumented, both on Netflix.
Don’t call it a comeback, but Gomez was all about taking back control of her story with the January 2020 release of Rare, her years-in-the-making third studio album—the title of which she had tattooed on her neck. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
“The reason why I’ve become so vocal about the trials and tribulations of my life is because people were already going to narrate that for me,” Gomez said in an interview for NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. “I wasn’t going to have a choice because of how fast everything moves now. And most of the time, yes, it’s not true, or it’s an embellished version of what the truth is. I want to be able to tell my story the way that I want to tell it.”
In another delicious turn of events, she’s getting her own 10-part cooking show to premiere on HBO Max, with each episode featuring a chef joining her remotely and highlighting a different food-related charity.
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Joey King
The Los Angeles native was only 10 when she played the imaginative, bold and terrifically outspoken Ramona Quimby, but she was already a veteran child actress, having appeared in Reign Over Me (playing Adam Sandler‘s daughter—which she had in common with Gomez, who is Sandler’s daughter in the Hotel Transylvania franchise), Horton Hears a Who! and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.
King has been acting nonstop ever since, showing up in major productions such as The Conjuring, Fargo on FX and Independence Day: Resurgence. But it was more recently that she really became a household name playing real-life killer Gypsy Rose Blanchard in the 2019 Hulu series The Act. She was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe for lead actress in a limited series or TV movie and subsequently became a red carpet favorite.
“It feels amazing,” she told E! News’ Will Marfuggi at the 2019 Critics’ Choice Awards. “I still can’t believe I’m here as a nominee and that The Act did as well as it did. I was just really excited to be given the opportunity to play such a complex role.”
She can currently be seen in Quibi’s Home Movie: The Princess Bride, a series of shorts featuring some huge stars reenacting scenes from The Princess Bride, directed by Jason Reitman while everyone was social-distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Looking back at Ramona and Beezus, King told Entertainment Tonight in 2019, “I’m so appreciative of that film and everything it did for me.”
And, rather adorably, she still thinks the world of her movie sister. “From the time we worked together until now, I’ve always really looked up to [Selena Gomez],” King also said. “I’m really proud of everything she’s done. Everything she’s been doing lately with speaking out about mental health, I think it’s so beautiful and inspiring. She just shows everyone every day that no matter what your Instagram follower count says, no matter how much you may or may not edit your pictures, no matter how many photo shoots you do, no matter what your life is like, it’s okay to not be okay. I really love that she puts it out there for everyone to see. It’s very vulnerable for her. She’s a big inspiration to people, whether she realizes it or not.”
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John Corbett
If there just hasn’t been enough Aidan in your life, aside from the Sex and the City reruns on repeat, look no further. Corbett, also of Northern Exposure and My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame, may forever be the furniture builder who wasn’t destined to be Carrie’s Big love, but he pulls his emotional weight as Ramona and Beezus’ dad, Robert Quimby, who finds himself at a career crossroads when he loses his job and the family faces financial hardship.
While nothing quite as iconic as SATC or MBFGW has come along since (except for the movies’ respective sequels, in 2010 and 2016), Corbett has never left your screen. Highlights include his role as Toni Collette‘s husband on Showtime’s United States of Tara; his recurring role as Sarah’s ex-husband Seth on NBC’s Parenthood; playing a veteran rocker who goes by Flash on the FX drama Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll; and popping up as Dr. Covey in the Netflix rom-coms To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You.
Corbett is also a real-life country rocker who has released two albums.
Meanwhile, his home base is a ranch in California’s Santa Ynez Valley where he lives with his longtime partner, actress Bo Derek. “My gal and I love Sundays. We just like to hang out,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2017. “We live in this beautiful wine country, and a good day for us is to have breakfast at a great little coffee shop. I’ll take my writing pad and we’ll have lots of coffee and eggs Benny. We’ll talk for long time and then I do a lot of journaling.”
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Bridget Moynahan
Coincidentally, she and John Corbett played the cheated-on significant others when Big and Carrie were having their third-season fling in Sex and the City—and 10 years later they reunited to play a loving couple in Ramona and Beezus.
The same year she played the titular sisters’ mom, Dorothy Quimby, Moynahan signed up to play Assistant District Attorney Erin Reagan on Blue Bloods—and she’s been doing that ever since, the CBS cop drama having recently been renewed for an 11th season.
In another twist, before playing mother and daughter, Moynahan and Joey King both shot the alien-invasion flick Battle: Los Angeles, which didn’t come out until 2011. Moynahan’s been pretty busy with Blue Bloods, but she also carved out big-screen time for the family adventure Midnight Sun and to play Keanu Reeves‘ late wife in the first two John Wick movies, both of which were huge hits.
Off screen, Moynahan is mom to her son, Jack, with ex-boyfriend Tom Brady, and in 2015 she married businessman and father of three Andrew Frankel in a Hamptons ceremony.
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Sandra Oh
The Grey’s Anatomy star spent her post-season break in 2010 playing Ramona’s teacher Mrs. Meacham, the observant, conscientious educator of any school district’s dreams.
Also in 2010, Oh played a grieving parent who starts an affair with Nicole Kidman‘s husband in the devastating drama Rabbit Hole, but that was it for films until she ended her 10-season run as Dr. Cristina Yang on Grey’s in 2014, a role for which she earned five Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe.
Oh did a few smaller projects, such as the indie dark comedy Catfight, then popped up on the third season of ABC’s American Crime in 2017. The following year, she struck pop culture gold again playing an American MI5 agent who has a seriously convoluted relationship with the assassin she’s pursuing in Killing Eve. Oh has since been nominated for five more Emmys (two for acting on Eve and one for Best Drama Series as a producer, plus one for Outstanding Variety Special as a co-host of the 2019 Emmys with Andy Samberg, and another for Guest Actress in a Comedy for hosting Saturday Night Live in 2019) and won another Golden Globe.
She was married to director Alexander Payne from 2003 until 2006, but these days keeps her private life to herself.
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Ginnifer Goodwin
A year after playing Ramona and Beezus’ fun and quirky Aunt Bea (who is also Beezus’ namesake), the He’s Just Not That Into You and Big Love star joined Kate Hudson in the bittersweet rom-com Something Borrowed and started her seven-season run in the dual roles of Mary Margaret and Snow White on the fantasy drama Once Upon a Time.
Goodwin was on the 2012 web series Electric City and played Jacqueline Kennedy in the 2013 TV movie Killing Kennedy while starring in Once Upon a Time until 2018. She was back at it in 2019 in the multi-timeline dramedy Why Women Kill, which has been renewed for a second season on CBS All Access.
In the meantime, she ended up with Prince Charming—kinda literally. She married her Once Upon a Time co-star Josh Dallas in 2014 and they have two sons together.
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Josh Duhamel
Well done, Aunt Bea!
In 1984’s Ramona Forever, the penultimate book in Beverly Cleary‘s Ramona series, the sisters’ beloved relative ends up marrying their neighbor Howie Kemp’s rich Uncle Hobart. In the movie, Hobart is Bea’s former high school sweetheart who grew up to be super-hot and great with kids. Both versions end in a wedding.
Duhamel had a packed wide-release schedule in 2010, also starring in When in Rome and Life as We Know It, after which it was on to his third Transformers movie, New Year’s Eve, and a return to his old All My Children stomping grounds, reprising the character of Leo du Pres in a couple of episodes in 2011.
Just since 2015, he starred in the quirky detective series Battle Creek, was on the Hulu miniseries 11/22/63, played real-life detective Greg Kading in Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. and was a doting dad in both the coming-of-age-and-coming-out dramedy Love, Simon and Think Like a Dog.
Duhamel and Fergie, whom he met in 2004 when the Black Eyed Peas made a cameo on his series Las Vegas, separated in 2017 and finalized their divorce in 2019. They’re co-parents to son Axl together.
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Hutch Dano
Henry Huggins is a supporting character from Beezus’ grade in the Cleary books—and star of his own rather tame tale from 1950, featuring his dog Ribsy—but in Ramona and Beezus, Henry is the neighborhood paperboy and Beezus’ big crush. Happily, he crushes on her right back.
Dano, then 18, was also a member of the Disney family, having previously appeared in The Suite Life On Deck and starring in his own Disney XD series Zeke and Luther. Like Selena Gomez, Ramona and Beezus was his movie debut.
After Zeke and Luther ended in 2012, Dano continued to act, and he both appeared in and co-wrote the 2019 indie thriller Disappearance. He is also an acting coach and a painter, and his work can be purchased from his online gallery. “Art is a way for me to express my creativity without boundaries or rules,” he shares on his website.
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Sierra McCormick
Before playing Ramona’s classmate Susan when she was 13, McCormick had made a number of appearances on TV (‘Til Death, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Supernatural, Hannah Montana, Monk), and competed on the hit game show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?
After Ramona and Beezus, she starred on the Disney Channel teen sitcom A.N.T. Farm until 2014, and continued to do movies such as A Nanny for Christmas and numerous made-for-TV projects, such as the Lifetime Movie Who Stole My Daughter?
Her most recent film, the 1950s-set sci-fi mystery The Vast of Night, premiered at Slamdance in 2019 and has received stellar reviews since its debut on Amazon Prime in May.
“When we shot it, we had no idea, no clue that it was ever going to reach this many people,” McCormick, who plays Fay, a switchboard operator who’s listening to her best friend’s radio show when he starts picking up a strange frequency (while everyone else in their small town is at a high school basketball game), told KTLA 5 in May. “We knew that it was special, but the way movies work, the special ones don’t always get seen by a lot of people.”
And McCormick really lobbied director Andrew Patterson to play Fay. “I just hadn’t read anything like it before,” she told The Gate. “I was floored when I read it…But most of all, the character of Fay for actresses just doesn’t come along all that often.” Ultimately, a lot of her performance was inspired by her younger sister. “I had this template that I could start with, a visualization for Fay. That was really exciting,” she said.
So, “all of those things, sort of made me, when I finished reading the script, I said to myself, ‘I need to do everything in my power to make sure I get to be a part of this.'”
At the end of the day, the special relationship between two sisters is what Ramona and Beezus is all about—which Selena Gomez, also a proud sibling in real life, recognized from the beginning.
“I think it’s very relatable,” the teen observed in 2010. “We don’t like each other in the beginning and kind of annoy one another, and then towards the end we realize that we kinda need each other.”
