Angourie Rice Made a Surprising Request to Her Mom Years Ago & It’s Now a Reese Witherspoon-Approved Novel

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Whether you know her from the 2024 Mean Girls, Honor Society, or The Last Thing He Told Me, Angourie Rice is decidedly one of the biggest rising stars in Hollywood. But her latest project is one that none of her fans could’ve predicted.

On May 6, she released her debut novel, Stuck Up and Stupid, alongside her actress and playwright mom, Kate Rice.

“Our book, Stuck Up and Stupid, is a YA contemporary retelling of Pride and Prejudice,” Angourie says in an interview with SheKnows. “It’s about Lily, who lives in a small beach town outside of Sydney, and her summer is changed when a group of young, talented, good-looking Hollywood movie stars come to stay in her beach town. There, she meets Dorian, who she finds quite standoffish and rude at first, but their paths keep crossing, and it’s a beautiful story about love and friendship and families.”

As for the inspiration behind the novel (which was just selected as Reese Witherspoon’s Summer YA pick!), it all stems from the mother-daughter duo’s love for Jane Austen.

“We are both huge Pride and Prejudice fans, huge Jane Austen fans, and we each separately had an idea to do a new, contemporary retelling or an update, and I was really interested in looking at what happens next,” Angourie remembered. “So, our story actually follows the children of the original five sisters in Pride and Prejudice, but set now and in Australia.”

But while the two agreed on the story, writing together wasn’t necessarily their first idea.

“I came to Kate, and I said, ‘Can you write a contemporary retelling? I just want to read it,'” Angourie remembers. “And she said, ‘Let’s write it together.'”

Plus, they started writing when the COVID-19 pandemic left them quarantined in Australia, and all they could do was stay home.

“It was beautiful, it was during COVID in Australia, and we had so Angourie was home, and we had time, and I went and bought some big A4 notebooks and pencils, and we wrote it all by hand from the start,” Kate recalls of the time.

“It’s nice to work with Kate, in a way that’s not just like mother and daughter, but we’re working together as two creative people who like telling stories,” Angourie reflects. “It’s really nice to have something together in that way.”

In our video series Common Ground, the two answered some burning questions about their exciting new novel, their love for reading, and Angourie’s incredible career.

When it comes to who Angourie’s favorite TV mom is, the two agreed on Jennifer Garner (aka her co-star in The Last Thing He Told Me). “Jen is the TV mom I’ve spent the most time with. We did two seasons together. So really, like, I feel closest to her because we spent so much time together,” Angourie explains. “She’s so kind and warm and welcoming that as soon as you’re about to freak out, you don’t anymore, because she’s so nice.”

But Kate Winslet, who co-starred with Angourie Mare of Easttown, follows closely behind. “I was very starstruck meeting Kate,” Angourie admits. “I met her on the first day of rehearsals for Mare of Easttown, and she came in with like, seven different binders for each of the different episodes and all her notes and all her highlighters, and she said, ‘This is my method,’ and in that moment, I was like, ‘Wow, I just love that so much.'”

Kate couldn’t agree more. “When I met [Winslet] for the first time, she was like, ‘It’s Angourie’s mom,’ and she just came up and gave me the biggest hug,” she remembers.

We also asked the mom-daughter duo about Mean Girls, a movie Angourie helped reboot into a musical in 2024. “I’ve seen the 2004 Mean Girls so many times because we had it on DVD,” she admits. “And so when you were working, my sister and I, we would sit in the corner with our little portable DVD player and watch Mean Girls 2004 on repeat.”

“My favorite line, obviously, is, ‘I’m not a regular mom, I’m a cool mom,'” Kate says of the iconic Amy Poehler line.

Angourie and Kate’s exciting new book, Stuck Up and Stupid, is available to order now!

Find all the best YA Books from Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club.