The Princess Diaries’ Mia Thermopolis may not be an official Disney Princess, but she certainly shares one popular thing many of them sadly have: a dead parent. But I just learned that Mia’s dad is very much alive in The Princess Diaries books. When it came to Meg Cabot's novels being turned into a movie from Walt Disney Pictures, the producers had a big reason for why they felt Mia's dad needed to be dead, and what a revelation!
Why are the characters in Disney movies always without parents? When it came to Cabot’s The Princess Diaries books, she had no intention of following that trend and leaving Mia without a father. However, here's why the storyline changed for the 2001 movie, per Cabot:
They actually called me, and they go, ‘Well, we have some bad news; we have to kill the dad in your book.’ And I was like, ‘Why? What did he do?’ They go, ‘Well, we have an actress that we want to play the grandmother, and she’s a really great actress, and she hasn’t done anything in a while, and we really want to give her more lines. So we’re going to kill the dad and give this actress the dead dad lines.’
If you’re a reader who follows along with all the book-to-screen adaptations, you know that changes between the book and movie are inevitable. A film script just doesn’t have the kind of time to get into as much detail as a novel can, and characters being combined into one role is common. As Cabot also said in a new interview with CBS Mornings:
So I said, ‘Well, who’s the actress?’ And they said, ‘Julie Andrews.’ I said, ‘Kill the dad. Bye dad! It’s Julie, you’re out.’
So, I’m never looking at The Princess Diaries movies the same again whenever I watch them with my Disney+ subscription. While it’s kind of sad that the studio felt they needed to give Mia a darker backstory, they also had a really good reason for it: Julie Andrews. And all they had to say was her name for Cabot to get on board, too.
When Julie Andrews was approached for The Princess Diaries, it became her first Disney film since 1964’s Mary Poppins; it was also a big deal because she only worked on six projects during the '90s. And, four years prior to signing on for The Princess Diaries, Andrews actually had surgery to remove a non-cancerous lesion on her vocal cords that ended up leaving her without the four-octave soprano range she once had.
Ultimately, Walt Disney Pictures made a good decision to give Andrews the bigger role as Queen Clarisse rather than balancing the characters of Mia’s grandma and dad in one movie. But, wow!
Cabot just released a graphic novel version of her classic middle-grade novel as we look forward to the third Princess Diaries movie that's currently in development. Cabot also recently said The Princess Diaries 3 script is “amazing,” and she’s “so excited” for it.
I'm also hyped after hearing that it's going to be shot in Europe and be a “wish fulfillment movie for queens” per the director's most recent update about it in May. Right now, the star of The Princess Diaries movies, Anne Hathaway, is booked and busy on her third press tour of the year, The Odyssey. (She's the lead of five 2026 movies). So, it's unclear when exactly production will begin on The Princess Diaries 3. However, we do know that it's being actively worked on.
I felt like Mia Thermopolis when she learned she was a princess when coming across this story of Mia's dead dad's origins, and I will feel that way again when my burning questions about The Princess Diaries 3 are answered. While we wait, you can grab The Princess Diaries graphic novel on Amazon and see Hathaway in The Odyssey when it hits theaters on July 17.
