To celebrate the release of ‘Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead‘, People asked Nicole Richie who she would pick to babysit her two kids. Read the full interview below or click here to read it on their website.
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead star Nicole Richie knows who she’d pick to watch her two kids if she could take a solo trip like the mom from the movie.
No, she wouldn’t ask her dad Lionel Richie to watch Harlow, 16, and Sparrow, 14, the two children she shares with husband Joel Madden. And no, it’s not her sister-in-law Cameron Diaz, either.
“I’m going to go with the entire cast of Sister Act 2,” says Richie, 42, referencing the sequel to the 1992 hit comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg as a Las Vegas lounge singer who goes in disguise as a nun and hides out in a convent to hide from her gangster boyfriend.
The cast of the 1993 follow-up, which has the subtitle Back in the Habit, includes Goldberg, Kathy Najimy, Maggie Smith, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Jennifer Love Hewitt and a young Lauryn Hill.
But based on Richie’s explanation for picking the cast of Sister Act 2, it sounds like she’d rather stay behind with her kids than go on vacation herself.
“They’re fun, they’re musical, and I already know all the choreography for the end scene, and we would just have a great time singing ‘Joyful, Joyful.’ And I could just fit right in. I know all the harmonies. I would just flow in,” she continues.
Richie is now starring in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, a remake of the 1991 comedy about a teenager (Christina Applegate as Sue Ellen in the original, Simone Joy Jones as Tanya in the update) whose mom leaves her kids behind in the care of elderly babysitter Mrs Sturak and goes away for the summer.
When Mrs. Sturak dies shortly after she arrives, the kids are left to fend for themselves and the eldest daughter fudges a resume and lands a job at a fashion company. Richie plays Rose, the nurturing boss who takes Tanya under her wing. (Joanna Cassidy played the role in the original.)
Richie seems to love the original film as much as she loves Sister Act 2.
“I feel like I’ve seen it no less than a thousand times. I love that movie,” she says. “I don’t even think that I did a re-watch right before we started shooting because I think I just naturally watch it maybe, I don’t know, once a year, whenever it’s on.”
“I love the family adventure. I love movies where you are just rooting for the teenager that’s just trying to make her way and how all the adults feel like aliens,” she adds. “And it’s just, to me, that is what just makes me feel at home and happy and cozy.”
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead is in theaters April 12.
