The cast of Bridesmaids reunited at the 2026 Oscars, but one woman was conspicuous by her absence: Wendi McLendon-Covey.
In an Instagram post late Sunday, March 15, the comedian and actress, 56, revealed why she declined the invitation to present with her one-time costars, including Kristen Wiig, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph and Ellie Kemper.
“In response to some of the DMs I’m getting: I had a neck lift last week because I’m tired of looking like a melting candle,” she captioned a selfie of her head covered in bandages. “So I had to skip the Academy Awards. No drama. Everything is fine. 😘”
2026 marks 15 years since director Paul Feig’s raucous comedy hit theaters and became instant box office gold. Bridesmaids grossed nearly $300 million at the global box office and earned McCarthy, 55, a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the 2012 Oscars. Wiig, who also wrote the movie, was nominated for Best Original Screenplay alongside cowriter Annie Mumolo.
During Sunday’s 98th Academy Awards, Byrne, 46, was nominated for Best Leading Actress for the first time in her career for her critically acclaimed performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. The award went to Irish actress Jessie Buckley for her Hamnet.
Over the years, fans have clamored for a Bridesmaids sequel, but according to Wiig, that isn’t on the cards.
“We have said we weren’t really interested in, like, going back and writing another one,” Wiig told Andy Cohen in a 2021 interview on SiriusXM. “But I just don’t want it to be translated as a negative thing, because we obviously love the movie. … We feel like we told that story and we were just so excited to do other things.”
Mumolo, who was also part of the interview, shared that a sequel is “not worth doing” unless they were able to get the story just right. “It takes years to get movies made,” Mumolo explained. “And Bridesmaids took many years to get made and … because it takes so many years, [we] felt like we purged that out of us.”
That same year, McLendon-Covey exclusively told Us Weekly, “You know, for 10 years we’ve been saying that there will be no sequel. And that’s coming from Kristen’s mouth. So, yeah, there is no sequel.”
The actress did share where she thinks her character, Rita, would be now, however.
“I think maybe one of Rita’s kids knocked up a teacher,” McLendon-Covey told Us. “And I think she’s divorced and seeing that, you know, ‘Oh, I had it so much better when I was married. I wonder why I was so miserable all the time?’ I kind of patterned her off of any of the Real Housewives of wherever, where there is always something wrong, but there’s really nothing wrong. It’s just that she’s bored and needs to get a job.”
