'Princess Diaries' Author Reveals Reason Why Mia's Dad Wasn't In The Movies At All

If you’ve read “The Princess Diaries” books, you know full and well that Mia’s dad, Artur Christoff Phillipe Gerard Grimaldi Renaldi, is alive.

In fact, he’s alive for the entire series — but not in the films, and the reason for that is all because of Julie Andrews.

Author Meg Cabot spoke to EW about her most famous book series and how it came to be that Phillipe was killed off in the movies.

“He plays a big role in the books…I was like, ‘Oh, oh, my God, what did he do?’ [Laughs] I forgot it was Disney and they always kill all the fathers in like every movie [laughs].”

But that wasn’t the reason they did it at all: “They said, ‘Well, we have this actress, who’s a really big actress, that we want to play the grandmother. And we wanna make her role much bigger, and kinda raise the stakes, and give her a lot more lines, and we think we can give her a lotta the dad�the dad lines,’” Meg shares.

After asking who it was and the actress being Julie — Meg possibly had the reaction we all would.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, kill the dad.’ [Laughs] I was like, it’s Julie Andrews, sure.”

Meg continues, “She is just so�such a nice, fun person, and great to be around. And, I mean, I think they tried to make her as horrible as they could, but it’s Julie Andrews.”