‘The Breakfast Club’ Cast Reunites After 40 Years: “We All Really Do Love Each Other”

It’s been four decades since they sat in that library, strangers turned soulmates by the end of a Saturday detention. And now, for the first time in 40 years, all five members of The Breakfast Club were together again — and yes, it hit different.

Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall reunited at C2E2, Chicago’s beloved pop culture convention, in the very city where the John Hughes classic was filmed. It wasn’t just a nostalgia trip — it was a deeply emotional moment for fans and cast alike.

“I feel very emotional and moved to have us all together,” said Ringwald, her voice catching slightly as she looked around at the group who helped define a generation. “We don’t have to use the cardboard cutout anymore,” she joked, referring to Estevez, who has often been absent from past reunions. He laughed, replying, “I felt that I needed to do it myself.”

For a movie that was never meant to become what it did — a cultural touchstone, a generational anthem — the love still lingers. Anthony Michael Hall recalled how John Hughes didn’t even show him a script at first. “He just said, ‘Come in.’ That was it.” Ringwald added that Hughes had actually planned to make The Breakfast Club before Sixteen Candles, but the studio pushed the latter first.

But it was Ally Sheedy, who played the quietly brilliant outcast Allison, who said what everyone was thinking. “We all really do love each other. It was a dream. A joyful experience.”

No one walked away from that film the same — not the cast, not the audience. And now, 40 years later, they’re still reminding us why it mattered.