The Notebook grossed around $200 million in tear-soaked money as women handed over fistfuls of cash to hear Ryan Gosling tell Rachel McAdams he wrote her 365 letters (geez, obsessed much?). This was off a $29 million budget so everyone considered it a rousing success. Gosling and McAdams then went on to date each other for four years. Seems almost like a fairytale, right? Well, did you know when they first started working together, they couldn’t stand each other? *record scratch* Whaaaaa?
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Notebook, director Nick Cassavetes revealed some behind the scenes going-ons during filming including that one time Ryan tried to have Rachel kicked off the movie.
Maybe I’m not supposed to tell this story, but they were really not getting along one day on set. Really not. And Ryan came to me, and there’s 150 people standing in this big scene, and he says, “Nick come here.” And he’s doing a scene with Rachel and he says, “Would you take her out of here and bring in another actress to read off camera with me?” I said, “What?” He says, “I can’t. I can’t do it with her. I’m just not getting anything from this.”
Luckily, the director’s impromptu therapy session helped save the film:
We went into a room with a producer; they started screaming and yelling at each other. I walked out. At that point I was smoking cigarettes. I smoked a cigarette and everybody came out like, “All right let’s do this.” And it got better after that, you know? They had it out… I think Ryan respected her for standing up for her character and Rachel was happy to get that out in the open. The rest of the film wasn’t smooth sailing, but it was smoother sailing.
Thankfully it all worked out in the end and we got to have millions of women brainwashed into thinking this is how real relationships were supposed to go. Hey, good work, guys!