Believe it or not, it has been ten years since the classic romance adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ novel, The Notebook, starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling was released, and to celebrate its 10th anniversary, director Nick Cassavetes is letting the world in on some well-kept crew secrets.
In an interview with VH1, the film’s director revealed that shockingly the main characters did not get along for some time off-screen. Allie and Noah might have been madly, crazy in love, but McAdams and Gosling, the stars who played them, often butt heads on set.
Cassavetes quotes in VH1: “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.’”
In attempts to subdue the tension between the two stars, the director explains: “We went into a room with a producer; they started screaming and yelling at each other,” he recalled. “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. 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.”
And despite their brief off-screen riff, the pair went on to actually date for two years from 2005 to 2007, and briefly again in 2008. Gosling even spoke to GQ in an interview in 2007 about his passionate romance with McAdams, quoting: “God bless The Notebook. It introduced me to one of the great loves of my life. But people do Rachel and me a disservice by assuming we were anything like the people in that movie. Rachel and my love story is a hell of a lot more romantic than that.”
