Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams’ famous on-screen chemistry was the result of chemical warfare behind the scenes. Director Nick Cassavetes recently opened up about the “initial tension” between Gosling and McAdams. So, for a brief moment, let’s chat about love.
We all experience heartbreak at one point or another. We phone up our friends and say, “My boyfriend ate my laptop! He also broke up with me.” We cry on windowsills and post Kelly Clarkson song lyrics on Facebook. We listen to the cracks forming in our soul while the universe burns. And then we watch The Notebook.
Cassavetes told 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.’” Oh snap, guurl! He gon’ diva your ass! (Or something along those lines…)
Cassavetes was one nervous breakdown away from, uh, getting a nervous breakdown? He arranged a mediation session to get the show back on the road, but it quickly spiralled out of control and resulted in a screaming match between Gosling and McAdams. “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,” he said.
Thankfully, The Notebook was saved from damnation after Gosling and McAdams aired their differences.
Cassavetes continued, “I smoked a cigarette and everybody came out like, ‘Alright, 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.”
The End… Joking. This story has an even happier ending. Gosling and McAdams fell madly in love after the film.
Gosling told GQ magazine in 2007, “God bless The Notebook. It introduced me to one of the great loves of my life. But people do Rachel and [I] 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.”
Yes, you may cry now. Get it out of your system! Gosling and McAdams eventually parted ways, but their on-screen, off-screen love story will always remind us to keep our broken hearts nearby, because there is great love to be found in this big ol’ broken-hearted universe.
Image credit to FameFlynet