You might know Ryan Gosling as the charming life-sized doll Ken, but way before Ken, in the early 2000s, fans fell in love with Gosling’s Noah from ‘The Notebook‘ which ended up becoming one of the most successful romantic movies of the current generation. Based on Nicholas Sparks’ book, the film tells a beautiful story of love between two teenagers turned adults. In retrospect, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else playing Noah and Allie, thanks to stellar performances from Gosling and Rachel McAdams. But turns out, Gosling wasn’t too happy during the filming.
It has been revealed that Gosling wasn’t very satisfied with the casting choices, and surprisingly, there was also another actor who could’ve robbed Gosling of his role.
Ryan Gosling Didn’t Want Rachel McAdams To Get Cast In ‘The Notebook’
Allie and Noah might be one of the most iconic characters of the romantic genre, but in real life, the actors who portrayed these characters didn’t really get along very well.
Though both the actors later went on to date, on set they weren’t the biggest fans of each other and had a lot of issues between them.
Director Nick Cassavetes revealed, “They were really not getting along one day on set. 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.’” It was, apparently so bad that at one point Gosling even tried to replace her!
Cassavetes later added he made things better between them by letting them lash out at each other.
He said, “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? 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.”
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Another Actor Almost Played Noah In The Film
I mean, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in a see-through white shirt and dreamy long hair, passionately kissing Rachel McAdams after a session of rowing, right? Cassavetes felt the same apparently.
Reportedly, the film was originally set to be directed by Steven Spielberg, who had Britney Spears and Tom Cruise in mind for the roles of Allie and Noah. Later on, due to certain reasons, the film rights were bought by New Lines Cinema and Cassavetes came to the scene and immediately chose Gosling as his lead.
He revealed, “When I told [New Line Cinema] I wanted to hire Ryan for the lead, they kind of looked at me like I was out of my mind.”
Later on, however, everyone agreed and it turned out to be one of the best choices- both for the film and for the actor. ‘The Notebook’ ended up being Gosling’s big break and continues to remain one of his best roles.
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