Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams looked unhappy when 'Notebook' love scenes were brought up in interview
Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams set the screens on fire with their sizzling chemistry in the 2004 Nicholas Sparks adaptation 'The Notebook.' In late June 2004, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams were promoting their romantic film on ABC News when things took a tense turn. During the interview, host Charles Gibson fired off several questions about their on-screen intimacy, making the atmosphere a bit awkward. As per The Things, Gibson asked, "You don't know each other at the beginning of the film, and yet, you have to do love scenes. How do you get to know one another." Initially, both Gosling and McAdams looked extremely uncomfortable and laughed nervously, but Gosling tried to handle the situation with his humor by saying, "Well...you have love scenes in your private time."
Gosling's quick wit left his co-star giggling, while he immediately added, "That's not true.. no." However, Gibson further pressed the topic, "Because it's sort of it makes you sort of mildly uncomfortable I would think about how do you how are we gonna do this do you sit down have a conversation about it sometimes," to which McAdams replied, "Yeah, we would have a conversation." Then, Gibson cut off McAdams mid-sentence and shared, "How are you gonna do this? How am I gonna do that?" In her response, McAdams said, "Well sort of." Gibson didn't seem to drop the matter as he further asked, "What's your sign... or..?" McAdams added, "or favorite color." However, at that point, both of them looked really uncomfortable.
McAdams further stated that filming love scenes wasn't hard because Gosling was a "true gentleman." But Gibson didn't seem to drop the matter, he asked, "What would not being a gentleman mean? He asked being a little more aggressive in the scene than you'd anticipated?" Upon hearing the question, McAdams appeared distressed and needed a moment to collect herself, letting out a squeal before responding. However, she maintained her composure, saying, "I don't know. I think you sort of have to jump in before you can jump out. So, you know, we did the first scene and we sort of said, you know, anything you're sort of worried about, anything you want to talk about, and we think we were both on the same page instinctively."
During a 2014 interview with VH1, Nick Cassavetes, the director of the classic rom-com revealed that Gosling and McAdams went through some challenges behind the scenes. At one point, Gosling even wanted to replace McAdams amid-scene during the early days of the film's shooting. “Maybe I’m not supposed to tell this story, but they were really not getting along one day on set. Really not. Ryan came to me, and there’s 150 people standing in this big scene, and he says, ‘Nick come here.’ 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,'" Cassavetes said at that time, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Cassavetes further added, "Later we went into a room with a producer; they started screaming and yelling at each other. I walked out … 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.” In case you're interested, 'The Notebook' is available for streaming on several streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney +.
