"But I want you. Not for today, or next week, but forever. Every day, you and me."
Sure, Ryan Gosling infamously said that line in The Notebook to Rachel McAdams, who would go on to become his real-life girlfriend after production ended. But during the casting process for the iconic 2004 movie, Gosling was pushing hard for another actress to be the Allie to his Noah.
And that's just one surprising bombshell casting director Matthew Barry dropped during a recent phone interview with E! News, along with sharing new details about Britney Spears' "fantastic" audition.
Despite the obvious allure of the pop princess, he noted that the chemistry between Gosling and McAdams was "immediate." Though Barry admitted director Nick Cassavetes had concerns early on about his leads clashing on-set.
"Well, it was funny because after the first day of shooting, Nick called me and was like, 'This is a disaster,'" Barry said. "And I saw the first day's dailies and she was awful and I was like, 'F--k.' And then she settled in."
Barry continued, "Look, there was a lot of pressure on her, she had a lot of pressure and it was was a big boy's club. Nick was friends with all the other guys who were in the movie and she was kind of on an island by herself."
And, as the story goes, things got so heated between Gosling and McAdams that he even tried to have her replaced, with Cassavetes telling VH1 in 2014, "[Ryan]'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.'"
So how was it fixed? The director let his stars hash their s--t out. "We went into a room with a producer; they started screaming and yelling at each other....And it got better after that, you know?" Cassavetes explained. "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 by the time Barry arrived on set—he played Dr. Barnwall in the movie—"everything was fine," he told E! News. "Like any film, you have your battles and you come out loving each other and they wound up together." Only in the movies, right?
From the actress who considers the movie the one that got away to the actor the studio initially wanted to play Noah, Barry is spilling all of The Notebook's casting secrets.
The Notebook is streaming on Netflix.