The Notebook’s Director Apologizes to Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling For Exposing On-Set Drama

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly to celebrate the film’s 20th anniversary, Cassavetes recalled an interview he did for the beloved movie’s 10th anniversary, expressing the regret he felt after letting it slip that leads Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling did not get along during filming.

“The last time I did an interview on this thing, I spilled the beans on that. I regretted it. Everyone’s like, ‘Why are you telling that?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know. It caught me on a bad day’, but if [McAdams and Gosling] are around, I apologize to you guys. I shouldn’t have spilled the beans,” he said of the story that made headlines.

“Maybe I’m not supposed to tell this story, but they were really not getting along one day on set. Really not,” Cassavetes said at the time, in a 2014 interview with VH1.

“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,'” he continued.

“[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,” Cassavetes continued in the 2014 interview.

The pair played one of the most iconic couples to grace the silver screen. The story follows the relationship between Allie Hamilton (McAdams) and Noah Calhoun (Gosling) as they fall in love as teenagers during a summer romance, while also highlighting the devastation behind Allie’s eventual Alzheimer’s disease and the pair’s enduring love. Understandably, it was a shock to fans when they found out the film’s stars hid their distaste for each other so well.

Despite their off-screen feuding, their on-screen chemistry was undeniable, so much so that  McAdams and Gosling eventually went on to date from 2005 to 2007.

“They fell in love, and became a wonderful, wonderful fiery couple. I still think they got lots of respect and love for each other, but in the beginning, it wasn’t like that,” he told EW. “But they’re both the greatest actors in the world, and some of the things that I asked them to play were so difficult, and there was nothing they couldn’t do.”

Also in the 20th anniversary interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cassavetes shared that his 93-year-old mother actress, Gena Rowlands has been diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease — the same disease she battled in the 2004 film, in which she played an older version of Allie.

“I got my mom to play older Allie, and we spent a lot of time talking about Alzheimer’s and wanting to be authentic with it, and now, for the last five years, she’s had Alzheimer’s,” he shared with the publication.

“She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”