35 Surprising Facts About 'The Notebook' You Literally Won't Want to Believe

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If there's one thing that can unite us all in these uncertain times, it's a mutual and enduring love for The Notebook—a 20(!!)-year-old movie so romantic that—personally?—every time I watch, I'm furious with my significant other for not hanging off an old time-y Ferris wheel to publicly declare his love for me.

At this point, it seems safe to assume that we all have Noah and Allie's love story memorized line by line and whisper, "If you're a bird, I'm a bird," into a pillow at night while weeping. But even if you're an expert in The Notebook and would willingly write a controversial dissertation on why Allie should have picked Lon (actually, if you feel this way, don't speak to me), there are a lot of surprising facts about this movie that are pretty under the radar.

Let's just say Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling's character prep was borderline method, there were screaming matches on set, Ryan's eye color is not as it seems, and the true story of a dining room table Noah and Allie had sex on will leave you screaming.

Click through for 34 little-known behind-the-scenes facts from everyone's favorite romance movie, nay FILM—and reminder that The Notebook is currently streaming on Hulu in case you're in the mood to cry hysterically at your computer while your dog/cat worries that you're having a breakdown. C ya!

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Ryan and Rachel discussed the love scenes ahead of time.

These two had a verrrrry awkward interview about The Notebook's sex scenes when the movie came out, and Rachel said that for the most part, she and Ryan had a conversation beforehand. "I knew he was going to be a gentleman," she added.

But they didn't rehearse much before filming.

"We didn't rehearse a lot," Ryan said during a throwback interview. "We weren't gonna make the movie when we were auditioning, we were just seeing if there was a girl who could play this part."

They lived totally separate lives in Charleston before filming.

Rachel said, "In the two months leading up to the film, we were both in Charleston, doing prep work, but very separate."

"It kinda worked I think," she added, "because we were supposed to be playing these people from opposite ends of the spectrum who come together and find each other and complement each other in their opposites."

Rachel 'bawled her eyes out' reading the script.

"I read the script the night before and bawled my eyes out," she said in a BTS featurette that's honestly a must-watch. "I'm surprised I even got up the next day, I was just wrecked by it."

And her audition was so good, everyone cried.

"We were all sort of crying," Rachel said of her emotional audition. "Matthew Berry, the casting director, was filming and he had to stop and get a tissue and stuff, it was really nice. And then we did the third scene and it was pretty electric."

Buuut Ryan tried to kick Rachel off the movie.

I'm personally pretending like this is simply not true, but here you go, if you prefer not to be in denial:

"Maybe I'm not supposed to tell this story, but they were really not getting along one day on set. Really not," director Nick Cassavetes revealed to VH1. "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.'"

They ended up having a screaming fight on set.

"We went into a room with a producer; they started screaming and yelling at each other," Nick recalled. "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? 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."

There's a *really good* deleted scene that didn't make the final cut.

You. are. welcome.

See the original post on Youtube

Ryan wore colored contacts.

Nick Cassavetes said that dreamy blue-eyed Ryan decided to wear brown contact lenses to look more like James Garner (aka Old Noah).

Jessica Biel auditioned for Allie while covered in blood.

Jessica was one of many celeb names circling the part of Allie, and her audition was wild."That's one that I wanted so badly," she said.

"I was in the middle of shooting Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I auditioned with Ryan Gosling in my trailer—covered in blood. Nick Cassavetes put me through the wringer in an interesting, excitingly creative way. But there's a million that get away. We're gluttons for punishment. It's just rejection."

Kate Beckinsale auditioned, too, but had zero chemistry with Ryan.

Truly can't relate, but casting director Matthew Barry said, "Nick flew to San Francisco to go meet with her and there was no chemistry between the two of them. So Nick was like, 'She's out, find me somebody.'"

Ryan wanted Jane McGregor to play Allie.

Jane was a rising actor from Canada, and apparently, Ryan was rooting for her to play Allie.

"Allie was a tough role, it was not an easy role and we tried to will this girl and Ryan really, really responded to her," casting director Matthew Barry explained. "She just didn't have it. We went to dinner and [Ryan] was like, 'Let me go work with her, let me go work with her.' And he went and worked with her and came back and still couldn't get there."

Britney Spears auditioned for the role too.

As she put it in her memoir, "The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams, and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, I'm glad I didn't do it. If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone, I'd have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night."

Watch her audition video over here!

Ryan got cast because he...wasn't handsome?

Ryan himself confirmed this factually untrue nugget of info, saying, "The director, Nick Cassavetes, called me to meet him at his house. When I got there, he was standing in his backyard, and he looked at me and said, 'I want you to play this role because you're not like the other young actors out there in Hollywood. You're not handsome, you're not cool, you're just a regular guy who looks a bit nuts."

Truly, ARE WE LOOKING AT THE SAME PERSON, NICK CASSAVETES?

Hayden Christensen was a contender for Noah, but 'couldn't act.'

The team went to check out Hayden in Star Wars, but as casting director Matthew Barry bluntly put it, "We lasted probably 20-25 minutes and we were like, 'He cannot act.' Nick turned to me and my partner at the time and said, 'Who do you got?'" Harsh!

Steven Spielberg almost directed...and cast Tom Cruise.

According to E! News, Steven Spielberg was originally lined up to direct The Notebook and wanted Tom Cruise to play Noah. Fortunately, some (me) might say, "scheduling conflicts" got in the way.

Ryan improvised the iconic 'What do you want?!' line.

It came straight from his beautiful brain!

Or, as Nick Cassavetes put it, "There was a scene at the end where Ryan improvised, 'What do you want? What do you want?' And it became one of the most iconic things from the film [that] wasn't in the script. He just knew it. I'm a literary guy, I was a lit major in college and I like words, but I also like improvisation, [so] that's fine. But he was so on it. We just let him go."

Allie's famous blue dress was custom-made.

Costume designer Karyn Wagner said, "We wanted to communicate with [the] audience why she woke up that morning and picked out that blue dress. She wants to say something to him. The color of that dress is about hope. It's not a very ornate dress. It's got just enough detail to make it interesting … it's a classic dress, but it says a lot about her and her hopes for this day."

The bird scene almost didn't make the final cut.

Like, can you imagine the movie without this scene? Me neither, but apparently New Line tried to shut it down for bird-related reasons.

"We went into New Line and they were like, 'You can’t do the birds. There’s just too much—you've got to take the birds out," Nick Cassavetes revealed. "We said, 'How come?' And they said, 'It just doesn’t work. We talked to every animal wrangler—you can't do it. The birds aren't trained. You've got to take it out.' Well, the producer and I didn’t listen very much."

SOMEONE GIVE THIS FLOCK AN OSCAR.

Ryan wanted Noah to burn the house down.

VH1's interview with Nick Cassavetes is truly the gift that keeps on giving, because the man loves to dish. And he went ahead and revealed that Ryan wanted to burn down the house Noah built for Allie:

"He'd come to me and say, 'Why can’t I burn the house down?' Cassavetes said. "I'd say, 'Because I don't even know what that means.' And he'd say, 'Cleansing my fire!'"

'The Notebook' was inspired by Nicholas Sparks's in-laws.

Author Nicholas Sparks says The Notebook was inspired by his wife's grandparents. "Two wonderful people who spent over 60 years together." Cuuuuute.

Nick Cassavetes cast his mom as older Allie.

In case you didn't know, Nick Cassevetes's mom is the iconic actor Gena Rowlands, and his dad is famed director John Cassavetes!

Ryan went low-key method as a carpenter.

"I apprenticed with a cabinetmaker in Charleston for about two months," he said. "We made all the Adirondack chairs in front of the house. We sat in them a lot."

Rachel took ballet lessons and worked out a ton.

While Ryan was busy being a carpenter, Rachel spent her time doing etiquette lessons.

"Nick had me take ballet and etiquette classes. And I went to a few weddings and talked to some debutantes," she said, adding that there was also a grueling workout schedule. "I'd never trained like that. I was even taking protein powder. It got to the point where I turned to my trainer, pointed to my bicep, and said, 'This doesn't look 1940s anymore, it's gone even beyond pin-up girl.' So we had to tone it down."

Oh, and she also took dialect lessons.

Gotta perfect that Southern drawl, right? As Rachel put it, "We went down two months early so we started with a dialect coach right away."

So, about that table Noah and Allie have sex on...

Just gonna let you sit with this quote: "We shot a scene where Rachel and I consummate our relationship on a table I made. But I couldn't keep it. We used a special wood, and the deal was [the cabinetmaker] got the table. But he doesn't know what happened on it."

The sex scene was supposed to be way longer.

According to IMDb's ~trivia~ Allie and Noah's second love scene was originally "longer and more explicit," but they wanted to keep a PG-13 rating.

Ryan rowed every day to prepare for the role.

The man was COMMITTED to getting those biceps in shape, and apparently, he rowed the Ashley River every day for months.

The famous rain kiss was freezing IRL.

Turns out this scene was the opposite of romantic:"We just wanted to get out of the rain," Rachel said of the scene. "It was very cold. That dress was made for the film, but a lot of the stuff I wore was rented and was actually from the 1940s. So much of it was falling apart. I think there's a scene in the movie where I'm running in bare feet, and it's only because [after] the first few takes I did, the shoes disintegrated off my feet."

Rachel and Ryan didn't start dating 'til way after the movie.

Ryan told W Magazine, “We were together long before we were physically together. All I knew is that she was a force to be reckoned with. How I was going to reckon with it, I had no idea. She's not someone you can ever dismiss or put into any category. She's many things.”

James Marsden thought the movie would be bad.

First of all, how dare he! But here's the quote in case you're interested:

"I never set out to make a bad movie. Some movies just turn out bad, and I want to scream, 'Why did you pick that take?!' There are some movies that I've been in that I was sure people would laugh at, that have become huge. I thought The Notebook was going to be a schmaltzy Movie of the Week-type thing, and here we are!"

'If I'm a bird' didn't ~spark joy~ in Ryan.

When asked about the line by MTV, Ryan said, "That line, I did not think was going to spark joy. It didn't spark joy in me. I said it and somehow, you know, but it did. You don't know. You think you do, but you don't know.”

Ryan didn't mean to drive into that gate.

The scene of him rushing to Allie's house before she left after their summer romance? Ryan definitely did not mean to crash into the gate, but they kept it in the movie.

Oh, also, George Clooney was almost Noah.

Apparently, George was going to play Noah as a young man and Paul Newman was going to play him as an old man. But then they met up and George said, "'I can't play you. I don't look anything like you. This is insane.' We just wanted to do it because we wanted to work together, [but] it ended up being not the right thing for us to do."

Ryan and Rachel recreated their iconic kiss on stage.

After winning Best Kiss at the 2005 MTV Movie & TV Awards, the actors GAVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANTED—and sorry, but no Best Kiss couple moment will ever top this. Oh and looks like these two got over their differences!!

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