The Julia Roberts role Meg Ryan rejected: “I don’t know if it’s good form to talk about this”
Meg Ryan is one of the ultimate leading women from the romance genre, with the actor starring in beloved classics from When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. From the infamous cheesecake scene alongside Billy Crystal or the fateful meeting at the top of the Empire State building, Ryan has cultivated a filmography of cult classics that have defined the romantic framework within cinema.
The enemies-to-lovers trope or success of Nora Ephron would perhaps not be where it is without the charming presence of Ryan, with the actor endearing audiences through her quirky neurosis and fast-paced talking style, doing circles around co-stars as they struggle to keep up with her manic sense of wit. However, while she is forever ingrained in our minds and cultural references, there was one film that the actor almost passed up on, despite becoming one of her most revered characters.
Many great philosophical questions have been pondered over through the medium of film, whether it be the true meaning of life or the age-old debate over whether or not men and women can be friends. When Harry Met Sally is truly one of the most influential rom-coms of all time, with Ephron redefining the structure of the genre by breaking all the conventions in the first act.
We typically expect the two leads in a love story to meet and immediately fall for each other, but Ephron flips this by having Sally and Harry repeatedly meet and get along horribly, clashing over nearly every single opinion and finding each other completely insufferable. Everybody else around them seems to be falling in love, with the two of them only being met with disappointments in their romantic lives.
But while we cannot imagine anyone else in this role, there is a parallel world in which Ryan accepted an offer to star in another film and turned down the classic Rob Reiner film, with Ryan being offered the part of Shelby in Steel Magnolias.
Julia Roberts was famously cast in this role, with the tear-jerking classic becoming the film to launch her career and lead to subsequent roles in Pretty Women and My Best Friend’s Wedding. However, perhaps Ryan had a moment of divine intervention, with the actor rejecting her role in the Herbert Ross film to star alongside Crystal and thus making history.
When describing this, Ryan said, “I don’t know if it’s good form to talk about this, but I’m so happy that things turned out as they did.” It seems as though Ryan also managed to dodge a bullet, with Ross becoming notorious for his treatment of the cast and crew during the production and frequently reducing Roberts to tears, with the director harbouring an intense hatred towards the actor and subjecting her to his brutal tirades each day. As a result, Ryan got to work on a role that is now a definitive highlight of her career, with the dynamic duo being forever remembered as one of the greatest examples of opposites attract in cinematic history.
