‘When Harry Met Sally’ director shares the movie’s original ending
For the most part, romantic comedies are obligated to give audiences a happy ending, but director Rob Reiner has revealed that almost wasn’t the case for When Harry Met Sally.
The 1989 favourite follows Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s title characters over the course of a dozen years, where they try to maintain a platonic friendship without letting their increasing feelings for each other get in the way.
Of course, things don’t quite go according to plan, and at the end of the movie Harry declares his love for Sally, and they proceed to get married 12 years after their first argument over whether or not men and women can be friends without sex getting in the way.
Speaking on CNN’s Who’s Talking with Chris Wallace, Reiner admitted that his own romantic history had started to seep into the storyline. “I had been married for 10 years,” he said. “I had been single for 10 years, and I couldn’t figure out how I was ever going to be with anybody, and that gave birth to When Harry Met Sally.”
Reiner was divorced from first wife Penny Marshall in 1981, and would embark upon a decade of bachelorhood, something that almost saw his film end on a much more downbeat note. “I hadn’t met anybody, and so it was going to be the two of them seeing each other after years, talking, and then walking away from each other,” he continued.
As fate would have it, Reiner met photographer Michele Singer during production, and they were married the same year When Harry Met Sally was released in cinemas.
If it hadn’t been for those fortuitous circumstances, though, then Crystal and Ryan’s characters may have never ended up getting their happy ending on-screen. “I met her while we were making the film, and I changed the ending,” he admitted, with Reiner’s newfound personal happiness directly informing the conclusion of one of his most popular hits.
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