Fans of The Notebook might enjoy thinking about all the steamy chemistry leads Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams shared both on screen and during their subsequent two year relationship, but apparently, life on the set wasn’t always so rosy between the two. In fact, Gosling allegedly tried to get his leading lady thrown off the set at one point because he was so frustrated with her.
Stories of the on-screen tension just exploded out during a VH1 interview with director Nick Cassavetes. Apparently, the growing tension reached its breaking point on set when Ryan Gosling stopped a pivotal scene and told the production head he wasn’t going to do it anymore, at least not with Rachel McAdams.
"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."
A declaration like that likely would have been enough to irreparably harm most productions, but instead of separating Gosling and McAdams, Cassavetes and the producers decided to let them fight out all their negativity. So, they put them into a trailer together and just let them scream.
"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. 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."
Sometimes what creative types want to see from co-workers, more than anything else, is passion. They want to see the other person is just as invested and just as willing to walk out of the edge in order to make the best possible final product. At the time, Rachel McAdams was almost a complete unknown; so, it makes sense that Ryan Gosling would have had some doubts. Fortunately, he stuck with it, and the two of them were able to create a finished product that means a lot to a lot of people.
Besides, God only knows the truly awful things that are happening on movie sets right now. By all accounts, actors quitting, threatening to quit and acting like divas is such a common occurrence that most producers don’t even make an issue about it until it crosses a certain line.
