Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were the on-screen couple audiences loved to watch in the ‘90s. Their first movie together was 1990’s Joe Versus the Volcano followed by one of the best romantic comedies of all time, Sleepless in Seattle, three years later. However, did you know that the Nora Ephron classic could have been their third team-up instead of their second? This is because Hanks’ wife, Rita Wilson, revealed that the You’ve Got Mail duo was about to star together in another iconic rom-com before working on Sleepless in Seattle.
While Sleepless in Seattle was the movie that made our hearts sing for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, we could have fallen for them much earlier if the Big star would have been her leading man in When Harry Met Sally... On the podcast Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi, Hanks' wife, Rita Wilson, revealed why her husband passed up the chance to work with his Joe Versus the Volcano co-star in the Rob Reiner film, saying:
People probably don’t know this, but Tom was offered when ‘Harry Met Sally’ and he turned it down because he was going through a divorce and he was very happy to be not married. And so he could not understand that a person going through a divorce would have anything other than just like, ‘I’m so happy.’ But I loved that script.
Don’t we all? To think that Tom Hanks could have been the one witnessing firsthand Meg Ryan’s infamous orgasm scene. But, his reasoning makes sense as he clearly wasn’t in the headspace to play a man who was unhappily divorced. Before Rita Wilson came into the picture in 1988, the Toy Story star was married to actress Samantha Lewes, and they had two kids: Fargo actor Colin Hanks and their daughter Elizabeth. After nine years of marriage, these two got divorced in 1987. When Harry Met Sally... came out in 1989.
As Tom Hanks passed on the male lead, Harry was played by Billy Crystal, Rob Reiner's best friend, who he worked with before on The Princess Bride. The real inspiration behind When Harry Met Sally… actually came from heartbreak after Reiner divorced comedian/filmmaker Penny Marshall and Crystal helped him cope. While he was in the middle of his single life, the Stand By Me director was going through a lot of relationship snags. This gave him the idea to make a movie about a platonic relationship like Harry and Sally's.
Considering the City Slickers actor has been married to his high school sweetheart since 1970, Crystal did research to play the role of a melancholy divorced man by staying in a separate room away from the cast and crew when they would shoot in Manhattan. This romantic-comedy was initially going to have a super depressing ending where Harry and Sally decide to just be friends as Reiner and Ephron felt it was a more realistic outcome. But Harry and Sally got married, and these days the rom-com is considered one of the best friends-to-lovers movies we have.
Tom Hanks may not have been Meg Ryan’s leading man in When Harry Met Sally…, but they showed their great chemistry in movies like Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. While this American actress’s decade-long return to rom-coms doesn’t feature the Saving Mr. Banks actor, this rom-com partnership should make another movie again soon to bring us some nostalgia and show audiences what raw chemistry is all about. You can watch Sleepless in Seattle on your Netflix subscription and When Harry Met Sally…is free on Tubi.
