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When Harry Met Sally director Rob Reiner originally gave the film a much more depressing ending - but then he fell in love
Rob Reiner met his future wife while he was filming When Harry Met Sally and that inspired the new romantic ending that we all love
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When Rob Reiner was tragically killed in 2025, he left behind one of the most impressive film legacies of all time. In the late 80s and early 90s, he directed some of the most iconic films in multiple genres, including arguably the greatest romantic comedy of all time, When Harry Met Sally. However, the film originally had a much more depressing ending, which Rob Reiner changed because he, himself, fell in love while filming.
Rob Reiner revealed that the original ending of When Harry Met Sally didn’t see the pair finally sort their lives out and get together. Instead, it was going to mimic the director’s own experience in love, which at the time was more of a series of missed connections.
“It was going to be the two of them seeing each other after years, talking and then walking away from each other,” Rob Reiner said in an interview. “I had been married for 10 years. I’d 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.”
What changed? Rob Reiner met the woman who would become his wife. “I met my wife Michele, who I’ve been married to now 35 years. I met her while we were making the film, and I changed the ending.”
That feeling of meeting the woman who would become the love of his life seems to have slipped into the memorable monologue that Billy Crystal delivers as Harry at the end of the movie. At a New Year's party, he tells Sally, played by Meg Ryan, that he loves everything about her, including how it takes her an hour and a half to order a sandwich. The most important line in the scene, though, is when he tells her, “I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
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