Meg Ryan has joked that faking an orgasm in the famous scene from her hit rom-com When Harry Met Sally was ‘natural’ for her thanks to co-star Billy Crystal.
The You’ve Got Mail actress, 62, was on hand on Sunday night at the Kennedy Centre Honours to pay tribute to Crystal as he was awarded the prestigious prize alongside the likes of the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb, Dionne Warwick and Queen Latifah.
She also wasn’t afraid to gently roast the 75-year-old Analyze This actor as she referenced the scene in which her character Sally shows off her orgasm-faking skills to Harry (Crystal) across lunch at a busy deli.
Harry had earlier claimed that none of the women he’s been with have ever merely pretended to climax, before Sally’s rendition ends in a repeated chorus of ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ amid plenty of banging the table with her hand.
The sequence is then perfectly topped off when a woman who’s watched the whole scene unfold (and played by director Rob Reiner’s mother) tells a waitress: ‘I’ll have what she’s having!’
‘The scene came really natural to me and I really have Billy to thank for that. I’ve never been around anyone who made faking an orgasm easier,’ Ryan quipped of her co-star in the 1989 movie during the ceremony.
‘Acting with Billy was effortless. The characters just came alive. And just meeting him. I don’t know. How could you not love Billy Crystal?’ Ryan added, according to DailyMail.com.
‘Of course Harry is a very broad character noxious, insensitive and terrified of commitment.’
‘But if you take out all of Harry’s flaws when you have underneath is pure Billy. And what he brings to all of his characters is heart,’ she added.
‘Harry is his heart because Billy listens to his and as his wife Janice has known for for over 50 years – falling in love with Billy is a pretty easy thing to do,’ Ryan said.
Reiner was also in attendance, crediting Crystal for coming up with ‘the funniest line in all of movie history’ (his mother’s retort) and proclaiming that ‘his life is better because Billy Crystal has been in it’.
Ryan previously shared her children’s reaction to the infamous sequence, which has become a classic one in cinema.
‘It’s funny, my son just called me this morning and he’s in New York staying at a hotel that’s right across the street from Katz’s Deli [where the scene was shot].
‘My daughter was here and everybody was on speaker, and they were like, “Mom, this is a very unique embarrassment”,’ Ryan told Carol Burnett, who was chatting to her for Interview Magazine before the Sag-Aftra strike earlier this year.
She continued: ‘He said, “You know you can go into that deli and there’s an arrow pointing down to the table where you shot that scene.”’
She is mum to actor Jack Quaid, 31, with ex-husband and star of The Parent Trap and The Day After Tomorrow Dennis Quaid, and adopted daughter Daisy True Ryan, 19.
Having said that it’s embarrassing, as many people would expect of Ryan’s children, her son has actually been quite sweet about it before too – after finally seeing the film for the first time in 2018.
‘Guys, when your mother has one of the most famous orgasm scenes of all time, you do not jump to the film, okay?’ he explained during a panel for Entertainment Weekly.
However, Scream star Jack then quickly fell in love with it too after he watched it, calling it his ‘favourite of hers’.
He added: ‘I saw it because I was doing a rom-com, and that’s like the rom-com, and I watched it, and then afterwards I cried for so long, because I was so proud of her, and I immediately called her, and I’m like, “I’m so sorry I missed this movie.” She’s like, “I’ve seen it like one time.”’
Ryan also made it clear recently that she is not pleased with Jack being labelled a ‘nepo baby’ due to her Hollywood stardom.
She called the term – which is given to the children of famous parents, especially when they enter the same industry – ‘dismissive’.
Jack, who made his acting debut in The Hunger Games, is best known for his role in the satirical superhero series The Boys, which he’s starred in since 2019.
‘Jack is really talented. He’s more of a natural than I’ll ever be. That nepo stuff is so dismissive of his work ethic, his gifts, and how sensitive he is to the idea of his privilege,’ she told Glamour magazine.
Ryan also recalled when she first recognised his performing talent after he was cast as Bottom in a middle school production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
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‘I was newly divorced from his dad, and he was seated at the other side of the gym. I had my head in my hands and was like, “Oh, no. He’s good. He’s really good”,’ she remembered.
The star added that she ‘just knew’ and leaned forward, seeing Quaid, who was ‘also leaning forward with his head in his hands’.
Quaid Junior was also among the cast for Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Oppenheimer, led by Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt.
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