Tom Hanks was the co-lead in two of Nora Ephron‘s most popular romantic-comedies, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. It could have been three, but it turns out he was too happy being the most divorced man alive.
“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,” his wife Rita Wilson revealed on the Table for Two podcast. “And so he could not understand that a person going through a divorce would have anything other than just like, I’m so happy.”
Hanks divorced his first wife Samantha Lewes in 1987 and married Wilson in 1988. Hanks’ marital status notwithstanding, director Rob Reiner considered a number of actors for the Harry role before settling on Billy Crystal, including Albert Brooks, Richard Dreyfuss, and Michael Keaton, while Molly Ringwald was considered for Sally Albright.
If Hanks had starred in When Harry Met Sally…, he might have been too busy to make The ‘Burbs, the Jon Dante cult comedy that came out the same year. A world without Hanks in The ‘Burbs, and Billy Crystal looking marvelous in a white sweater, is not a world I want to live in.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)