Is it meant to be? In 2001, romantic comedy fans adopted the would-or-wouldn’t-they romance of Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack‘s lovestruck characters in Serendipity.
Within the basic movie, the actors performed Jonathan Trager and Sara Thomas, respectively, who ended up searching for one another over several years in New York Metropolis after they first met, fell in love and went their separate methods. Regardless of a heartbreaking parting, the pair remained satisfied that their preliminary encounter was fated.
“As is commonly the case, there was a form of central downside with the feminine character not essentially being completely plausible. So we had a variety of conferences about it: I didn’t need this character to be this type of wispy idiot, although she was so thinking about destiny,” Beckinsale recalled of her appearing course of throughout an April 2020 interview with Vulture. “You could be like that with out being this form of ghastly supernatural particular person. … She’s a therapist. You don’t need her to be a nasty, embarrassing therapist, however she’s also obsessed with the notion of serendipity and fate. So attempting to marry these two issues with out making her a personality who appears fully implausible. You could be a type of whimsical, constructive, open one who’s additionally clever.”
The England native fondly seemed again on her Manhattan filming experience.
“After which immediately there we had been in August in New York, in scarves and overcoats, sweating to dying and pretending to be ice-skating on what was really linoleum, as a result of it was too sizzling for ice,” she advised the outlet on the time. “I keep in mind being extremely sizzling the entire time. A classic Christmas movie and we’re all pouring sweat.”
The Pearl Harbor actress is not any stranger to reliving the candy flick, even recreating its now-infamous elevator scene alongside a begrudging lodge worker.
“I knew I acknowledged the elevators on this lodge I used to be staying in,” she captioned an Instagram clip in September 2018, the place she recited her wistful movie dialogue. “That is the place we shot Serendipity. Alas, I couldn't get my main man to play ball this time @fairmontroyalyork.”
The movie’s director, Peter Chelsom, additionally opened up concerning the filmmaking journey practically twenty years after the film’s launch.
“We had been making a movie a couple of world that we hope would possibly exist,” Chelsom advised Insider in October 2021. “Sure, there’s no clock. Sure, you'll be able to’t see the celebs. All that's completely proper. However with it this manner it transports you, you'll be able to escape extra. … It’s the steadiness between the person and lady. They've mirror issues: marrying the so-called good associate and realizing they will’t. There have been a variety of movies within the early 2000s — and I stated this again then — they had been sexist. This concept of ‘frat boy behaves actually badly, s—t hits the fan in act two, then all of act three is him apologizing to the gorgeous blonde.’ That was the laziness of romantic comedies within the early 2000s and in some methods Serendipity was the apex.”
Scroll under to see what the Serendipity forged has been as much as because the 2001 vacation rom-com premiered:
