Romantic comedy queen Meg Ryan revealed that one of her most famous scenes causes her son Jack Quaid “a unique embarrassment” that leads him to avoid Katz’s Deli.
“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,” Ryan began, telling Carol Burnett in a phone call for an Interview Magazine feature.“My daughter was here and everybody was on speaker, and they were like, ‘Mom, this is a very unique embarrassment.’”
Ryan was referring to the “When Harry Met Sally” orgasm scene that coined “I’ll have what she’s having” and was filmed in Katz’s Deli, which is memorialized in a very public way.
“[Jack] said, ‘You know you can go into that deli and there’s an arrow pointing down to the table where you shot that scene,” Ryan added. “I wonder if it’s the right one.”
Burnett thanked Ryan for “so many wonderful moments” in her movies, including the famous orgasm scene, which is what prompted this anecdote.
“You can’t top that. Did you do it more than once?” Burnett asked.
“Oh, we probably did that over and over and over again,” Ryan said.
Burnett went on to admire Ryan’s chemistry with her rom-com partners like Billy Crystal and David Duchovny, who co-stars with Ryan in the upcoming Bleecker Street film “What Happens Later,” which Ryan also directed.
“I love the moments that you’ve had with your costars, you and Billy and now with David,” Burnett said. “You made me cry a little bit, too. I was very touched by—I don’t want to spoil anything.”
“What Happens Later” arrives in theaters Oct. 13.
“The story started to revolve around this question of how we begin to forgive ourselves and one another,” Ryan said. “It’s a rom-com, so a lot of times you have to ask those deeper questions in secret and hope that people can feel them underneath everything.”
