
It’s been 37 years since Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal captivated filmgoers in the beloved 1989 rom-com “When Harry Met Sally.”
Now, the erstwhile Sally Albright and Harry Burns are together again, with Crystal sharing evidence of their sweet reunion.
When Billy Met Meg
On Wednesday, November 5, Crystal took to Instagram to share a photo of himself posing with his former co-star.
The photo was taken onstage at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, where Crystal is performing in his acclaimed one-man show “Billy Crystal 860.”
“An old friend stopped by the Imperial last night,” Crystal wrote in the caption.
Fans could not hold back their delight at seeing this iconic onscreen couple together again.
“Are you guys actually still together? It certainly took long enough! 😎” quipped one fan in a comment.
“My favorite duo🙌🏻🙌🏻 And my most favorite movie of all time 🍁,” another added.
“The all time best movie ever made!❤️,” wrote another comment, with a fan suggesting, “Maybe you guys should do a sequel.”
He Wasn’t Rob Reiner’s First Choice
While Harry Burns has become a signature role for Crystal, during a recent interview with People he revealed that he wasn’t actually director Rob Reiner‘s first choice for the role.
“It was difficult in that I was not his first choice for Harry,” he admitted.
“I said, ‘Listen, when he wants me, if he wants me, then he wants me. But I know he’s seeing other people, which he should do,’” he added, admitting he found out some of the other actors whom Reiner had been considering, a list that reportedly included Albert Brooks, Michael Keaton and Tom Hanks. “I knew who some of them were and I’m going, ‘Oh, he’ll get it.’”
Finally, just as Crystal had pretty much given up hope, “one day the call came.
Crystal recalled Reiner being “almost upset,” and told him, “I always knew it was you, but you have to see them. You have to see these [others] because you never…’
According to Crystal, “I said, ‘Of course.’ So he said, ‘Please read it.’ And I said, ‘Someone snuck it to me. So I read it. Guess what? I don’t like it.’ And then we laughed, laughed, laughed.”
Crystal recalled Reiner wanting to get going immediately. “And then I said, ‘I have a lot of ideas.’ He said, ‘Come on, we’ll start tomorrow. Let’s go to work.’ And so I brought to it so many ideas. It was great to do them because Rob was Harry.”
That, however, created a bit of a problem when Crystal realized the “difficult part” about taking the role would be telling Reiner, “You have to get out of the way so I can then step in and be this guy.”
Thankfully, Reiner understood, with Crystal telling him, “Let me invent the way I’m feeling him.”
Crystal recalled he and Reiner were constantly on the phone, shooting ideas back and forth — with their conversations echoed in the scenes of Harry and Sally watching movies together from their respective apartments while on the phone with each other.
One of those exchanges — in which Harry complains of a headache he jokingly dismisses as “a 24-hour tumor” — sprang directly from a conversation with Reiner, who complained to Crystal. “Oh, I got a headache, buddy. I got such a headache.”
When Crystal suggested he see the doctor, the director replied, “No, he’ll just tell me it’s nothing.”
“And it’s one of my favorite little exchanges,” Crystal said. “That was pure us.”
Billy Crystal & Meg Ryan Reunite 37 Years After ‘When Harry Met Sally’