Movies
‘The Notebook’ Rain Scene Secrets: Behind-the-Scenes Details You Should Know
The Notebook is widely regarded as one of the most romantic movies of all time, featuring one of the most iconic and swoonworthy moments ever seen on the big screen. After years apart, Noah (Ryan Gosling) and Allie (Rachel McAdams) spend the day together, which culminates in the rain scene.
As Noah is tying up his row boat, and the rain is pouring down, Allie walks up to him and demands to know, “Why didn’t you write me?” She says she waited for him for seven years, and “now it’s too late.” Noah is dumbfounded because he wrote Allie a letter every day for a year. (Her mom kept the letters from her.) Noah commands the conversation and says what they’re both thinking, “It wasn’t over. It still isn’t over.” And that’s when Noah and Allie finally kiss after so many years apart.
Many romance movies have tried to replicate the power of The Notebook’s rain scene, to no avail. That scene has only been rivaled by Gosling and McAdams’ legendary recreation of the kiss at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards. It’s been over 20 years since The Notebook hit theaters, and the rain scene still lives rent-free in our heads. With the Nicholas Sparks adaptation available on Netflix, Swooon has rounded up crucial rain scene facts you may not know.
New Line / Everett Collection
1. Rachel McAdams’ outfit in the rain scene was “falling apart.”
Allie wears a gorgeous light blue dress for the pivotal scene, and McAdams admitted it wasn’t the most durable outfit, especially in the rain. “We just wanted to get out of the rain. It was very cold,” she told Allure, according to Life & Style. “That dress was made for the film, but a lot of the stuff I wore was rented and was actually from the 1940s. So much of it was falling apart.”
2. The rain scene wasn’t actually all natural.
When McAdams, Gosling, and the crew were filming the rain scene, the weather wasn’t exactly playing nice. “It didn’t rain when we needed it to,” McAdams told GMA. “They had to pump rain from the bottom of the lake through fire hoses and then pelt us with it.”
3. Kobe Bryant brought the rain dress for his wife, Vanessa Bryant.
Bryant revealed during her eulogy for the former Los Angeles Laker that her husband had gifted her the blue dress from The Notebook, the exact one McAdams wears. “When I asked him why he chose the blue dress, he said it was because it was the scene when Allie comes back to Noah. We had hoped to grow old together like the movie,” Bryant said. (Kobe Bryant, along with his daughter, Gianna, died in a 2020 helicopter crash with seven others.)
4. The rain scene was included in The Notebook Broadway musical.
The Notebook made its way to Broadway in 2024 and found a way to include the rain scene. Pulling that off was a feat, considering the production took place in a New York City theater. “It’s a particular system where each drop is released from a little nozzle and then hits some metal to break it up before it falls to the deck,” The Notebook co-designer Brett J. Banakis told Playbill.
