Meg Ryan and Nora Ephron once planned to make a movie about red hawks in Central Park
Meg Ryan has finally directed a rom-com with What Happens Later, her second directorial effort. The actress, 61, is practically synonymous with the genre, having risen to fame as a star in Nora Ephron-penned (and later -directed) films like When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You've Got Mail. But before Ephron's death in 2012, Ryan and the iconic writer had thrown around the idea of collaborating on another film, this time behind the camera.
"At one point we talked about a script, about something that happened in Central Park with the red hawks," Ryan tells EW. "We were dancing around that for a minute. These hawks end up on Fifth Avenue and the facade of this very tony [apartment] building."
Adds Ryan's costar David Duchovny of the story, "The residents loved these hawks until the hawks started eating pigeons and squirrels and dropping them on people below."
Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock Meg Ryan and Nora Ephron
The main hawk was named Pale Male, after the true story of the bird who first began roosting on the building in the early 1990s. The story gained international attention in 2004 when the building's co-op removed the nest, sparking an outcry. The plan was for Ephron to write a film inspired by the 2004 incident, with Ryan directing.
"She had a draft of that and then we were going to work on that," Ryan explains. "I was going to try to direct; it was a long time ago." That plan never came to fruition, but Ryan did get behind the camera in 2015 for Ithaca. And now, she returns in her and Ephron's signature genre.
Many of the Ephron hallmarks are in What Happens Later, from the quirky characters who feel both highly specific and utterly real, to the note of melancholy threaded throughout the story. The film follows Willa (Ryan) and Bill (Duchovny), two exes who get snowed in for the night at an airport, 20 years after they last saw each other.
Bleecker Street Meg Ryan and David Duchovny in 'What Happens Later'
Ryan even dedicated the film to the late auteur with an ending title card that reads "For Nora."
"I'm just grateful to her," Ryan says. "I have so many blessings in my life that I could trace back to her. We fell in love with the same genre. We were in love with it in the same way."
"One of the main things for Nora was magical reality," Ryan says of the connections between her movie and Ephron's films. "Her [work] was all around destiny and kismet and the idea of larger forces at work. In this movie, it's the airport. It's this environment that is irritating them and brokering their current interaction. That is her element. If rom-coms could secretly speak to the moment, she felt they were successful."
What Happens Later is playing in theaters starting this Friday.
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