Meg Ryan takes a look through her career and breaks down some of her iconic movie and TV looks! Meg dishes on how she got all her iconic hairstyles (not wigs) in 'When Harry Met Sally,' playing three different characters in 'Joe Versus the Volcano' and more. Plus, hear about Meg's big breakthrough for her newest film, 'What Happens Later.'
Director: Noël Jean
Director of Photography: Grant Bell
Editor: Lika Kumoi
Talent: Meg Ryan
Coordinating Producer: Sydney Malone
Production Managers: Andressa Pelachi, Kevin Balash
Talent Booker: Caitlin Brody
Gaffer: Shay Eberle-Gunst
Sound Mixer: Cassiano Pereira
Production Assistants: Fernando Barajas, Liza Antonova
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Erica Dillman
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Graphics Supervisor: Ross Rackin
Director: Noël Jean
Director of Photography: Grant Bell
Editor: Lika Kumoi
Talent: Meg Ryan
Coordinating Producer: Sydney Malone
Production Managers: Andressa Pelachi, Kevin Balash
Talent Booker: Caitlin Brody
Gaffer: Shay Eberle-Gunst
Sound Mixer: Cassiano Pereira
Production Assistants: Fernando Barajas, Liza Antonova
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Erica Dillman
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Graphics Supervisor: Ross Rackin
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 I clearly cut all my hair off
00:01 'cause everyone was sick of dealing with it.
00:03 This is when Harry met Sally in 1989.
00:10 This was just the costume designer's idea
00:12 of like New York in the 80s.
00:14 I think my favorite is whatever the librarian look is
00:16 with the bow tie.
00:17 Fantastic.
00:18 I remember that the hair from their college days
00:21 had said to Rob there was time
00:24 when I used to take the curling iron
00:26 and just like put it on one side
00:28 and let it bake there for a while.
00:29 And then do the same over here and aquanut it.
00:32 I looked like that in high school.
00:33 Let me tell you something.
00:37 I think they were all my hair.
00:38 Yes!
00:41 Yes!
00:42 Yes!
00:43 Oh!
00:43 Oh!
00:45 I didn't come up with the whole scene.
00:46 The scene was in the script,
00:47 but there were variations on how it was originally scripted
00:50 and then what we ended up with.
00:51 But no way did I come up with that line that Billie said.
00:54 It was just too funny.
00:55 I'll have what she's having.
00:58 This is "Sleepless in Seattle."
00:59 It was a movie about love in the movies
01:02 and love itself.
01:02 It was an homage to love in the movies.
01:05 Are you in love with him?
01:06 I'm not now.
01:11 Now those were the days when people knew how to be in love.
01:16 This I think was Nora Ephron's idea of like the journalist.
01:21 So this I think was her idea
01:22 and I think kind of Nora might've dressed
01:24 a little bit like this.
01:26 You know, with the big shoulders and some of these colors.
01:29 I still have, there's a coat in that movie
01:30 that I actually gave to the Academy last year.
01:34 Yeah, that I kept, but then I gave it away.
01:37 Judy Ruskin, she designed that coat.
01:39 I don't know based on what,
01:40 but probably some film from the 40s that she and Nora loved.
01:45 There's a whole last part of the thing where she's going,
01:48 she's like running to the Empire State Building
01:50 and they had like this dolly truck set up and all of that,
01:53 like all kinds of apparatus set up
01:56 and the shoes were either too tight.
01:58 No, they were too big.
01:59 And it was like, kind of flip flopping down the street.
02:03 Her hair and makeup for this,
02:04 I think they were just trying to figure out
02:06 what to do with all my hair.
02:07 And they came up with various braids.
02:09 This is one where we were barely ever
02:15 around each other actually,
02:16 because he was shooting in Seattle
02:18 and I was shooting in Baltimore.
02:20 So we had a couple of times where we were on the same set,
02:23 but rarely actually.
02:26 - It's you.
02:27 - It's me.
02:28 - You've got mail.
02:29 I clearly cut all my hair off
02:31 'cause everyone was sick of dealing with it.
02:33 So much of this stuff is very reactive, you know,
02:36 like I don't know that it was like super intentional.
02:38 I think I had done a movie just before this
02:40 where I had super bleached hair
02:42 and like it was trimming that off.
02:44 And so it ended up being short like this.
02:46 And then I was stuck in this kind of cycle
02:48 of short hair for a long time.
02:49 And I didn't really like wearing wigs.
02:51 I think it was so Nora's vision, you know,
02:54 I think she wanted Kathleen to look kind of classic
02:58 and undated.
02:59 She's got a small bookstore.
03:00 Big chains were taking over
03:02 these little mom and pop bookstores.
03:03 And she was like regretting that
03:05 because I think she felt like New York
03:06 was really a series of small towns,
03:08 which is true actually if you live there.
03:11 And the fact that these little places were going away,
03:13 she, you know, felt sad,
03:15 felt that that was a little bit tragic.
03:17 And then I always wonder what she would have done later
03:20 with this, like after, you know,
03:22 Barnes and Noble got sort of eaten up by Amazon, right?
03:25 So, interesting.
03:27 Joe versus the Volcano, 1990.
03:30 And I played three different characters
03:32 who according to John Shanley,
03:34 who was the director and the writer,
03:36 they were basically three different aspects of womanhood,
03:39 almost like a prepubescent, which is Dee Dee.
03:42 And then like a teenager self, Angelica, the poet,
03:45 who is clearly trying on personalities.
03:48 The last one is Patricia,
03:50 who sort of of all of them looks
03:52 the most comfortable in her skin.
03:54 They all had different voices,
03:55 they all had different looks and they were,
03:57 you know, John is a Jungian.
03:59 So a lot of the preparation on my part for that movie
04:02 was trying to understand what that even meant.
04:04 You could be different aspects of the female archetype.
04:08 Colleen Atwood, it's just, I'm glad you chose this
04:11 because I feel like Colleen is one of these artists
04:14 with a giant imagination.
04:15 And this was a chance to have the resources
04:18 at her disposal to express herself very fully.
04:23 And I mean, the entire movie is a really imaginative
04:26 and it's true magical reality and she grounds it as well.
04:30 I don't know how many Oscars she has by now,
04:32 but probably deserves,
04:34 definitely deserves every one of them.
04:35 My favorite line in that movie is that the middle one,
04:38 like the teenage sort of adolescent one,
04:40 like gets Tom, I think talks to her.
04:41 And she says things like, "I have no response to that."
04:45 - I have no response to that.
04:47 - This is "French Kiss" 1995.
04:49 I had a blast doing this movie.
04:51 We shot the whole thing in France, very top drawer.
04:54 Larry Kazdin directed it.
04:55 It was, I mean, just fun on so many levels.
04:57 But I remember like a week we had to shut down
04:59 and rewrite the end, which was fine to do in France
05:03 because we were, I think they'd put the entire crew up
05:06 off season at the Hotel du Cop, which was crazy.
05:09 This is another example of not being able
05:11 to grow my hair out.
05:12 The short hair, I just loved it for this person.
05:15 This is somebody who like wasn't,
05:17 she was on the, not on the run,
05:19 she was sort of on the go.
05:20 She was like living out of her purse or something.
05:22 She had like obviously one shower.
05:24 And that's where I have this amazing Hervé Leger,
05:28 like who's that designer who did that dress?
05:30 Hervé Leger.
05:32 Yeah, this incredible dress that I showered for.
05:35 But I remember going to that atelier
05:37 to try it on and have all these fittings.
05:39 I'd never done that before.
05:40 It was great.
05:41 It was just really fun.
05:43 My son also was really little then
05:46 and there's this scene where I'm covered in cake
05:49 and he just thought that was the best thing
05:51 that ever happened to him, or to me.
05:53 Just had a blast.
05:54 He was there that day.
05:55 Addicted to love.
05:56 Oh, I'm still stuck with the short hair.
05:59 So I guess I was like working a lot right then.
06:02 I love this look for this,
06:04 like this is a nut of a character.
06:06 She's like a vigilante or something.
06:08 [laughs]
06:10 She's a photographer and she's like obsessed
06:12 with her ex-boyfriend.
06:14 And Griffin Dunn directed this
06:16 and I loved every single thing I wore in this film.
06:19 It was just so fun.
06:21 And she was just an exaggerated,
06:23 like downtown kind of Soho character,
06:27 like after hours kind of character.
06:29 I think that Renée just had pure freedom
06:32 and like, 'cause that's downtown, that's New York,
06:35 you know, wear what you want and figure it out.
06:37 And I wore a boa, who does that?
06:39 So I love that.
06:40 And then she has this like striped tank top
06:43 and then like more velvet coats.
06:45 Oh, I do remember I got this coat,
06:47 this like, it wasn't leather,
06:49 it was a vinyl short tight,
06:52 not quite a motorcycle jacket,
06:53 but kind of with fake fur.
06:54 And I wore that every day for like five years
06:57 after this movie.
06:59 Yeah, Lutz Weissman did that.
07:06 And he, again, he was new to film
07:09 and he was from fashion.
07:11 So it was fun to have Sally and Lutz on that movie.
07:14 To shoot in New York is the greatest.
07:16 And then to shoot downtown with Griffin,
07:18 it was all fun.
07:20 It never seemed like work, this particular film.
07:23 Proof of Life.
07:24 This movie was like, this character, I think,
07:27 was spending all this time in South America.
07:30 And so the costume designer, Ruth Meyers,
07:33 who I really liked and admired, she's amazing.
07:37 She just kept finding pieces
07:39 that we could kind of justify this character's
07:43 kind of assuming some of the environment
07:45 that she's around, that she's been in.
07:49 You know, she started out as a sort of country club lady,
07:51 kind of like conservative person,
07:53 but she's like now living most of her life in South America.
07:57 So that's why these sarongs and t-shirts
08:00 and kind of things that look like they,
08:03 she could have found them in a thrift store.
08:04 We shot at like 12,000 feet.
08:07 So it was something to have to acclimate to that.
08:10 There's very little oxygen up there.
08:11 So once you're there for a while, you're okay.
08:14 You know, you're after about like a week,
08:16 but you take your time 'cause it strains the body
08:20 and you don't come and go.
08:21 You basically stay up there.
08:23 The hair and the makeup.
08:24 Again, I think it was just supposed to look like undone.
08:29 You know, not trying too hard,
08:30 which of course takes a ton of work.
08:32 What happens?
08:33 Oh, already the 2023.
08:35 I took a big break, grew my hair,
08:38 and have one outfit in what happens later.
08:41 And this idea came to me that both,
08:46 you know, there's only two characters in the film
08:49 and only two people talk in the film.
08:51 And they're ex lovers who see each other 25 years later.
08:55 And of all the people in the airport,
08:57 they're basically dressed alike.
09:00 They have the same name.
09:01 They call each other, she's like Willa Davis
09:03 and he's William Davis.
09:05 - Hello, Willa Mina.
09:06 - Hello, William.
09:08 And there's sort of these,
09:09 I imagine them as sort of like two halves of a whole,
09:12 like a yin yang, kind of like a black and white symbol
09:15 that's always trying to find, which they never do,
09:18 find some sort of balance and equanimity.
09:22 And what I love too is that as they go through the movie,
09:25 they sort of like shed this,
09:26 like he sheds his black jacket,
09:28 she sheds her long black coat.
09:30 And they just look like more and more innocent
09:33 and almost like they're in their pajamas by the end.
09:35 That was very deliberate on our part
09:38 to have it be a transition like that.
09:42 I haven't really directed,
09:43 I mean, I was in a movie that,
09:45 I had a small part in a movie I directed before this.
09:49 And this was, I realized that we were really lucky
09:51 because it was just a teeny movie, a $3 million movie,
09:55 which means that we didn't have a lot of the bells
09:57 and whistles that you have on other films.
09:59 Like we didn't get to watch playback.
10:01 So only footage I saw was by the time
10:04 we got to the editing room.
10:06 So I'm happy about that because I think that
10:09 the performances are really unselfconscious
10:11 and we were really free.
10:14 And we shot all night long for like 21 days
10:17 and just felt like being in a little bit of a bubble.
10:20 And it works for the intimacy of the romance, I think.
10:23 - And what made you decide on David to come here?
10:29 - It has rom-com elements that I love,
10:31 but it's a love story.
10:32 And I think what I was, ended up loving the most about it
10:36 is that it isn't what you think.
10:38 That it has some deeper pings,
10:41 makes some pretty modern day observations
10:44 about love and forgiveness.
10:46 And it somehow is a love story rom-com with,
10:50 it's like a delivery system for some more profound ideas
10:54 that hopefully don't feel like medicine going down.
10:57 - How was it walking in the community?
11:00 - I have to say it's a new experience.
11:02 Strange to see, like I have, I do,
11:04 I have a lot of hair to account for.
11:06 Thank you.
11:09 Thanks you guys.
11:10 Thank you for listening to all of this.
11:12 (upbeat music)
11:15 (upbeat music)