Everyone knows about the infamous fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally… even Meg Ryan’s daughter, apparently.
The star of the beloved rom-com recently revealed to PEOPLE that her fiancé, musician John Mellencamp, showed her 14-year-old daughter the film for the first time, and it made for a bit of an awkward moment.
“I’m walking around the house doing other stuff,” Ryan told the outlet. “But I can hear, ‘Baby fish mouth.’ I hear the orgasm scene, and then there’s silence from the room they’re watching in. My daughter’s 14! And John goes, ‘Meeeeeeeeg! I’m not explaining this!’”
In the scene, which takes place at Katz’s Deli in New York, Sally (Ryan) proves her point to Harry (Billy Crystal) that he has most likely, unbeknownst to him, slept with a woman who faked an orgasm by, well, faking an orgasm right there in the middle of the restaurant.
Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection
Ryan’s daughter wasn’t the only one in the family who hadn’t seen the film, though. Ryan’s son with Dennis Quaid, actor Jack Quaid, told EW’s Breaking Big panel at New York Comic Con last year that he had only recently watched it for the first time.
“Guys, when your mother has one of the most famous orgasm scenes of all time, you do not jump to the film, okay?” he said at the time. “I saw it because I was doing a rom-com, and that’s like the rom-com, and I watched it, and then afterwards I cried for so long, because I was so proud of her, and I immediately called her, and I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry I missed this movie.’ She’s like, ‘I’ve seen it like one time.’ Anyway, that’s my favorite of hers.”
The film’s director, Rob Reiner, told EW back in February that shooting the legendary scene was not easy for Ryan at first. “She was nervous,” he explained. “In front of extras and the crew and everything, and you’re having to pretend to have an orgasm in front of everybody! She did it half-hearted the first few times. I kept saying, ‘No, you’ve got to really go after it. You’ve got to do it full-out.’”
When Harry Met Sally celebrates its 30th anniversary later this month.
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