When Harry Met Sally

Director Rob Reiner Reveals How the Most Iconic Scenes Came to Be

- David Canfield

KATZ’S DELI. “BABY FISHMOUTH.” THE ELABORATE APPLE PIE order that inspired thousands of elaborate apple pie orders. Thirty years after When Harry Met Sally… was released, so many of its scenes are now beloved, the stuff of rom-com legend. And from Billy Crystal’s genius improvisation skills to one of the most difficult phone-call scenes ever pulled off on film, there’s a story behind every one. We couldn’t fit them all here. But director Rob Reiner took us through his favorites, revealing, in turn, how he, writer Nora Ephron, and an incomparable cast made magic together.

When Harry Meets Sally

Harry (Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) drive from the University of Chicago, where they’ve both just graduated, to New York. The ride is filled with bickering, musings about male-female relationships, and grape-spitting. “The thing about Billy is he comes off as this sweet guy,” Reiner says. “I wanted to make him a little bit rougher around the edges to start. So we came up with this idea of him eating the grapes.” Indeed, this detail wasn’t in the original script. “[Billy] said, ‘I can just be spitting the seeds out the window.’ That’s what gave Harry a little bit more abruptness. Billy and I just came up with that on set as we were doing it.”

Sally’s Apple Pie

Harry and Sally stop for some food while on their road trip, and it’s here where Sally’s infamous apple pie à la mode order was realized. (A snippet: “But I’d like the pie heated, and I don’t want [Nora and I] were working on the script, we went out to lunch one time and Nora ordered like that,” Reiner recalls. “I said, ‘I can’t believe the qualifications you have on how the dish should be served! Let’s put it right in the script.’ So we did.”