Can you imagine anyone else other than Rachel McAdams playing Allie Hamilton in The Notebook? Neither can we, but it turns out the role almost went to Britney Spears. Having a hard time visualizing what the superstar would have been like in the leading role? Well, let's roll the tape.
Almost two decades after the film was released, Britney Spears's audition for The Notebook has been making the rounds on Twitter/X after the Daily Mail obtained the long-lost audition tape, only a few days before the release of her memoir The Woman In Me. In the never-before-seen clip, we see Spears as Allie chatting to Ryan Gosling, who's off-screen reading Noah's lines in arguably one of the film's most tense and teary moments: when she tells Noah she's marrying Lon, played by James Marsden.
"I'm not staying. I tried to call you to tell you that I wasn't going to stay, but nobody answered the phone. Look, Noah, I can't be here," Spears says in the clip, before tapping into the #emotions. "It's not fair to Lon. Noah, you can't marry two people. And I'm marrying Lon, so I should go, okay? I prayed for you to die in the war, really. Well, not die. I would have felt completely horrible if you would have died. But I just… I kind of just didn't want you to be alive anymore because I couldn't bear the thought of you being with somebody else or us never seeing each other again, so I gotta go, okay?"
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Fans who had been eagerly anticipating seeing snippets from Spears's The Notebook audition were taken aback by her performance. "The Notebook cast was perfect. Rachel McAdams really did a good job portraying the role. But damn, Britney's [audition] was also good," someone commented. "Rachel McAdams was the right fit, but I'm very impressed by Britney. She did way better than I thought," someone else pointed out. “I've always said Britney is an amazing actress even when they made her believe she's not. She's an ENTERTAINER in the old Hollywood sense of the word,” a third person added.
Nevertheless, many weren't as convinced. “She did good, not Rachel McAdams good. But she did good,” one person said. Others called the audition “dry AF," “disastrous,” and claimed the casting directors “made the right decision.” “There's hints of something there, but she would have required a coach,” offered another person. “However, Rachel McAdams steals the show. But I think in another universe, Britney could have made it work.”
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As the Daily Mail notes, Spears was actually one of the front-runners for the role of Allie — beating out the likes of Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, and Jessica Biel — before the role ultimately went to Rachel McAdams. Spears might not have gotten the role, but she left casting director Michael Barry speechless with her audition and chemistry tests. "Britney wasn't just good — she was phenomenal," Barry told the Daily Mail. “It was a tough decision. Britney blew us all away. Our jaws were on the floor. I was blown away. Absolutely blown away. She brought her A-game that day.”
The audition was so memorable that it's actually also part of Spears's new memoir, The Woman in Me, where she reveals she actually felt glad that she didn't book the role. "The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams, and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on The Mickey Mouse Club, I'm glad I didn't do it," an excerpt published by People reads. "If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone, I'd have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night."
Gosling had also previously praised Spears's audition, speaking to Entertainment Tonight in 2013: “I hadn't seen her really since she was about 12, but she was really good, actually. She did a really nice job.”
