Richard Gere has admitted that the iconic piano scene with Julia Roberts in their hit 1990 movie Pretty Woman wasn’t planned despite it becoming an integral part of the story.
Speaking at a masterclass hosted by Cartier at the Venice Film Festival, Gere, who was celebrating his 75th birthday, reflected on Garry Marshall‘s popular romantic comedy that catapulted Roberts into superstardom.
After watching a clip of his hot and heavy piano scene with Roberts, Gere joked (per Variety), “No chemistry. I mean, this actor and this actress, obviously, had no chemistry between them… I haven’t seen that in a long time, too. It was a sexy, sexy scene.”
The American Gigolo actor then confessed that the scene had been improvised, noting, “This was never in the script.”
“We didn’t know how we would use it later. It ended up being integral to the film,” he explained. “I was playing a character that was almost criminally underwritten. It was basically a suit and a good haircut.”
Gere shared how Marshall, who directed the film, asked him to imagine what his character might do while in the hotel. Gere played Edward Lewis, a rich but lonely corporate raider from New York who hires an escort, Vivian (Roberts), to accompany him to social events. The pair eventually fall in love.
“We just basically improvised this scene. I just started playing something moody that was about this character’s interior life,” Gere stated, referring to the moment when his character starts playing the piano in the ballroom of the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Vivian, who had fallen asleep earlier, comes downstairs and watches Edward play before they start making out.
Gere said it was that moment where Vivian was able to see Edward “in a complete different way. There was a mysterious yearning and maybe a damaged quality to this guy that she didn’t know.”
That scene, among many others, made Pretty Woman a roaring success, grossing $463.4 million worldwide from a reported $14 million budget. The popularity of the film came as a surprise to the cast and crew.
“We were having fun making this,” Gere noted. “The whole time we made the movie, we didn’t know if anyone would ever see this.”