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Pretty Woman without Richard Gere? Not in the land of dreams! The seasoned actor, 65, reunited with costars Julia Roberts, Hector Elizondo, Laura San Giacomo, and director Garry Marshall on the Today show on Tuesday, March 24, to reveal some of the secrets from the set for the rom-com’s 25th anniversary.
It turns out that before Marshall joined the cast the film was called 3,000, and was supposed to be a dark tale about drug abuse.
“At the end of the original script, Richard’s character threw my character out of the car, threw the money on top of her, and drove away, and the credits rolled,” Roberts, now 47, explained of the original script for the 1990 classic.
When Marshall got involved, the film turned into a love story.
Though Roberts was on board, it was harder to convince Gere to play the role he referred to as “the suit.”
“You could put a suit on a goat,” he said of his then-nondescript part. “So I didn’t get it.”
It took one “pretty woman” to persuade him to accept. Marshall took Roberts to visit her future costar and left the room so they could have a conversation.
“She’s across the desk and she takes a piece of paper, a Post-it, and she turns it around and she pushes it to me and she says ‘Please say yes,’” Gere recalled. “It was so sweet, and I said, ‘I just said yes.’”
As for their chemistry, Gere said it was instant, noting, “We loved each other immediately, it was a really great thing.”
Watch the clip to see what Roberts’ and Gere’s favorite scenes from the iconic film were!
