Falling In Love with The Notebook Broadway Musical

What's up, guys? Leslie Roberts here coming to you from New York City. All right, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, of course, started in the romantic, iconic film The Notebook. That was 20 years ago, but actually, that was eight years after the book, written by Nicholas Sparks, became a best-seller. Well, fast forward to 2024 and The Notebook has now become a hit musical on Broadway, and Young Hollywood is taking you behind the scenes. Jordan and John, Noah and Allie. I mean, Rachel has nothing on you. You're stunning. Ryan's got nothing on you. You probably get that all the time being the stars of The Notebook.

It's just different. It's so such a different um, iteration of the story. So, um, you know, people feel like they can reach out and touch us in a way that they didn't feel they could touch Rachel and Ryan.

Okay, we're we're just inside the stage door now. Break down where we are where it all goes down.

Yeah, so this is where we come into work every day, and we usually check in with today we have James, our our security guy. And then you're you're up the tower to the dressing room, second, you do the show.

Mhm. Oh, the star of The Notebook is entering the building. We're on camera right now.

I know. We're on camera right now. Bye. That's happening. I know. I was like, Oh, I want to just tell the audience that they might not know that different actors and actresses play each stage of Noah and Allie. And so here we have younger Allie, and not younger. I call it little, middle, and old.

Yeah, do the show. It's not just like once a week.

No, and every day. Usually we have eight shows a week, which means one show a night except Wednesdays and Saturdays, we have two shows per day.

That's a lot of crying. Stop it.

Hi. See, it's active stage door. Yes. Come on in. Thank you. Thank you. They got us on camera. I want them to get it on camera. You're literally screaming. Jesus. Oh, Thank you.

Where are we going to next?

Mine dressing room. I have affirmations all over the place. Like, this is a nice one. Calmness washes over me with every deep breath I take.

And how do you step into that role every day? It's pretty heavy.

Maryann actually gave me great advice and and said, we don't have to do the heavy part. Let the audience do the processing they need to. I'm just here to have fun with him. I'm just here to have fun with my Noah and learn him.

You have to fall in love every show. So how how do you fall in love every show as an actor? How do you do it?

I'm listen. I mean, It's really hard.

You make love on stage? Wait, how do you make love on stage? Go ahead, take that.

Well, you'll have to come and see and find out for yourself. Second guest: Yeah, you have to come see that.

To the fellas' dressing room. These are our costumes for the top of show, but then once we're in these, all of our changes are down on the deck or below the stage. So, um, this is really just where we spend time getting ready for the show beforehand. So, this is from the novel, and I tried to go through and pick out any quotes that I felt were sort of like revealing of his character. Um, natural things gave back more than they took, and their sounds always brought him back to the way man was supposed to be. There were times during the war, especially after a major engagement, when he had often thought about these simple sounds. "It'll keep you from going crazy," his father had told him the day he'd shipped out. "It's God's music, and it'll take you home." That's one of my favorites. Second guest: We get our steps in every day.

Yes, we do. We are up and down these stairs like it's nobody's business. But there's another Noah. They're everywhere. It's one of the things that I think, uh, works so well for the theater is that we we can use devices that just don't work in any other medium like film. Like being able to have three actors playing the same role who get to interact with each other. Character being able to interact in real time with his own memories or her own memories. Second guest: So, we're actually in the basement of the Schoenfeld Theater right now.

We are in the basement. So, you'll see actors darting from one side of the stage down the stairs through the hallway that you're about to walk through, back up the stairs so that they can enter and be nice and calm as if they didn't just run through the the basement of the theater. Second guest: Come on through. Hi, y'all. There's a camera. Is everybody okay with sure.

Take me a little bit behind the scenes of well, this Broadway show. Your hair is stunning. Why would you need a wig? So, why

Thanks.

So, so why do you need a wig?

Well, I mean, if you think about, um, like the amount of like, I don't actually know how many products you use to style the hair every night and stuff like that. Yeah. With the rain, with keeping in mind the protection of the actors and what they have to do, we want to make sure also that the style is consistent every day. And with your natural hair, as you know, as everybody knows, it's not all created equal. Monday through Wednesday, it looks amazing. Thursday, Friday, it's a wild card, and then, you know. In any show where you see someone, and then five minutes later, their hair is this complicated style or something completely different, it allows us to give you that magic and perform that magic for you. Second guest: Yeah, we're gonna take you the long way home. Down the hallway to stage right. Quick change booth number one. We have all the rain draining from these tubes into buckets.

We're slowly getting closer to the rain. Second guest: We are. That that's that's the magic of The Notebook. A bucket with a hose, everybody. That's it. That's it.

The moment you've been waiting for. We're heading upstairs to the stage. Second guest: You see this palette here? Often times the set pieces which will live above our heads will come down onto this and they'll they'll ride out onto the stage as if by magic. And if you come through this curtain, you will be on stage. So, down here is the pool, running water here with some even some rocks and um, it's really amazing. And then straight up is where the water comes down.

People are coming for the passion, the water. They're looking for the love. But talk about what they're really taking away at the end of the day.

It's about the love story, um, you know, the passion, but in my opinion, it's just it's about the commitment that this couple has to each other and especially Noah to Allie by the end of their lives. Um, and a lot of people when you look around you anywhere in any given room are affected by Alzheimer's, are affected by these memory loss disorders. Um, and I think people get wrecked by the end emotionally because it's really honest, and it's an honest portrayal of that and how it affects relationships and families and I think Maryann says it really nicely and succinctly that is, you're watching a life play out on stage and whether you have a connection, whether you've experienced what's happening on stage or not in terms of the dementia, um, what you're watching are these two people living very kind of unextraordinary lives and the lyrics and the book are written in such a way that invites audience members to imprint their own personal memories on what's happening on stage. Your life is just as magical as the life that's happening on stage. The only reason that we're telling this story is because they decided to write it all down.

I love the show. I hear the music. I hear the orchestra getting ready. Because you guys have a show in minutes and and and that means I have to sadly leave this stage. Which I don't want to and I have to leave you guys, but the music's about to start. So, they're prepping. You guys have to get ready. So as we depart, break a leg.

Thank you. Second guest: Thanks so much for coming.