Richard Gere is shedding light on one of the steamiest scenes in Pretty Woman.
Gere opened up about the romantic classic while talking about his series The Agency during the Nov. 20 episode of the Today show. Host Savannah Guthrie mentioned that the 1990 film’s 35th anniversary is coming next year, and she asked about the iconic scene in which Gere’s character plays piano.
In the scene, Gere’s Edward Lewis tickles the ivories in a mostly empty room at the hotel where they’re staying when Julia Roberts’ Vivian Ward comes and finds him. He asks the other people to clear the room, undresses Vivian and lifts her on top of the piano before kissing her. Eventually, the scene fades away as things heat up.
Gere, 75, told Guthrie, “Garry Marshall is really the heart and soul of that movie, and it comes from him. He’s the director, and really all the jokes in that are from him.” The director died in 2016 at age 81.
The American Gigolo star told Guthrie, 52, that he and Roberts, 57, would ask for Marshall to give them new jokes, “and he’d come up with 10 jokes like this,” as he snapped.
Buena Vista Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
It was that improvisational spirit that led to the piano scene. “My character needed some help just to make it a little more interesting,” Gere shared. Marshall asked him what he does when he stays in hotels. “I’m always in hotels. I’m jet-lagged,” Gere explained. “I said, I find a piano, you know, and it’s late at night. No one’s there. It’s the guy sweeping the floor and me.”
Marshall said they could do something with that, and thus the piano scene was born. As for the piece he plays, he said, “I just improvised one right there. And then they gave me a “composed by” [credit]. People expect me to be able to play that again. I say, ‘I don’t know’ … I just played.”
Back in September, Gere watched the piano scene during a masterclass at the 81st Venice Film Festival and joked that he and Roberts had “no chemistry.” “This actor and this actress obviously had no chemistry between them,” he said. “I haven’t seen that in a long time. That’s a sexy scene.”
Still, Gere said at the masterclass that his character was “criminally underwritten,” noting, “It was basically a suit and a good haircut.”
But even if Gere is right about his character, fans loved the combination of him and Roberts so much that they reunited for another romance, 1999’s Runaway Bride.
Buena Vista Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Pretty Woman was Roberts’ breakout role. In a 2006 interview with PEOPLE, Marshall talked about discovering the actress. “We’re a business who loves to discover a star,” he said. “She was absolutely delightful and charming. It wasn’t just good acting – she was magical. Sooner or later, somebody would have discovered her, but I was glad I was the one.”
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He screen-tested her with a bunch of people, and she stood her ground each time. “I remember after the screen test, I called Jeffrey Katzenberg and said, ‘We’ve got to get a guy, but the guy’s not so important because we’re going to make it with this girl. She’s got it,’ ” he remembered.
