When Harry Met Sally's original ending has no New Year's Eve speech in it at all

When Harry Met Sally... hit theaters in 1989 with a script by Nora Ephron, Rob Reiner directing and Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as two people who spend twelve years arguing about whether men and women can be friends. Its ending is so famous that it's easy to forget it was a rewrite. The version Ephron first wrote ended somewhere else entirely, and the reason it changed happened off camera.

The ending Ephron wrote first

The story started with Reiner's own life. He told Ephron about being single again after his first marriage ended, she interviewed him at length and wrote the first draft, and Harry was built largely on him.

In that draft, Harry and Sally don't end up together. Reiner described it to CNN's Chris Wallace in February 2024: the film was going to end with the two of them seeing each other after years, talking, and walking away from each other, TheWrap reported. No party, no midnight, no speech. Just two old friends who never quite got their timing right.

That ending matched where Reiner was at the time. He'd been married for ten years and then single for ten, and he said he couldn't figure out how he was ever going to be with anybody.

"I was single for 10 years and making a mess of my personal life."

— Rob Reiner, as quoted by Mental Floss

What changed

During production, Reiner met Michele Singer, a photographer. He fell in love, and the ending followed. He told Wallace that he met her while they were making the film, "and I changed the ending."

Wallace's follow-up was, "So we owe the tear-jerking ending... to Michelle." Reiner said, "That's right." They married that year.

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Where the speech came from

The New Year's Eve scene was built in pieces, according to Salon's Coleman Spilde:

• Reiner's idea: Keep it simple. Harry shows up at a New Year's Eve party and confesses his love.
• Ephron's idea: Make Harry say exactly what he loves about Sally, down to the specifics.
• The final version: Both. Harry runs across the city to the party and delivers a speech that's a list of tiny, unglamorous reasons.

Crystal, who improvised throughout the shoot, also helped shape the monologue. The result is one of the most quoted speeches in romantic comedy, and it exists because the director had a better year than he'd planned for.

Ephron's first draft was a movie about two people who missed their chance. Reiner fell in love during the shoot and gave Harry one more run across Manhattan.

The couple behind the rewrite

Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner were married for 36 years. In December 2025, they were found dead in their Brentwood home in Los Angeles, and their son Nick was charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

The tributes that followed kept coming back to this film, and to the ending Reiner rewrote after he met her. The original still exists only as Reiner described it: two friends, a short conversation and a walk in opposite directions. What audiences got instead was the ending Reiner wrote after he met her.

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