*Eight* Other Superstars Auditioned for Rachel McAdams’ Part in ‘The Notebook’—and the Runner-Up Was Britney Spears

It was ultimately Rachel McAdams that won the part of Allie alongside Ryan Gosling’s Noah in the hit 2004 film The Notebook—but it could have been a slew of other women, including Britney Spears, multiple outlets report.

And now, over 20 years later, Spears’ audition tape has been released, a two-and-a-half-minute clip where she becomes teary eyed while in character as she breaks the news to Gosling’s Noah that she is marrying Lon, played by James Marsden. “I’m not staying,” Spears said in part of the monologue, per E! News. “I tried to call you to tell you that I wasn’t going to stay—but nobody answered the phone. Noah, you can’t marry two people. And I’m marrying Lon, so I should go, okay?”

The film’s casting director Michael Barry said of Spears that “Britney wasn’t just good—she was phenomenal. It was a tough decision. Britney blew us all away. Our jaws were on the floor. I was blown away. Absolutely blown away. She brought her A-game that day.”

Though the movie didn’t come out until 2004, Spears auditioned in 2002, the same year her film Crossroads hit theaters. In her memoir, The Woman in Me (released today), Spears expressed her relief over not having to step back in front of the camera so soon after Crossroads—instead getting to focus on her music.

“The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams, and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on The Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t do it,” she writes. “If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone, I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night.”

On playing Lucy Wagner in Crossroads, Spears writes “I hope I never get close to that occupational hazard again. Living that way, being half yourself and half a fictional character, is messed up. After a while you don’t know what’s real anymore.” 

Spears and McAdams weren’t the only two women up for the part—a star-studded list, including Claire Danes, Scarlett Johannsson, Amy Adams, Kate Bosworth, Jamie King, Mandy Moore, and Jessica Biel (who ultimately ended up marrying Spears’ ex, Justin Timberlake), were also contenders for the role, The Daily Mail reports. (“Everybody who was anybody that year wanted this part,” Barry said.)

Gosling went on to date costar McAdams; he later told GQ “I mean, God bless The Notebook—it introduced me to one of the great loves of my life,” he said. “People do Rachel and me a disservice by assuming we were anything like the people in that movie. Rachel and my love story is a hell of a lot more romantic than that.”