‘A Walk to Remember’: Professional Scuba Divers Had to Save Shane West From This ‘Weird’ Creature During Filming

If you want to feel old, just think about the fact that A Walk to Remember turns 19 today. The classic film with Mandy Moore and Shane West is almost two decades old. Moore may be a big star on This Is Us now, but A Walk to Remember was her first starring film role and arguably the role that made her a star. While the film was mostly a romance and didn’t include many stunts, there was one scene that made the cast a bit nervous to film.

‘A Walk to Remember’s’ storyline

A Walk to Remember provides an endearing twist on the classic high school romance story. At the beginning of the film, Landon Carter and the rest of his friends play a prank on the new student, Clay Gephardt, and convince him that jumping into a lake is an initiation ritual for their friend group. However, when he jumps, he’s injured badly, which causes the school principal to get involved. Instead of involving the police, the principal allows Landon to do service projects around school to make up for his transgression. These tasks include tutoring kids, janitorial tasks, and participating in the school play.

While practicing for the school play, Landon falls in love with Jamie Sullivan, a Christian girl who mostly keeps to herself. Unfortunately, he later discovers that Jaime has cancer. He spends the rest of the movie trying to help Jamie complete everything on her bucket list before she dies.

The most dangerous scene

There aren’t many stunts in A Walk to Remember but the first scene of the movie was pretty dangerous to film. The scene where they dare Clay to jump into the water was shot on a man-made lake in Wilmington, North Carolina that was created for Dawson’s Creek.

“Apparently the man-made lake had been used for ‘Dawson’s Creek’ in the past and they left it out there,” West told Today. “And it was covered in seaweed, covered in plants. It was frightening. Apparently, there were eels in that. And they had to bring in scuba divers to swim around to push the eels away and push the weird creatures away as we swam in there. So for me, it was freezing, it was day one. I didn’t know any of these people yet, and we were half-naked in a man-made lake with giant eels. That was one of the more challenging things for me.”

Though there were actually eels in the water, West said it was one of the most memorable scenes not because of the potential danger but “simply because it was mentally challenging.”

Did Mandy Moore and Shane West date?

Moore and West had an insane amount of on-screen chemistry and they both developed feelings for one another.

“I think we both [fell in love],” West told Access Live. “I was in a little punk rock band at the time and doing acting for a while and she was doing the pop star thing for a while and this was kind of her first lead in a film. So we were definitely opposites attract. So I think at first I’m not sure if we loved each other – or liked each other – right off the bat, but it quickly changed. The writing helped, the direction helped and the fact that she is one of the sweetest people ever.” 

However, the pair never dated and Moore is now married to Taylor Goldsmith.