Ginnifer Goodwin Says She Fought for a Huge Scene in ‘Something Borrowed’ That Filmmakers Wanted Cut

Actor Ginnifer Goodwin said the reason she wanted to do the film Something Borrowed was because the characters were complex and flawed – something that filmmakers actually tried to cut during production.

Goodwin recalled the scene after Dex (Colin Egglesfield) and Rachel first sleep together. They wake up the next morning and Rachel says Dex cheated on Darcy (Kate Hudson) because they were drunk. Dex insists he actually wasn’t drunk – which became a scene that Goodwin had to fight to keep in the film.

Ginnifer Goodwin said ‘Something Borrowed’ filmmakers wanted to cut the scene where the characters sleep together

“You know they tried to cut it and I went into the studio,” she said during a chat with Egglesfield on his Coffee with Colin YouTube series. “And I sat down with my reps in the studio. And I said I’m going to explain to you why you cannot cut this scene.”

Egglesfield wondered why they wanted to cut it. Essentially producers didn’t want Dex to look like a bad guy for cheating on his fiancée. “Well, there was an idea floating around that for him to admit he wasn’t that drunk,” Goodwin recalled.

“Like they didn’t like that he was knowingly making a bad … like knowingly having cheated,” she said. “They wanted it to be for a moment which is not like the book. They wanted it to be for a moment that he was too drunk. It’s not his fault. Let’s blame the alcohol. Like, he’s not dubious. He’s not being, you know, he wouldn’t be dishonest. It was something that got away from him.”

She fought for the scene to stay in the film

Goodwin fought to keep the scene in the film. “And I was like, you’ve butchered their relationship if you cut this. I feel like the premise of the love story, which is … I said I would trust a man far more for owning a mistake and for telling me that he could keep it in his pants that had chosen not to. As opposed to having someone make the excuse to me that there was anything outside of their control.”

“I felt this way about it as a character,” she continued. “I wanted it to be her love story. Her real love story was with the guy who knowingly made this decision and made a mistake about how to handle it. But then fixed it as opposed to she ended up with someone kind of incidentally because they had gotten drunk and slept together. I was just like that’s not a real love story. The real story is he wanted to be with her and he made the choice.”

Egglesfield said he was glad she fought for it. “I got upset,” she admitted. “You cannot cut this, you cannot cut this.”

Colin Egglesfield said the audience was split between if they liked the scene

Later, during the test screening of the film, Egglesfield recalled the audience’s reaction to that very scene. “It was interesting to just watch an audience for the first time reacting to scenes,” Egglesfield recalled. “And it was the scene, of course, the morning after we slept together for the first time. The reaction seeing some of these people was interesting.”

“Then afterward they interviewed and asked everyone in the theater what they thought about these different scenes and what they thought about each of these different characters,” he continued. “And it was interesting to see how it was pretty much split 50 50. Between some of the people in the theater said that they thought Dex was a cheater, that he was unredeemable. It was horrible that you being engaged to someone that you would cheat on your fiancee.”

“Then the other half were like, well, look, he was really, truly in love with this woman. And that true love prevails and that sometimes we find ourselves in situations that are difficult,” he added. “There’s not always the easy way out. And I think we told a really fine line with this story in terms of trying to make these characters as realistic as possible and make them make it as if, like this is, this is what people really face in real life.”