Harry Connick Jr. says being asked to record the ‘When Harry Met Sally’ soundtrack 35 years ago was ‘a dream’: ‘I was a kid’

When Harry Met Sally… hit theaters 35 years in the past, not solely did Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s “opposites appeal to” chemistry make for one of many biggest rom-coms of all time, however the movie additionally launched one other Harry to the leisure world.

Harry Connick Jr. was a 21-year-old singer and pianist with huge desires when, in 1989, director Rob Reiner requested him to document the movie’s soundtrack. Connick carried out requirements with an orchestra, organized by composer Marc Shaiman, and the soundtrack went to No. 1 on Billboard’s conventional jazz chart and in addition made the Billboard 200.

“It was like a dream,” Connick, now 56, tells Yahoo Leisure. “I used to be a child — I used to be like 20 years previous — and I used to be working with a person that I actually admired,” he stated of Reiner.

Whereas the New Orleans native had been performing for a number of years already, “I used to be thrilled to have the chance to do some issues I had by no means completed earlier than,” he says. “I had by no means sung with a full orchestra, so being within the room with all of these of us and having my eyes and ears open to hear and be taught, I will always remember that. That was an enormous alternative for me.”

The When Harry Met Sally… soundtrack netted Connick his first Grammy for Greatest Jazz Male Vocal Efficiency. Trying again, he says, “That entire time in my life was actually wild.”

Three many years later, Connick is performing and singing in a brand new Netflix rom-com, Discover Me Falling, which options two authentic songs by the musician. He performs an getting older, closely tatooed rock star at a private crossroads.

Initially of the movie, he’s “at a tragic, lonely, grumpy level in his life,” Connick says.

Fortunately, in true rom-com vogue, issues get higher alongside the way in which.

Connick — who has additionally starred in movies together with Hope Floats (1998) with Sandra Bullock, Independence Day (1996) with Will Smith and New in City with Renée Zellweger (2009) — had no drawback developing with two songs for the movie, together with one which impressed the movie’s title.

“Stelana Kliris, who wrote and directed the movie, stated, ‘We’d like a track that John would have written and sung in his early 20s,’” Connick says about his character. “So I wrote ‘Woman on the Seaside’” because the track that made John a world rock star.

“The second track he would have written lately,” he stated. “That had extra melancholy and poetry, and would have been a extra advanced model emotionally. So I wrote ‘Discover Me Falling,’ and primarily based on the lyrics I wrote, the [film’s] title advanced. That wasn’t the unique title. They modified it to [my] track title. In order that was enjoyable, writing as another person, as a result of I made decisions I would not essentially have made.”

Discover Me Falling has the normal parts of a romantic comedy — as Connick’s character reconnects with an previous flame — however this movie, shot in beautiful Cyprus, has some twists and turns alongside the way in which.

“I feel the final feeling of a rom-com is form of the identical” because it was years in the past, Connick says. “It is escape, it is love, it is journey, it is zany tales.”

Discover Me Falling is at the moment streaming on Netflix.