Britney Spears' 'Notebook' Screen Test I Video Has Gone Viral

— Vera Anderson/WireImage/Getty Images
Fans have known for over a decade that Britney Spears auditioned for The Notebook. In 2021, an eBay auction listing even purportedly offered Spears’ 2002 audition tape for $1 million, according to The Daily Mail. Thanks to casting director Matthew Barry, however, Britney stans can now watch the video for free.

The day before Spears dropped her memoir, The Woman in Me, on Oct. 24, Barry shared the emotional two-and-a-half-minute-minute video of her screen test with the UK publication.

In the clip, Spears takes on the lead role of Allie, with Ryan Gosling reading his lines as her love interest, Noah, off camera. The scene is when Allie is torn between her two loves, and Spears shows her acting chops, breaking into tears during the raw audition.

“I prayed for you to die in the war, really. Well, not die. I would have felt completely horrible if you would have died,” Spears said during the screen test. “But I just… I kind of just didn’t want you to be alive anymore because I couldn't bear the thought of you being with somebody else or us never seeing each other again, so I gotta go, OK?”

Britney Has No Regrets

In The Woman in Me, Spears recalled that casting came down to her and Rachel McAdams, who eventually landed the coveted role. She saw the silver lining to losing out on the part, though.

“Even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t do it,” Spears, who was 21 years old at the time, writes in her book. “If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone, I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night.”

— Archive Photos/Moviepix/Getty ImagesElsewhere in her memoir, Spears shared her difficult experience with “method acting” while filming Crossroads the same year.

“I didn’t know how to break out of my character. I really became this other person. Some people do Method acting, but they’re usually aware of the fact that they’re doing it. But I didn’t have any separation at all,” she elaborated, noting that the 2002 coming-of-age dramedy was “pretty much the beginning and end” of her acting career.

A Tough Decision

Despite his choosing McAdams in the end, Barry said Spears impressed him nonetheless, noting that she still “beat out several of the top female actresses at the time,” including Jessica Biel, Scarlett Johansson, Claire Danes, Kate Bosworth, Amy Adams, Jamie King, and Mandy Moore.

“It was a tough decision. Britney blew us all away,” Barry told The Daily Mail. “Our jaws were on the floor. I was blown away. Absolutely blown away. She brought her A-game that day.”

He echoed that sentiment in another recent Entertainment Tonight interview, remarking that they weren’t aware of her and Justin Timberlake’s recent breakup, but he believes she “absolutely tapped into what was going on” between them in the scene.

“She showed us she was raw, she was emotional, she was fantastic. She laid it all out on the line,” Berry said, admitting that the final decision was “a very, very hard toss-up” between Spears and McAdams.

— Gregory Pace/FilmMagic/Getty ImagesThe casting director revealed to E! News in June 2021 that Spears “came in eight hours, two days in a row” to work with him and his team to nail the audition. Despite this, director Nick Cassavetes was concerned over the singer’s level of fame. “It was definitely a consideration because she was really good,” he added.

More Rave Reviews

Gosling, for his part, praised Spears, saying she did an “excellent job,” in a 2013 Entertainment Tonight interview, per The Daily Mail.

“We met with a lot of actresses, and they were all very good,” he said at the time. “I hadn’t seen her really since she was about 12 — we were both 12 — so she’s grown up, but she was really good, actually.”

Now that the video is out there, the public largely agrees that Spears held her own. Though several users on X (formerly Twitter) find it difficult to imagine anyone but McAdams in the role, they were still “blown away” by Spears’ audition.

“Rachel McAdams was the right fit, but I'm very impressed by Britney. She did way better than I thought,” one fan wrote.

While others advised Meryl Streep to step aside, another X user more boldly asserted, “Give her an Oscar right now.”