Meg Ryan And Tom Hanks Reunite On-Screen In ‘Ithaca’

By Rachel West. Published: 27 Jul 2016 4:00 PM Last updated: 27 Jul 2016 4:07 PM

“Sleepless In Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail” co-stars Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks will reunite on-screen once again in “Ithaca”.

The film, which marks Meg Ryan’s directorial debut, will feature an epic cameo by Hanks. Set in the 1940s, the film follows 14-year-old Homer Macauley who is determined to be the best bicycle messenger his town has ever seen. With a brother off fighting in WWII, Homer is left to grapple with the content of one message that will forever change his life. Ryan was more than happy to have her old friend Hanks join her for her debut film.

“He’s just so dear,” she says of Hanks. “He so did not have to do that. It took him a day to [shoot his scene]. At the end of his time, he says to the crew, ‘All right, gather ’round. Listen, I know we’ve gotten to know each other very well over the last 10 hours together, but I just want to thank you for being here for my friend Meg’, she recalls. “It was such an act of friendship. I love him so much.”

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Human Comedy, Ryan is keeping this film all in the family.

Ryan’s 24-year-old son, Jack Quaid, stars in the film as one of the member of the Macauley family. Ryan channelled her experiences as a mother of two, drawing on her personal experiences to help her tell the story.

“There was a day I thought, ‘Oh, man. I can’t protect my kid from everything.’ It’s a difficult moment,” the 54-year old tells Entertainment Weekly. The actress recalls how she use the lead-up to the Iraq War and an inspiration for “Ithaca”. “I think it speaks to the complicated things happening [in the world], in the sense of community and cultivation of an individual’s integrity – what Saroyan believes are important antidotes,” she says. “Hopefully ‘Ithaca’ is about how fierce and frail life really is.”

“I felt like it was a very simple story about complicated things,” she says.