While Britney Spears may not be known for her acting abilities—her one-and-only film role in 2002 road trip comedy Crossroads wasn’t exactly well received by critics at the time—the world was on the verge of a Spears-issance that could have changed the fabric of Hollywood as we know it.
Spears’ fans have long known that Britney made the shortlist for Allie, the protagonist of 2004 romantic drama The Notebook, opposite Ryan Gosling. While the part would eventually go to Rachel McAdams, then relatively unknown, fans have long been asking—nay, begging—for a glimpse at the “Toxic” singer’s audition tape, which casting director Matthew Barry called “phenomenal.” Now, per the Daily Mail, that day has finally arrived.
“I’m not staying. I tried to call you to tell you that I wasn’t going to stay but nobody answered the phone,” Britney begins in a line reading opposite Gosling, who remains off-camera during the audition. In the monologue, Allie tells Gosling’s Noah that she is marrying another man while her face crumples with emotion.
“Britney wasn’t just good—she was phenomenal,” Barry said of Britney’s 2002 audition. “It was a tough decision. Britney blew us all away. Our jaws were on the floor. I was blown away. Absolutely blown away. She brought her A-game that day.”
It sounds like she had to, because “everybody who was anybody that year wanted this part,” according to the casting director. Still, “Britney beat out several of the top female actresses at the time,” he continued. “Scarlett Johansson, Claire Danes, Kate Bosworth, Amy Adams, Jamie King and Mandy Moore auditioned for this role. Britney beat out all of them.”
But while fans may mourn what could have been, Britney herself doesn’t seem all that broken up about it. “I’m glad I didn’t do it,” Spears writes in her upcoming memoir The Woman In Me, explaining that she didn’t enjoy Method acting and the “occupational hazard” of getting too close to her characters. “If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night,” she continues. “After a while you don’t know what’s real anymore.”