Twentieth Century Fox
- Vartan reveals he got a little too excited kissing Barrymore.
- "You really kissed me," he said on "The Drew Barrymore Show. "I was not ready for it in the least."
- He acted like his back went out so he could rush off the field without revealing how excited he was.
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It turns out actor Michael Vartan got a little too excited during that famous kiss with Drew Barrymore at the end of the 1999 romantic comedy "Never Been Kissed."
The scene has become a rom-com hallmark. In the movie, Barrymore plays Josie Geller, a journalist who decides to go undercover in a high school to help parents become more aware of their kids' lives. She falls for her teacher Sam (Vartan), which leads to a dramatic ending where Josie, who has never been in a real relationship, has a dramatic kiss with him on the pitcher's mound of a baseball field.
During a reunion with cast members on Tuesday's "The Drew Barrymore Show," Vartan revealed something that even his costars didn't know about the lip-locking scene.
20th Century Fox
"So I get up to the mound, we embrace and we start kissing, and you really kissed me," Vartan said. "I mean, you really kissed me. I was not ready for it in the least. And I am a man – I was a very young man back then. And you know, I had feelings – the feelings were just, they just happened, and I very quickly realized I was in a very bad spot because I was wearing very, very loose, sort of like slacks."
Aware he was on the cusp of being the center of a very embarrassing moment, Vartan made a dramatic decision during the take.
"So what I did is, in a panic, I just yelled, 'Cut!' and bent over and said, 'Oh, guys, sorry. My back. I put my back out playing ball,'" he said on the show as Barrymore looked on with a flushed look.
20th Century Fox
"I went off into my corner and I was thinking horrible thoughts like, you know, dead puppies, dead puppies," he said. "And so finally I was able to compose myself, and luckily the, you know, subsequent scenes went on without a hitch."
"But you're a very good kisser," he said to Barrymore.
After Vartan's story, Barrymore revealed that she didn't hold back in that scene.
"You weren't married at the time, so yeah, I went for it because you were single and I felt I wasn't going to offend anybody," she said.