If you’ve seen this trailer for “Love and Other Drugs” (and you should, because it’s the better—though less frequently shown—of the two), then you’ve already seen the moment in which Jake Gyllenhaal’s character Jamie says “I love you” to Anne Hathaway’s Maggie. Since it’s in the trailer, we don’t consider it spoilery to say that this is without a doubt one of the cutest “I love you” scenes we’ve seen in a rom-com in recent years.

It’s actually even better in the context of the movie than it is in the trailer, and the build-up and proceeding scenes are quite hilarious—for a reason. Director Ed Zwick told us that he wanted to take a more authentic route for Jamie to share his feelings with Maggie, instead of making the scene big and dramatic.

Okay, so there are a couple spoilers from here on out.

“I just thought that that was a really good idea when we were writing, the idea that saying that would bring about a full-scale panic attack,” Ed explained about the circumstances surrounding Jamie’s “I love you.” “I think that was probably going to ring true to a lot of people, men and women. That’s my guess.”

The scene comes during one of the film’s many sex scenes, and there is definitely a reversal of typical character roles in the film. Jamie is the one to get more attached and share his feelings, while Maggie tries to hold herself back, expressing her feelings sexually instead of emotionally. What began as a fling becomes something much more—first for Jamie, then for Maggie.

“We’re very much into authenticity, and the issue of women and their appetite, I think, it’s still something that the culture says that they are okay with and understand, but I think is still in some question. And I think to have it presented like this is new and probably important for women to see,” Ed said. “On the other hand, like men, when that kind of intimacy precedes real intimacy, it’s problematic and often is a mask against other things. I think for her, it’s probably easier to f–k than to talk, at least initially.”

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