You’ve Got Mail > Trivia

The children’s bookstore scenes were filmed at Maya Schaper’s Cheese and Antique Shop at 106 West 69th Street. The filmmakers chose the antique shop because it had the quaint, homey feel they wanted. They sent the owner of the antique shop on vacation for a few weeks, and while she was gone, they turned the store into a children’s bookshop. After filming was finished, they put everything back the way they had found it.
The scene where Joe accidentally closes the door of Kathleen’s shop on the balloons was unscripted. Tom Hanks ad-libbed the line, “Good thing it wasn’t the fish.” Nora Ephron thought it was so funny that she kept it in.
The extra playing the florist at the beginning is pregnant. Later, Kathleen buys flowers at the same florist, and a sign in the window reads, “It’s a girl.”
Nora Ephron arranged for Meg Ryan and Heather Burns to work in a real New York City bookstore in preparation of their roles prior to filming. The store was Books of Wonder in Manhattan, and the jobs lasted for about a week.
Joe and Kathleen’s emails were posted on the movie’s official website, which Warner Bros. kept active until May 2018.
The film invokes several literary and cinematic references to The Wizard of Oz (1939): a full shelf of Oz books on the shelf behind Kathleen when she opens the door for Jessica and Maya; the ruby slippers ornament that Kathleen is placing on the Christmas tree; the Scarecrow of Oz book opened on Kathleen’s bed when Joe visits her apartment; and “Over the Rainbow” playing in the closing scene.
A remake of The Shop Around the Corner (1940) starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. The original film involved two employees at a leather goods shop in Budapest who are, unbeknownst to one another, pen pals. The name of Kathleen’s bookstore is an homage to the film.
The opening and closing titles use common computer imagery of the time, specifically Windows 95/98. The ending title song, which begins just after the words “The End” appear on the screen, starts with an adaptation of the Windows 95 “startup” sound.
The passage Kathleen Kelly reads during her bookshop’s story time to a group of kids (including Joe Fox’s aunt and brother) is from “Boy: Tales of Childhood”, an autobiographical children’s novel by Roald Dahl.
The store used for Fox Books is the old Barney’s department store at 17th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan.
“If only…” which is the line that Tom Hanks says to Meg Ryan before meeting her online love, was the only line that was kept from the original movie this film was based on – The Shop Around the Corner (1940).