Remember When Kate Winslet Said 'My Heart Will Go On' Made Her Want to Throw Up?

It’s a tale as old as time (to quote another song by the chanteuse this post is about): Kate Winslet, star of Titanic, does not enjoy hearing Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” love theme of Titanic. In 2012, Winslet told MTV News that the song made her feel “like throwing up.” She then clarified: “No, I shouldn’t say that…No, actually, I do feel like throwing up. No…”

Yes.

The topic was brought up to Dion recently in a wonderfully entertaining (thanks in no small part to Dion’s participation) oral history of “My Heart Will Go On” that was published today on Billboard.com. Here’s what Dion said about Winslet’s comment:

They told me, “You know that Kate Winslet said every time she hears the song, she wants to throw up?” And I answered, “Thank God she didn’t have to sing it!”

That’s good humored and/or a bit frosty. And actually, this retort is old as rhyme, as Dion said something similar on the Today show soon after Winslet announced her nausea to the world (“If I just count how many times I’ve sung it, maybe it’ll get me sick…If she feels tired just hearing it, and, like, throwing up, I’m glad she was not the one singing it”).

To offer some perspective, Titanic executive producer Jon Landau weighs in on what Winslet actually meant:

I’ve spoken to Kate about this. Her comment was not about the song — it was the idea that when she would walk into a restaurant, they would start to play it. She couldn’t get away from it.

While we ponder how one begins to untangle such resentment from having to hear the song everywhere from the song itself, I’ll leave you with a few more excellent quotes from Dion that appear in this oral history. On her husband/manger René Angélil essentially assigning her the song she had no interest in recording:

I wanted to choke my husband. Because I didn’t want to do it! I just came out of “Because You Loved Me,” and then “Beauty and the Beast” was, like, huge. Why do we need to break our nose?

(I really hope Celine never loses her singular grasp on the English language.)

On her state of being the day she recorded the song’s demo:

I was mad! I don’t feel good. I have belly pains. My girly days are starting to happen. I’m going to have a black coffee with sugar — which I never have on my studio days because it speeds up my vibrato. But I got to New York and I do that. And [Horner] is explaining to me what is the movie all about. He said, “Just think about that and do it.” I’m like (sarcastically), “All right, thanks. Thanks a lot.”