Warning: SPOILERS for The Offer Episode 7 - "Mr. Producer"
The real-life breakup of Robert Evans (Matthew Goode) and Ali MacGraw (Meredith Garretson) happened later than it does in The Offer. With shooting on The Godfather underway, producer Albert S. Ruddy (Miles Teller) is dealing with on-set tensions between director Francis Ford Coppola (Dan Fogler) and his creative team while also reeling from the assassination attempt at mobster Joe Colombo (Giovanni Ribisi). Meanwhile, Evans' life gets upended when he discovers his wife Ali has been cheating on him with Steve McQueen on the set of The Getaway.
In real-life, Robert Evans, the head of Paramount Pictures from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, married actress Ali MacGraw in 1969. Evans cast Ali in Love Story, which grossed over $100-million and became a blockbuster that bolstered the struggling studio. On the heels of Love Story's success, MacGraw became one of Hollywood's top actresses. She also gave birth to Josh, her son with Evans, in 1971. That same year, MacGraw was cast in director Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway opposite Steve McQueen, and the film began production in Huntsville, Texas, in February 1972. MacGraw and McQueen famously began a torrid affair on the set of The Getaway, and she divorced Evans in 1972. McQueen and MacGraw's own marriage ended in 1978.
The Offer significantly moves up the timeline of Evans' marriage to MacGraw ending. In The Offer episode 7, Evans drops in unannounced on Ali while she is shooting The Getaway in Texas, and he deduces that she's sleeping with McQueen. MacGraw's betrayal sparks a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior for Evans in The Offer. The studio head flies to New York to join the production of The Godfather, but he begins abusing drugs and alcohol more than he already does. Ruddy certainly notices Evans' appearance beginning to become disheveled, his disappearances, and his excesses and dalliances with random women. However, The Godfather was shooting in New York in 1971, and MacGraw didn't start production on The Getaway or begin her affair with Steve McQueen until early 1972.
Evans did behave strangely during The Godfather's production but that was a result of him suffering from sciatica, a debilitating back injury, and his abusing drugs and alcohol. However, the seed for Ali MacGraw and Steve McQueen's affair was planted in 1971. McQueen went over to the house Ali and Evans lived in and pitched for her to star in The Getaway. The actress was already smitten by the blue-eyed movie star before they got to set. Of course, Evans was heartbroken when he found out but, unlike how it's depicted in The Offer, it happened well after The Godfather was done shooting and Coppola's Mafia epic was released in March 1972.
The Offer likely moved up the timeline of Evans and MacGraw's breakup to work in one of the most famous stories about the studio head. The circumstances of how Ali MacGraw left Robert Evans for Steve McQueen is a well-known Hollywood tale and it enhances and humanizes Evans' character in The Offer so that getting The Godfather made cost Evans dearly. The slick raconteur who runs Paramount Studios admitted that he paid far more attention to "marriage" to the studio than in his actual marriage to Ali, which he feels is why he lost her. This is dramatized in The Offer in the scenes when MacGraw grows furious with Evans because he prioritizes The Godfather and Paramount's other pictures like Chinatown over her and her career. The Offer simply moved up Ali MacGraw's breakup with Robert Evans by about a year to benefit its own narrative.
New episodes of The Offer stream Thursdays on Paramount+.