This hidden detail in Love Actually's most emotional scene will stab you in your heart.

Beloved Christmas rom-com Love Actually has a lot of sins to answer for, but there's one scene that is particularly unforgivable.

Raise your hand if you've ever been personally victimised by Emma Thompson's character weeping to Joni Mitchell?

If you don't know the scene I'm referring to, lucky you!!! You've lived a much lighter life, not weighed down by the burden of this heart-wrenching cinematic moment.

In the midst of Hugh Grant's Prime Minister character committing workplace harassment, Laura Linney fumbling a hottie, Keira Knightly realising she's 'quite pretty' and Colin Firth tricking his Portuguese housekeeper into marriage, there's a devastating storyline that unfolds between the characters portrayed by Thompson and Alan Rickman.

They play married couple Karen and Harry, who appear happy, but throughout the film Harry flirts with his secretary, Mia, who asks him to buy her a gift for Christmas. He buys her a gold and ruby heart necklace (??), a very expensive gift that his wife Karen finds in his coat pocket and assumes it's for her. Ugh, I can't.

It's not until she opens her actual gift, a CD by her favourite artist Joni Mitchell, that she connects the dots and realises her husband is having an affair. In the film's rawest scene, Karen stands in her bedroom trying to contain her emotions as tears stream down her cheeks.

Watch the scene below and try not to audibly weep, I dare you.

To add to the moment, Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now' booms in the background, as the lyrics "It's love's illusions that I recall, I really don't know love, I really don't know love at all," blare in the background.

I mean, me typing that out literally brought tears to my eyes. SOMEONE SEDATE ME.

But do you want to feel ever sadder? A TikTok user @the_koo_koo_nest has noticed something about the scene that many missed. As the family gathered to swap gifts, Karen was wearing red earrings.

"The way she matched her earrings to the necklace," the user noted.

Watch on TikTok

Omg, this is information I didn't need to know. But it makes sense, as Karen had spied that the necklace was gold and red, SO she could have picked out red earrings to pair with it. On top of that, she was wearing a red cardigan too, as if that knife to the chest couldn't be any deeper.

Other online commenters have long pointed out another issue with the scene: as a lifelong fan of Joni Mitchell, why would Karen not already own this very album?? Get it together, Harry!

Love Actually is set in 2003, but the Joni Mitchell Alan Rickman buys for Emma Thompson was released in 2000. He should have bought her 2002 album "Travelogue," as she was less likely to have heard it already. Another little-discussed facet of his villainy.

— Joz Norris (@JozNorris) January 29, 2023

Make it make sense!

As if you need any more reasons to sob over this scene (I'm sorry, I'm a masochist, it seems), it's worth remembering that Emma said her acting in the emotional moment was inspired by what was happening in her personal life at the time.

She said her heart was broken by her first husband, Kenneth Branagh, who had an affair with Helena Bonham Carter, leading them to split after eight years together.

In a 2022 interview with the New Yorker, Emma said she knew what it was like to be "blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself" in an unfaithful marriage.

"That scene where my character is standing by the bed crying is so well known because it's something everyone's been through", she said at a fundraiser at the Tricycle Theatre in London

"I had my heart very badly broken by Ken. So I knew what it was like to find the necklace that wasn't meant for me. Well it wasn't exactly that, but we've all been through it."

Okay, I'll be sobbing about all this until 2025.

Keen to know more behind-the-scenes facts and surprising revelations from Love Actually? Click here.

Feature image: Universal Pictures.