Based on Casey McQuiston’s novel, the Matthew López-directed adaptation of Red, White & Royal Blue is cut from the same cloth of early ’00 favorites like Chasing Liberty, What a Girl Wants, First Daughter, and Princess Diaries – but very queer.
The rom-com, which drops on Prime Video August 11, follows Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), the son of the President of the United States (played by Uma Thurman with a molasses-like southern accent) and his BFF (Best Frenemy Forever), Britain’s Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine).
The charming rom-com co-written by López and Ted Malawer, shows their ups and downs after their long-running feud results in a very public altercation that has their families in power pushing them to make amends and show public that they can get along in order to defuse the situation to avoid scrutiny from their constituents. One thing leads to another and they eventually grow to like each other as friends… and more.
“I think that they really, both approached it from very, very different points of views,” López said in a recent interview with GLAAD’s Anthony Allen Ramos in regards to the two actors’ performances. “I’d see [Taylor] on set every day with a copy of the script in one hand and the book in the other. He always kept going back to the book and getting inspiration from the book and then bringing me questions.
He continued, “Nick actually never read the book before we did the movie because he didn’t want to be influenced by anything that wasn’t in the film. He wanted to encounter the character as the character, that we interpreted through Casey’s book. Nick actually was really afraid of getting into his head by reading the book and he didn’t want to know what he didn’t know from the script.”
López found it very fun working with these two points of view because they were both valid and said each of their acting styles makes the film “special”.
Ahead of the Red, White & Royal Blue’s debut on Prime Video, there was a screening in New York which López said was “insane” because the audience was excited like they were attending Taylor Swift’s “Eras” concert. That being said, Perez, Galitzine, Thurman and the rest of the cast haven’t been able to promote the film due to the strikes that are currently happening in Hollywood. It’s clear that López wishes his Red, White & Royal Blue posse were with him promoting, but right now, it feels like a necessary movement.
“The first thing that most people who work in this business are used to doing is wearing multiple hats and I am a writer who is on strike,” López explained. “I am also a director who is not on strike. My responsibilities to the film as a director are to promote the film. The thing is, nobody wants to be on strike. We have to be on strike.”
“Nick, Taylor, Uma and the rest of the cast [would] very much rather be here with me promoting this movie and talking about the film that we made together and celebrating it,” he added. “It’s not our fault we’re on strike. But it’s our responsibility to stay there until we get a fair deal.”
McQuiston’s novel means a lot to people and in turn, the movie will hold just as much weight and López is sad his cast isn’t able to join him. However he said that he feels a responsibility to represent this film because of them.
López, who also wrote the Tony and GLAAD Media Award winning play The Inheritance, says that it would have meant the world to him if he saw a movie like this when he was younger – which further bolsters his responsibility to represent this film.
“We talk a lot about representation mattering and sometimes we don’t really talk about things like why representation matters and what that really means,” he said. “For me, what that means is characters on screen and in books that you don’t normally have access to. I don’t need to see my specific life reflected back to me because my life is often rather boring.”
López wants to see people who remind him of himself and his experiences. For him, representation is as much about the characters as much as it is the person watching, reading our consuming the content.
“So, when we talk about representation and what that means is, is, is characters who look a lot more like the people who are naturally consuming these books and these movies. “If I’d had Alex Claremont Diaz in the world when I was younger, it would have absolutely made me feel less alone in the world,” he pointed out. “It probably would have made me feel less damaged than I did for such a long time. It would have made me feel like I mattered.”
That being said, many may be wondering if this romance between Alex and Henry is going to have a sequel. While that may not be on the horizon, there may be another iteration of the source material in the future.
“The reason my agent sent me the book is he thought maybe I’d want to turn it into a musical,” López said. “I don’t see it working as a musical, but maybe that’s because I know it too well as a movie – maybe I’m wrong about that. I reserved the right to be wrong about that… especially if the price is right.”