Matthew López (left) on the set of his new film, Red, White & Royal Blue.

Jonathan Prime/Prime Video

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Matthew López (left) on the set of his new film, Red, White & Royal Blue.

Jonathan Prime/Prime Video

It all begins with a royal marriage ceremony and catastrophic cake smash.

What ensues is an enemies-to-lovers romance between Alex Claremont-Diaz, the son of the U.S. president, and a British royal, Prince Henry. That’s the plot of the brand new Amazon Studios film, Red, White & Royal Blue, that is now streaming on Prime Video.

It is a display adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s bestselling novel of the identical title, printed in 2019. It’s additionally the directorial debut of Matthew López, the primary Latine to win a Tony award for finest play, for his play The Inheritance.

López informed All Things Considered host Juana Summers that he was captivated by the primary characters after studying the novel.

“For me, especially Alex, you know, I’m a queer Latine, biracial son of the South, and so is he,” López stated. “I had never encountered a book before that had a character like him at the center, and it really just made all of my imagination, you know, light up.”

López additionally spoke in regards to the problem of adapting a preferred e book to the display; how his personal life influenced his strategy to the story; and the significance of exhibiting queer intimacy on the display.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.

Interview highlights

Interview highlights

Juana Summers: Look, I’ve to let you know, I’m an enormous fan of romance books, and oftentimes once I learn them, I really feel like I’m sort of scripting my very own film in my head. I’m envisioning what the main characters seem like, the way in which their voices sound, the soundtrack that performs as they’re interacting, and I do know I’m not the one one that reads these books that manner.

And that, I believe, is without doubt one of the issues that may make tackling a film adaptation actually tough. Like, can the film {that a} director and a forged are constructing ever reside as much as this unbelievable factor that I’ve created in my head? How did you strategy that with a e book like this one that is the supply materials, that has simply been so beloved by so many followers?

Matthew López: I believe you actually recognized it together with your query, as a result of each reader of a novel is a movie director whereas they’re studying the e book. They have management over every thing: costume, design, casting. As you are studying a e book, it is your little film in your head. And with a e book as widespread as this one, you have acquired hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of individuals with their very own model of it of their head. And then there’s one one that makes the film, proper?

The excessive wire act that I used to be engaged in is, “How do I take a very popular bit of literature and make a movie of it?” And the reply I actually got here to was, I’ve to make the film that’s inside my head. I’ve to make the film that’s private to me. I’ve to make the film that I’m able to making — my response to the e book, in some ways.

López says he introduced his personal take to the movie.

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Summers: You’ve talked a very good deal about how a lot you instantly had been drawn to and associated to Alex’s character, however do you see shades of your self or had been there components of your individual story that impressed the way in which that you concentrate on Henry?

López: You know, rising up within the Eighties and early Nineteen Nineties, my expertise was much more like Henry’s than it was Alex’s. Alex’s story is sort of solely doable proper now, and it isn’t one thing that I had in my life rising up. I knew what it was wish to faux I used to be one thing I’m not. I knew what it was wish to consider that if I wasn’t this factor on this planet, that I consider that I’m purported to be, I might be letting down my household; that I might be out of step with the nation. So despite the fact that Alex demographically and kind of personally checks loads of containers for me, in my expertise, the ache of being a younger queer child within the Eighties and ’90s is absolutely mirrored very strongly for me in Henry’s story. It is what allowed me to entry Henry. I believe in some methods, Henry represents my previous, and Alex represents my current and my future.

Summers: I can not have this dialog with you with out speaking in regards to the intimacy of this movie and the way in which that it depicts intimate moments in intercourse. I imply, there’s one scene that I’m occupied with specifically. It’s when Henry and Alex are in Paris, and it feels private and sensual and in no way contrived, and I do not know if in some other romantic comedy that I’ve watched, that I’ve seen a intercourse scene between two males portrayed in that manner. I’d simply love to speak with you a bit about the way you approached as a director depicting their bodily relationship.

López: That scene in Paris was one thing that we mentioned from the very starting of the method. It was the scene that I informed the studio and the producers that in the event that they employed me, they had been gonna get, and that in the event that they did not need that scene to be within the film, they need to discover one other filmmaker. It was an enormous bluff, nevertheless it labored! I had by no means seen in mainstream studio finance motion pictures, a scene between two males, of affection and communion, that mirrored the way in which I as a homosexual man have intercourse. I needed to point out a scene of two characters genuinely making love and having an evening that’s life altering. But I additionally needed to point out a scene that fairly merely made logical bodily sense to anybody watching the scene who has had this type of intercourse earlier than.

I do assume that the distinction between a romantic comedy and a love story is kind of that scene, and once we talked about the place that scene falls within the movie, I used to be telling the studio and the producers that that is the second the romantic comedy ends and the love story begins, and it is nearly by way of the wanting glass.

And because of that scene, we at the moment are in a unique storytelling mode and we’re in love story mode and that vitality carries us. There are nonetheless tons of guffaws, hopefully, by way of the film, however we perceive and we care in regards to the characters in a really totally different manner after that scene.

López says there’s a energy to fairytales.

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Summers: One of the issues that I actually beloved once I watched this film is the truth that despite the fact that there have been components of it that had been laborious and sophisticated, it was extremely hopeful and optimistic at a time the place for a few of us it may be difficult to seek out that pleasure. What do you hope that individuals take away from this film after they see it?

López: I hope folks keep in mind what it feels wish to consider of their skill to vary the world by way of the straightforward act of being themselves. There is an influence to fairytales, which is why fairytales are one of many earliest types of storytelling, as a result of they’re our fondest hopes and needs set inside a framework that we are able to perceive that the world is perfected in fairytales, as a result of that is doable, as a result of we can’t typically excellent the world on our personal.

But they’re reflections of our hopes and they’re reflections of our wishes. And so we now reside in an age the place we all know that our hopes and wishes are one thing that we are able to obtain. But we at all times should preserve telling ourselves tales so as to keep in mind what our hopes and our wishes are. So yeah, I hope folks watch this film and are totally entertained. If folks watch this film and simply say, “That was so much fun,” that is sufficient for me. But if folks additionally watch this film and say, “That made me remember why I love politics; that movie made me remember why I used to volunteer for campaigns; that movie made me remember that I actually have some agency in the world;” effectively, that is a very good factor too.