Red, White & Royal Blue, the new Prime Video rom-com starring Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine, is a retelling of a queer love story that was first told by novelist Casey McQuiston.
While the movie is racking up rave reviews from critics and fans alike, it still had to take on the momentum task of squeezing hundreds of pages of a beloved story into two hours of screen time.
Unsurprisingly, that means that there were some big differences between the script and what fans read in the novel. We pulled together some of the most obvious changes and what we know about why they were implemented.
Read more about the biggest changes to Red, White & Royal Blue…
Perhaps one of the biggest differences between the movie and its source material is that the ruler of Britain is King James III, Prince Henry’s (Galitzine) grandfather, as opposed to his grandmother, Queen Mary.
Director Matthew Lopez explained that he purposefully made that decision during an interview with Us Weekly. It tracks back to the real-life royal family, which was ruled by the late Queen Elizabeth when he was casting.
“While Her Majesty was still alive at the time, I also knew that for most of the life of this film, most people will access it while there is a King of England,” he said. “Between King Charles, Prince William, Prince George — for most of our lifetime, there will always be King of England. And so, I wanted to sort of make sure that the film in some ways made sense to people for a hundred years.”
He added that the chance to cast Stephen Fry in the roll made the change even more tempting.
There were also a couple of changes implemented to Alexander Claremont-Diaz’s (Zakhar Perez) family. His mom (Uma Thurman) is still the first female President of the United States. However, in the book she and Alex’s dad get divorced and she remarries. In the movie, she is still together with Congressman Oscar Diaz (Clifton Collins Jr.).
Additionally, Alex’s older sister June was pulled from the script entirely. Her role as Alex’s confidant and friend was largely given to Nora Holleran (Rachel Hilson), the Vice President’s granddaughter. The White House Trio (what Alex, June and Nora were called in the book) were effectively turned into a duo.
While Prince Henry’s sister and brother were both kept in the script, they had reduced roles. Most notably that was the case for Princess Beatrice (Ellie Bamber). The royal was aged down and turned into the youngest child in the family, whereas she was originally presented as older than Henry.
Her own personal struggles with addiction, which were revealed when Alex and Henry’s emails were leaked, were totally removed from the script. The royal’s mother, Princess Catherine, also only made an appearance by mention.
Matthew seemingly addressed all of these changes in an interview with BuzzFeed.
“If it’s not about Alex and Henry, it doesn’t belong in the film – that was reinforced when I was editing the movie,” he explained. “There are some things we filmed that are in the novel that I had to take out. It was very clear to me the first time I saw an assembly of the film that anything not relevant to their love story just didn’t belong in it.”
While those are the most notable things that are missing from the film, there were a few other changes to the story.
For starters, Alex was presented as more aware that he was likely bisexual in the movie. In the book, he’d only had sexual experiences with one other man – his best friend in high school. He dismissed those moments as things shared between besties.
However, the movie presents him with one more experience under his belt with the reporter Miguel (Juan Castano). This also seems purposeful as it is strongly suggested that Miguel leaked the couple’s emails after he was rejected by Alex.
Speaking of the leak, the order of events is a little different from the books with Alex delivering a statement before traveling across the globe to reunite with Henry.
There are some other smaller changes that occur to move the plot along.
Matthew also revealed one change that was made for technical reasons, and it had to do with shooting in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In the book, Alex and Henry share a romantic moment after reaffirming their love for each other in the Renaissance Gallery.
The director told EW that the setting was not as magical when they were trying to film for a few reasons.
“It’s kind of dark and it’s very, very big, so there’s a lot of blank space between the statues. The chances that you’re going to get just a white wall behind you are good. And it’s very hard to shoot in there because the rule that the V&A had for us was that we couldn’t bring in any exterior lighting. We could not bring it in our own lights,” he explained.
Cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt found a solution: “He led me to this area of the museum where we did end up filming it. That long, beautiful corridor with all those gorgeous statues filled with very homoerotic art, as well as that narrow alleyway of busts.”
They filmed the scene using only the lights that illuminated the artwork, purposefully casting the scene darker.
“We decided that the scene would be the boys for the most part in shadow and the statues illuminated. It was a beautiful use of a problem to create a better solution that you could not have come up with on your own if you had no problem,” Matthew said.
You will likely also what to see what Nicholas and Taylor had to say about filming the movie’s sex scenes and what Matthew had to say about the film being rated R.
Red, White & Royal Blue premiered on Prime Video on August 11. Press play on the trailer below.
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn