That's the weird part, no one got that in all of the Twitter that I've seen for the entire film about every detail in the film. I guess because we just kinda made it up, it wasn't part of the book, but we decided the interview room could be an homage to Richard Curtis who wrote all the romantic comedies, you know for the past 20 years.
That was our nod to 'Notting Hill', because in 'Notting Hill', Julia Roberts was the American and Hugh Grant was the Brit, and they sort of do the whole interview thing with Horse & Hound. So we actually rented the exact same furniture. The sofa is different, because the one that Julia Roberts was on was a bit smaller, and for the two boys' size, we couldn't fit them on that sofa, so we had a different sofa. But the coffee table, everything – the flower arrangements, they were done by our florist who knew the original florist who did 'Notting Hill'. So we did this whole thing, so that was kinda our fun, cheeky little set because we wanted to see "oh, would anyone get it?" But it was our homage to you know, classic romcoms from our days and now we're doing a gay version so it was great.
BTS of #RWRBMovie: making love – part 2: moment of consent
ML via PrideSource:
But I also knew that the people watching this film who knew what was going on would know what was going on, and we couldn’t cheat. We couldn’t flub it. We couldn’t deliver anything other than something that was really authentic. So yeah, this was a scene that was devised by a queer filmmaker who knows a thing or two about what’s going on in that scene and what I wanted down to the most minute gesture. The thing that Robbie and I talked a lot about is, just the momentary moment of consent for the bottom to say to the top, “Go further.”
I watched this film with friends and during the love making scene, you show Alex slide his hand into Henry’s and they lock fingers. Then at the end you see Henry’s hand tense and Alex slides out. To me that was symbolism for the intercourse and everyone told me that I was reading too much into it. Was it your intention with cutting it like that?
ML: Yeah, well look I didn’t film it with that intention. I was just getting shots, like what do you want to get? Should we get their hands? I remember on the day, we shot the hands on a different day than the actual scene in the hotel room because I was talking to my editor like a week or so later and she was just like, “I really wish I could have some shot with their hands because I would really like to get some close, close, close shots.”
So we went and we did an afternoon a pickups for that and we had [Nicholas Galitzine, who plays Prince Henry]’s hand, and they were smart enough to give them a manicure that day [laughs], you know, I just remember working with our intimacy coordinator and we were like alright, run your hand up his forearm then take his hand. I was just narrating to them what they would do, and we did a number of those things and then we got into the edit and we pieced it together that way and then it became very intentional.
It was important for Henry to be the grab-and-kiss-er in this scenario, Lopez says, because “there’s something very striking about a character such as Henry, who has spent up to that point in the film being very buttoned down and seemingly in control of his urges in that moment, losing the ability to control his urges and give into the desire to kiss Alex.”
Plus, there’s the additional context of Henry being literal royalty: “There’s something very sexy and romantic about a prince dropping his guard. And taking things that are old movie tropes and letting two boys do it — that was definitely the romantic gesture that we wanted to go for.”
Of course, on a practical level, the grab-and-kiss has certain practical elements to consider. “The only danger on set was that sometimes [Nicholas Galitzine] would come at [Taylor Zakhar Perez] so forcefully that they would just bang faces. We were really worried about fat lips and bloody noses,” he laughs.
It wasn’t just the passion of the actors that was an issue, but the terrain — according to Lopez, “they were on a slope. So Nick was going downhill.” (Passion with a little help from Newtonian physics.)
On set for this as well as the film’s other, more graphic scenes was intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt, who oversaw shooting the kiss in two different ways: “We had one where Alex is completely taken by surprise and doesn’t respond to the kiss. And then we did Version B, where Alex is taken by surprise and then does respond to the kiss. Because I wasn’t quite sure what was going to work, so I gave myself the option of having both.”
Process-wise, this meant rehearsing both versions and then shooting different angles and framings, which means “those lads kissed easily like 40 or 50 times that night,” Lopez laughs. “There’s nothing like having to kiss someone 40 times in a row to really, really take the allure out of kissing.”
While the grab-and-kiss is the best term I’ve been able to come up with for this maneuver, it’s not my favorite — if only because if you Google the phrase “grab and kiss” today, the search term pulls up very unsexy results. These unsexy results (including phrases like “attempted sexual assault” and “Donald Trump”) do serve as a necessary reminder of how delicate a balance one has to strike with this particular maneuver. As Lopez puts it, “there is a gray area and I think you see it in some older movies, in which they do the grab-and-kiss and it’s icky — it just feels not consensual at all, or very uncomfortable.”
What’s so powerful about the grab-and-kiss is that it’s an embrace with purpose. There’s a backstory to it, usually one involving repressed emotions and deeply held longing. That was the strategy Lopez used with Red, White & Royal Blue, using the scenes leading up to the kiss beneath the tree to emphasize “the pull between them.” (Specifically, Lopez got what he calls his “West Side Story moment” during the New Year’s party, when a crowd dancing to Lil Jon’s “Get Low” does as instructed by the song, leaving a still-standing Henry and Alex to gaze at each other across the dance floor.)
For Matthew, this scene was an important one, but one that he felt needed a different energy than what is on the page.
"It is very similar and it's also simultaneously very different to the book which I think is just one way of describing this entire movie," he says. "Casey said to me after watching it for the second or third time, 'It's like there's my book, and then there's your movie and the two are very, very similar and also very different,' which is good because if the movie was so faithful to the book, it, I don't even think it would please the fans of the book.
"I know that's probably a controversial thing to say but it wouldn't have served the story very well." He continues: "I needed to observe the logic of a film and trust that I had internalized the emotional truths of the book and the Storming of Kensington in the book is a lot more chaotic and Alex is highly charged.
"When we were in rehearsals, and Taylor and Nick and I began to really delve into that scene, we realized quickly that if Alex came on that strong then Henry, given where he is mentally, would simply say, 'well, get out,' and kick Alex out. So we knew implicitly that we needed to do a different version of that scene, one in which Alex isn't at all certain of success.
"In the book, Alex is willing to burn down the castle in order to get what he wants, and although the scene actually uses a lot of dialogue from the book, our Alex in the film knows that if this doesn't work, their relationship is over. So he's a little more careful with Henry, more fearful, and Henry is more heartbroken, and those decisions really determined everything else that followed in the scene."
From Glamour:
Galitzine, meanwhile, says his most rewarding time on set came during the film's emotional climax, when Alex and Henry must decide if—and how—they're going to move forward in their relationship. “It's the emotional height of the movie in a lot of ways, and sometimes as an actor, you can very much get in your head about that,” he says. “But Taylor really was just so emotionally present that it helped me. We got to a vulnerable, beautiful space. Those kinds of moments are where you drift into a level of truth and sincerity that feels very real. That's what we're always aiming for.”
From I’ve Never Said this Before With Tommy DiDario:
ML: We had to break for lunch, and we haven't finished the scene and I was really, really worried that we were gonna come back from lunch and I would've lost them and never re-captured what was happening on set before lunch. And it was the pivotal part of the scene, the end where Alex makes an ultimatum to Henry. We got back on set and we started filming again and instantly in the first take, after lunch, Taylor started crying and Nick was facing away from him and he heard Taylor, and Nick started crying. The back half of that scene is so beautiful because they're doing such great work and I really had a difficult time cutting it because there was such beautiful, nuanced work from both of them. What's so remarkable about it is they had just had lunch, and they came right back into it and they were more dialled in, more in touch with each other than before. It was pretty remarkable. I have to say that was the moment I knew that whatever happened with this movie, those two actors would be fine in their careers.
Matthew López: I will be honest with you, for as lovely as that scene ended up, it was nobody’s favorite scene to film. Nobody looked back on that day and said, “That was a fun day.” It was a pain in the ass for my production designer, Miren Marañón, my DP, Stephen Goldblatt, my camera operator, and the two actors. We hated it!
It’s funny because there was so much joy and good humor and great, great chemistry between not just the actors but the actors and the crew throughout the whole shoot. So, the fact that the scene of maximum discomfort for our characters was one in which all of us were just mutually miserable for about five and a half hours was perfect for that scene. Nobody wants to spend five and a half hours locked in a closet shooting in a space where the camera and the lights can barely fit, let alone the actors. But I will say that it fed into what is going on in that scene, which is these two people stuck in a space that they don’t want to be in. So, for verisimilitude, I guess it was worth it.
From TV Guide:
In the Instagram photo, he captured his two leads, Nicholas Galitzine and Taylor Zakhar Perez, huddled together in the middle of a tight circle of chairs. The trio had been rehearsing a pivotal moment that comes early in the film when their characters Prince Henry (Galitzine) and Alex Claremont-Diaz (Perez), the First Son of the United States, get shoved into a broom closet by the Secret Service amid a potential security threat.
The rehearsal was an early chance for the two actors to play on the chemistry López already recognized between them. Still, as their director, he kept making the space smaller and smaller to get them cozy with one another.
"At one point, Nick was like, 'Mate, it's not gonna be this small,'" López says laughing, acknowledging Galitzine was right when they actually filmed the scene. "But it was a great challenge for them to work out together and we got a great picture out of it."
TZP: He's had sexual experiences with guys in the past, but he doesn't lead with it. I think it's not even top of mind. He's kissing girls at a New Year's party. And then Henry comes and kind of forces him to grow up and go, ‘Oh, I'm really into this.’ It turns into love, and his identity and family and relationships become even more important. I love that about Alex. Because who knows? If there's an alternative universe, who knows what would have happened if he didn't meet Henry? What if he didn't find a purpose or a higher path for himself other than just being a powerful politician?”
ML via Teen Vogue:
Alex's bisexuality is as important to who he is as Henry's homosexuality is.
This is the story of a young bisexual man discovering that, in addition to being into women, he also — he kind of knows that he's into guys. He admits freely to Nora that he has messed around with guys before, but he's never really had the need to identify until he meets Henry. One of the things that was important to me is that line that he has in that scene with Nora, that “I can wrap my head around being low level into guys, what I'm really confused about is being into Henry.” That for me was key. I needed the audience to hear that, that we're not dealing with a person who's — Alex isn’t a closet case. Alex isn't confused. Actually, if there's anything Alex is confused about, it’s “why am I hot for my sworn enemy?” That's a more interesting story to me. Alex's bisexuality finally needs to be identified in order to articulate his feelings for Henry.
ML via Variety:
In both the novel and the film, Prince Henry first kisses Alex on New Year’s Eve, but Alex’s reaction changed significantly in López’s adaptation. In the book, the kiss sends Alex into a profound realization of his bisexuality, something he’d never given himself time to consider amid his feverish devotion to his mother’s presidential campaign and his undergraduate studies at Georgetown University.
In the film, however, Alex is older — he appears to be in law school — and takes Henry’s kiss in stride, in so far as his attraction to men is concerned.
“It was born of my decision to cast actors who are older than the characters were in the book,” says López. “I really wanted there to be some genuine stakes and gravity for these characters. If they were too young, you could just explain this away as puppy love. I wanted this movie to be about that first real romance of your life, the first real love affair, the first real love.”
Rather than tell a story about a kid in his early 20s who is plunged into uncertainty about his sexuality, López says he wanted Alex to be someone who had messed around with guys but “has yet to have a reason to really understand himself as bisexual.”
The director continues, “I wanted Alex’s angst to not be about his sexuality. I wanted it to be focused on Henry.”
ML via Metro Weekly:
One of the things that I think was so beautiful about the story that Casey wrote, is that Alexis such a refreshing character because Alex is so clearly, very definitively bisexual, and that he might even be, I think, maybe that sociologists would term him as bisexual preferring women. He just happens to find himself really preferring Henry, and it surprises him. There's a scene in the movie with Nora, in which he says, "I can wrap my head around being into guys, what I'm really confused about is being into Henry." And I love that there is such an easy acceptance to Alex and who he's attracted to. And that for me was something so unusual about the story and that was so refreshing, and I wanted to bring that to life.
ML via Pink News:
“One of the thing I thought was really refreshing about the book, is the idea that room can be held for people who desire men and women and the journey that Alex takes,” López said.
“I really appreciate that in the novel and we’ve kept it in the movie. There is space made for Alex as a bisexual character.”
TZP via Newsweek:
TZP: And Nick and I were always in deep discussions with [Robbie Taylor Hunt] about this because the intimacy part is so important because Alex's arc as a character as somebody that has only dated women in the past—maybe a couple guy hookups—to not liking Henry to getting kissed by Henry and then having a relationship. It's just like, excuse me, the different degrees of comfort that Alex starts to have, this needs to be represented in in a proper way. And Robbie was with us the whole way. And Matthew was there. It was always a group effort, which I really respected.
