Red, White & Royal Blue's Matthew López talks about why sex is "vitally important" to the film
Red, White & Royal Blue spoilers follow.
Rainbow Crew is an ongoing interview series that celebrates the best LGBTQ+ representation on screen. Each instalment showcases talent working on both sides of the camera, including queer creatives and allies to the community.
Next up, we're speaking to Red, White & Royal Blue director Matthew López.
Casey McQuiston made other YA authors green with envy when her debut novel first landed on bookshelves in 2019. Red, White & Royal Blue soon became a New York Times bestseller and the sales were eclipsed only by the joy that countless fans found reading this gay love story over and over again.
What starts out as a bitter rivalry between Alex Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry, the son of America's first President and the UK's royal successor, soon softens into something romantic and gorgeously beautiful in the book.
But with so much love for a story like this come high expectations for the inevitable movie adaptation. Director Matthew López didn't go into this "trying to figure out what the fans want," though. The Tony-winning playwright is a self-proclaimed "super fan" of the book himself, so he knew that the most important thing to do in this case was make the audience feel "exactly the way they felt when they finished the book".
And that's exactly what he did with the help of Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine who bring Alex and Henry to life in ways even the most diehard fan should be happy with, despite a few tweaks here and there.
Digital Spy caught up with Matthew López to discuss the film's standout moments and why sex is so integral to the connection shared by these star-crossed lovers.
The book this film is based on has a huge fandom. Can you talk us through the challenges of adapting this story with that in mind?
The reason I made this film is because I am one of the big super fans of the book, so this was pure pleasure for me. But I also knew that if I got into the business of trying to figure out what the fans want, I would end up making something that nobody wanted, which is a muddled film.
The most important thing for me was telling the story in film time, which is two hours, and making sure that Alex and Henry were at the centre of the story. Everything had to feed that.
There are certain things that are in the book that I would be brought up on charges of The Hague if I didn't put them into the movie. But at the end of the day, the only goal I had was by the time we get to the end of the film, I want the audience to feel exactly the way they felt when they finished the book.
As the film maker, I always wanted to make sure that the film resembled the book that people loved. There has to be a spirit that is held onto and for me, the most important thing is Alex and Henry. If Alex and Henry were unrecognisable to the audience who loved the book, then the movie wouldn't work.
The cake sequence is very important, but also very tricky to film, we imagine. What were the practical challenges?
What you see from start to finish as it appears in the movie took about three days to film — and the cake was an entire afternoon. Part of the fun of making this movie is that at the end of the day, we put those two boys on the floor and we threw cake in their face [Laughs]. It was great fun.
I mean, I can't speak for either of them, but for us, it was tremendous fun. We were about three weeks into filming at that point, so any frustrations I may have had in that moment, we got to sort of get out in that.
Not only is it me and my production designer who were the ones actually throwing cake in their faces in that shot, we got so lucky in that it hit them perfectly, so we only did one take of it.
We were prepared to take them out and give them showers and change their costumes and redo their hair. But I also knew I'd lose about an hour and a half if I did that. So it was a real lucky break that we got it right the first time and then those two boys stayed on the floor for about three hours while we put all the detritus of fake cake and real frosting around them.
For all of us it was a fun day. I can't speak for Nick or Taylor. I think they had fun. Nobody doesn't enjoy being covered in cake for a small amount of time.
Another highlight is the moment when Alex comes out to his mum, who's played by Uma Thurman. How was it filming this key scene?
If my memory serves, we spent pretty much the entire day just doing that one scene. The first half of it with him coming out with her at the desk, and then we moved over to the sofa and did the second half of the scene.
That was one of those great days where it was just Taylor and Uma. By that point, they had filmed most of their scenes together. So this is one of the later scenes that they filmed which led to so much trust and warmth between the two of them. They really bonded as mother and son on set.
And honestly, what you see in that scene is is what Taylor and Uma brought to set that day. The work that we had to do behind the scenes was just to make sure that it looked great. That scene in particular is a result of the trust and the genuine warmth that's between those two actors.
I was very happy. There's a world where that scene could have taken forever and come off just half as good. Instead, it took half as long and it was twice as good as we could possibly have imagined.
Those coming-out moments are so delicate and important in films like this.
You could really feel it on set. They knew it was an important scene. Sometimes when you know something's important, you get really uptight and sort of freeze. They both just came at it with so much delicacy and so much care. It was a great pleasure to make that scene.
Speaking of queer moments in the film, we really appreciated how Red, White & Royal Blue doesn't shy away from sex, and gay sex specifically. Even though the sex is integral to the plot, it's not hard to imagine a world where an adaptation stopped short from showing it directly and positively.
In the book, their sex life is such a powerful part of their connection. And I really wanted to show something that I hadn't seen much of in mainstream movie making, which is sex between two men that is loving and connected, and that is emotionally resonant. So we took great care with that scene.
I worked with a wonderful intimacy coordinator named Robbie Taylor Hunt who really helped me understand the scene. We talked about what we wanted, how the scene should work, and what we wanted to film and how we would film it.
So by the time we got on set with the boys and we had rehearsed it with them and prepared them for the scene, they were able to forget because that was Robbie's job to remember. They were able to forget that they were on a set. They were able to forget that they were being asked to do this thing and they were able to just focus on their characters and their performances and their connection together.
It ended up being a scene no different from any other scene of dialogue as it relates to their ability to connect to one another in trust and safety. And so, the result is what you see in the film.
From the beginning, I told the studio that we were not going to shy away from the scene. There would be no tricks. It was going to be true and accurate to the way that two men have sex together.
It was very important to us that people see the film and understand exactly what is happening between these two characters because what is happening is vitally important to the story and their progression as characters. So we never thought of the sex in the film as being additional to the story. We never thought of it as being an add-on or something that you have to put in.
How did you feel when the R rating was revealed in the US? Were you expecting that or did it take you by surprise?
We were neither aiming for nor trying to avoid any particular rating. Contractually, I was able to deliver an R-rated film if that was the case, and the studio never pressed me to make changes in order to get a PG-13 rating.
When the MPAA came back and said to us, these are the things that you should do in order to get a PG-13, we looked at the suggestions and said, "Nah. We're gonna stick with what we've got."
I have two questions: if it was a heterosexual couple, would it have been rated R? And if it had been a scene of violence instead of a scene of of love, would it have gotten an R rating? My priorities are different from the MPAA's when it comes to what is restricted and what is not restricted in movies. But I don't run the MPAA. I just make movies.
We had those same questions, honestly.
I was very grateful that there was a very immediate and unanimous consensus that we weren't changing our movie in order to chase a PG-13 rating.
Looking back, was there a particular example of queer media that really resonated with you on screen?
You will not see a bit of its influence in this movie, but I've been thinking a lot about that movie Bound by the Wachowskis in the '90s.
I also remember my friend Wilson Cruz in My So-Called Life. That was huge. The fact that Wilson is now a friend of mine makes the younger version of me just squeal with delight. My So-Called Life was one of the very first things I remember when it comes to queer representation on American television that really resonated with me.
I think the reason I loved Bound so much is that a) it wasn't about gay men and b) it wasn't about victims. It was about people taking power for themselves. There was something really bold and audacious about that film, still to this day, that I love. I don't know how many people remember Bound outside of my generation, but they should.
I guess the other thing I would say is My Own Private Idaho by Gus Van Sant, which was also so revolutionary because it followed the storyline of Henry IV, it followed Shakespeare, so it had a different kind of tragic ending than you were used to seeing. I just thought that romance between River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves in that film was so beautiful and so understated, but not in any way ambiguous.
So, as you can tell, I kind of liked the off-key stuff. I liked the stuff that the studios weren't putting out.
Red, White, & Royal Blue is now available to watch globally, exclusively on Prime Video.
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