If the number of views for the trailer is anything to go by (7.2 million and counting), anticipation is high for the film adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s bestselling novel Red, White & Royal Blue, which premieres globally on Prime Video on Friday, August 11th. Fortunately for playwright Matthew López, who makes his feauture writing and directing debut with the project, he hadn’t quite grasped the immense popularity of the book, telling The Queer Review‘s editor James Kleinmann that it was useful to “work in that place of ignorance” otherwise he “probably would have frozen up”. That the narrative centres a young biracial Mexican-American character was particularly significant for López, “that’s why I made the film” he shares.
Inspired by the rom-coms of the 90s and 00s, it’s impossible not to be swept up by the romance of the modern-day queer fairytale which focuses on “the special relationship” between the son of the President of the United States, Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), and Britain’s Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine). Although things are initially strained between them—the pair can’t stand one another—they eventually strike up a meaningful friendship that unexpectedly deepens into a courtship that makes global headline news. The cast also features Uma Thurman, Clifton Collins Jr., Oscar Diaz, Sarah Shahi, Ellie Bamber, Thomas Flynn, Sharon D Clarke, Aneesh Sheth, Juan Castano, Love, Victor star Rachel Hilson, and Stephen Fry as the King.
López became the first Latine writer to win the Tony Award for Best Play for The Inheritance, which was also celebrated with other Best Play honours in London and New York including the Olivier Award, Drama Desk Award, Evening Standard Award, London Critics Circle Award, Outer Critics Circle Honors, Drama League Award, and the GLAAD Media Award. This year, López was Tony-nominated for co-writing the musical adaptation of the MGM classic comedy Some Like it Hot, which received the most nominations of any show last season. Off-Broadway productions of López’s work include The Whipping Man and The Legend of Georgia McBride, while his other plays include Somewhere, Reverberation, The Sentinels, and Zoey’s Perfect Wedding.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: I know seeing Peter Pan on Broadway as a child was a pivotal experience for you and helped to ignite your passion for theatre. What was the first movie you saw in the cinema and did it have a similar impact on you in terms of film?
Matthew López: “It’s funny you ask that because the first film I ever saw was The Muppet Movie in 1980. What’s so funny about it is that my parents were visiting me recently and in the middle of the afternoon on a rainy day I asked my dad if he wanted to watch a movie and he said, ‘You know what I’ve been wanting to revisit for the longest time? The Muppet Movie‘. I was like, ‘Let’s watch The Muppet Movie!’ So it was only about three weeks ago that I revisited the very first movie I ever saw.”
“The Muppets probably do explain a lot about my sense of humour. I actually refer to Taylor Zakhar Perez privately as a muppet. Taylor is a bit of a muppet in real life, there’s something very muppet-like about Taylor as a person. But I don’t know if The Muppet Movie really set a sensibility. I think that occurred when I was a teenager in the 90s. Being a movie-junkie teenager in the 90s was heaven because I got to see films like Pulp Fiction in the cinema on opening day and that changed my life. Seeing JFK as a teenager in the cinema really messed with my head , and The Piano. Oh my God, the list goes on and on of those great 90s movies.”
“In terms of what shaped me as a queer storyteller, I remember that I was starting to—as privately as I possibly could—find queer movies and watch them. I was lucky that my parents went to bed early on the weekends and whenever I could I would stay up and watch movies. One that was particularly big for me was Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, which really changed my idea of myself as well as what movies could be, very much in the same way that Pulp Fiction had changed my idea of what movies could be. A lot of the queer movies that I got to see at that time were about death and dying. What I loved about My Own Private Idaho is that it wasn’t what I was used to. While death and dying was a part of it, there was a lot of tenderness in that movie, there was hope and there was a lot of sweetness and I think I really responded to that.”
There’s a lot of hope and sweetness in Red, White & Royal Blue. It’s not only a bestselling book, there’s such an enthusiastic community of fans out there who are so invested in these characters and the story. What was it like to create the film knowing that potential audience was out there?
“I actually discovered the book a long time before most other people did because I was sent it pretty early on. I fell madly in love with it and I knew very quickly that I wanted to make this movie. I started lobbying for this job very soon after the book was published. When I started working on it I didn’t really pay attention to what the book was doing in the world because I was already focused on the movie. It wasn’t until September 2021, when it was finally announced that I was directing it, that I noticed something. Overnight I got about 15,000 new Instagram followers. It was right after the Tonys, so initially I thought that maybe it was because I had just won a Tony. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of new Instagram followers for the Tonys!’ Then it started to dawn on me that it was down to Red, White & Royal Blue. I remember saying to Casey McQuiston at one point, ‘You know your book is really popular, right?’ They were like, ‘Yeah, I know. Thanks for telling me that!’ I think I needed to work in that place of ignorance because if I had understood just how popular the book was I probably would have frozen up.”
There’s a really powerful moment, one of my favourites in the film, when Alex is talking about the importance of young men ‘with a Z in their names’ being able to see people like themselves succeeding in the world. What resonates with you about the queer Latine representation in the book and now the film which you’ve created so beautifully?
“When I read this book, even in my 40s, I had never encountered a character like Alex Claremont-Diaz before. It took that long for me to read a book with a character like that, who was biracial, Mexican-American, bisexual, smart, smart-ass, funny, charming and flawed in the best way possible. When I was contemplating making this film, I knew that I was asking for the opportunity to bring that character into the world in a movie. I have never seen Alex Claremont-Diaz before in a movie and it’s really important to me that my first film has a Latin lead at its centre, that the hero of the story, the person who takes us through this journey, is this young, biracial, Mexican-American boy. That’s why I made the film.”
I know there’s generally very little rehearsal time with film compared to theatre, but what were some of the things that you did with your lead actors before the cameras started rolling to help establish their onscreen relationship?
“It was mostly Taylor and Nick who I rehearsed with, but I also brought in the whole cast at a certain point, those who I could get ahead of time for a few days, like Sarah Shahi, Rachel Hilson, Ellie Bamber, and Thomas Flynn. I wanted Taylor and Nick to begin to form real-life relationships with the people who they were going to have onscreen relationships with. I really wanted Taylor and Nick to have a good solid chunk of time together, working together and understanding one another, coming to trust one another and figuring out how they each work. It was less about rehearsing like you would for a play and more about acclimatizing. I guess you could liken it to getting new goldfish and putting them in a plastic bag and then putting them in the water before you let them out into the general goldfish population!”
“I needed those two to problem-solve together. I needed those two to have lunches together and talk about their nights when they saw each other in the morning. I needed a familiarity that I didn’t want to leave to chance on the first day on set when everybody’s a little tight, everybody’s a little nervous, nobody knows each other and everybody’s figuring each other out. You had a filmmaker who’d never done this before and the last thing I wanted was for Taylor and Nick to start to get to know each other then because I think that would have been too late.”
After the trauma of reliving the 2016 election result in The Inheritance, it was great to see you bring a female US President to the screen in Red, White & Royal Blue played wonderfully by Uma Thurman.
“Actually a friend of mine pointed that out the other night and said that this feels like the antithesis to that scene in The Inheritance. I pray one day that we get a female President and I would love for it to be because we turned Texas blue.”
By James Kleinmann
Red, White & Royal Blue premieres globally on Prime Video on August 11th, 2023.
