When Casey McQuinston published this book back in 2019, the book instantly became a hit and gained a massive fan following. you couldn’t walk through the book world without actually seeing or hearing about the book. It was that loved and crazy-lit read of the year. The book also won the Best Romance and Best Debut Novel at the 2019 Goodreads Choice awards. Needless to say that it was also New York Times Bestseller. With all these accolades, it wasn’t staying behind without a movie adaptation and voila the wish came true this year when we finally saw the movie Red, White And Royal Blue getting released under the Prime video, written and directed by Matthew Lopez, starring Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in its lead role.
Lopez may be directing his first movie but he is no stranger to direction as he is famous for his Tony-winning play The Inheritance and the musical adaptation of Some Like it Hot.
Naturally there were a lot of things that were adapted and morphed specifically for its screen adaptation and explaining this Lopez said
“One of my hopes in knowing the things that needed to change in order to make the movie possible was that people will understand and embrace what Casey McQuiston and I keep talking about. As Casey said to me, ‘It’s my book, it’s your movie.’ They’re very similar and also very different things.”
Lopez may be directing his first movie but he is no stranger to direction as he is famous for his Tony-winning play The Inheritance and the musical adaptation of Some Like it Hot.
so at the risk of being a spoiler, we are going to give some major changes that the movie did from the book.
One of the major changes is that Lopez decided to keep the American family happy and intact, unlike the bookish version.
I was really drawn to the notion of showing a Latino father who is still with his family. I really wanted to show a Mexican American father who is still with his family. I needed that family unit to be intact for the movie. It works in the book as it’s written, but for my movie, I needed that unit to be tight and unbroken. That helped me understand Alex.” Lopez says to justify his decision to change the family aspect.
The other controversial change was the absence of June, the sister character in the book.
“This was probably the most controversial change. It was the possibility of having two young actors playing Nora and June, each of whom would have very little to do in the movie as a result of the two of them being there. I worried about two actresses having half a meal and neither being given a real chance to shine. I had the worry that they would fade into the background as a result. On set, we’d often say ‘R.I.P. June’ because I took what I needed from her story and gave it to Nora.” says Lopez
Another change was the king on the throne. While the book portrays a queen on the throne. The movie has a king.
“I had been trying to find something to do with Stephen for quite a while. So I said, ‘Let’s just make it a king. This is a perfect thing for Stephen.’ I mean, at the end of the day, if you’ve got Stephen Fry, why wouldn’t you?”
“In entertainment, we’d been very saturated with queens. “I didn’t know how to present a Queen of England that didn’t make the audience think of Queen Elizabeth. Half the actresses who were on the initial list had played her at one point or the other. And if they hadn’t played her, they’d played another Queen of England.”
Interestingly, in real life, we have a king on the crown now
Also, another interesting feature is that the movie has a scene that is shot in the actual Victoria and Albert Museum. It is one of the iconic moments in the book and unlike the book where it takes place inside the Renaissance Gallery, the movie shoots it in a different gallery.
“It’s not the most photogenic gallery,” explains López. “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.”
All in all, it would be a fun affair for the book fans to get to see the characters of their Red, White and Royal Blue come alive on screen…or would it be?
Have you seen the movie yet?
News Source : Entertainment Weekly Disclaimer : Images used in the article are not our own but picked up from different sources for representational purposes.
