As with the book, the movie charts the burgeoning romance between former rivals Alex Claremont-Diaz \u2013 the son of the first female President of the United States \u2013 and Prince Henry, a member of the British Royal family.<\/p>\n
Of course with any romance film, the chemistry between the two leads is of utmost importance, and this is perhaps even more essential when it comes to playing characters who are already so beloved to book readers.<\/p>
Luckily, fans needn\u2019t worry about a lack of chemistry between stars Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in the new film \u2013 as director Matthew Lopez has revealed that there was an \u201cinstantaneous\u201d connection between the actors when they first met.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of keeping them apart from each other while I looked for my Alex and I looked for my Henry,\u201d Lopez said of the casting process during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew that casting this thing would be crucial and difficult and potentially impossible, and I told my producers that if I didn\u2019t find the right actors for it, I wasn\u2019t going to make the movie. And then I found Nick. And then I found Taylor. And they were both so perfect for the roles in very different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n But having found his two leads separately, Lopez said that the main test was the chemistry read \u2013 and thankfully it didn\u2019t take him too long to work out that the pair were going to be compatible screen partners.<\/p>\n \u201cIt very quickly became Taylor and Nick,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce we got them on a Zoom together \u2013 that was the only downside of it, we had to do it on Zoom because we were all in different [places] \u2013 within five minutes of the beginning of that chemistry read, we all knew that we had found our Henry and our Alex.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was instantaneous. It was really just\u2026 quite literal chemistry. I think you could feel the atoms swirling between them. Even though one of them was in New Orleans, and one of them was in LA!\u201d<\/p>\n The fact that they were apart from each other was actually quite fitting \u2013 given that in the film much of Alex and Henry\u2019s relationship develops over text messages while the pair are in the US and UK respectively.<\/p>\n And Lopez revealed that working out how to stage these texting scenes was one of his biggest challenges as director \u2013 and meant he had to count on his extensive experience in the theatre.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more boring than watching two people text on screen,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I said that we need to figure out how to do this in a way that\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I really relied on my theatre training \u2013 in a contemporary play, the audience doesn\u2019t ever have any trouble understanding that two people on stage together having a conversation are actually talking on the phone, or actually texting with one another. Theatre has figured out very early on how to deal with technology.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I thought to myself, \u2018Well, why don\u2019t we just take that and apply it to film?\u201d The audience is gonna know they\u2019re not in the scene together. Even though they\u2019re on screen simultaneously and even though they\u2019re speaking what should be a text message, the audience is going to understand it.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so we built this sequence of them texting and speaking their text messages, and then we had a lot of fun adding a lot of the graphics to it and everything. So it was a big challenge, it was one of the hardest things to figure out and then it became one of the most fun things to pull off in the movie!\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Taylor](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/07\/red-white-royal-blue-d8297b4.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"red-white-royal-blue\\"\/")
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