Warning: This story contains spoilers aboutRed, White & Royal Blue.
“As Casey said to me, ‘It’s my book, it’s your movie.’
They’re very similar and also very different things.”
Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in ‘Red, White & Royal Blue;’ Book cover for ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’.Amazon Studios; St Martin’s Griffin
Lopez explains that his biggest challenge was condensing the storytelling into a two-hour movie.
“Book time and movie time are very different things,” he notes.
“Casey had 500 pages or thereabouts, and I had two hours.
Book cover for ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’.Casey McQuiston/St Martin’s Griffin
The audiobook is 12 hours and 15 minutes, and my movie is two hours.
Logically speaking, there’s 10 hours and 15 minutes that’s cut.
My hope is that people love the book and the movie in similar and in different ways.”
Taylor Zakhar Perez and Umu Thurman in ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’.Jonathan Prime/Prime Video
As a writer and director, Lopez has a bit of a thing for adapting famous works.
I had to be really ruthless about it.
That is the general framework for understanding all of the changes that were made."
Nicholas Galitzine, Malcolm Atobrah, Rachel Hilson, and Taylor Zakhar Perez in ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’.Jonathan Prime/Prime Video
“Oscar being still married to Ellen is cleaner storytelling for the movie.
It’s just one fewer character for the audience to have to deal with.
I really wanted to show a Mexican American father who is still with his family.
Ellie Bamber and Nicholas Galitzine in ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’.Jonathan Prime/Prime Video
I needed that family unit to be intact for the movie.
That helped me understand Alex.”
“I wanted him to be really connected to Alex’s family home,” explains Lopez.
Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’.Jonathan Prime/Prime Video
It is actually a working family home from which Oscar qualifies for his seat in Congress.
But Lopez had very deliberate reasons for cutting her from the story.
“This was probably the most controversial change,” the director admits.
Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in ‘Red, White and Royal Blue’.Amazon Studios
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.
Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’.Jonathan Prime/Prime Video
June’ because I took what I needed from her story and gave it to Nora."
“I needed something that would help the audience understand why Alex is protected.
I needed him to have only child energy.
Lopez says this was the hardest change to explain to McQuiston.
“I do think at first it was really tough for Casey to hear,” he admits.
“But Casey is a smart enough storyteller to hear my reasoning.”
And there’s one reason Stephen Fry.
“So I said, ‘Let’s just make it a king.
This is a perfect thing for Stephen.’
“In entertainment, we’d been very saturated with queens,” he says.
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.”
“If the primogeniture holds, the next three monarchs of England will be men.”
It’s the Richards campaign that leaks the various emails and photographs of Alex and Henry’s secret relationship.
“I needed the audience to understand the email leak within five seconds of hearing about it.
I needed the audience not to have to do any math around who’s behind it and why.
It’s a huge chunk of the book, and it’s very pleasurable to read.
But I just saw my runtime balloon.
“TheNews of the Worldhacking scandal wasn’t too long ago,” he says.
So, I needed to give them a rogue journalist.”
Alex’s sexuality
On the page, Alex initially thinks of himself as straight.
“One, it’s a slightly older Alex than what is in the book,” explains Lopez.
In a movie, a character’s only defined by action.
I needed something that was act-able.
I wanted that to be Alex’s real hang-up.
But he has not yet had any reason to self-identify until Henry gives him one.”
History, huh?
Bet we could make some."
That line then becomes an important symbol in their relationship with supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the phrase.
Because of that, the mural sequence is no more.
Not to mention the fact that licensing Star Wars imagery is prohibitively expensive for anyone not working for Disney.
“‘You’re going to worry about my sanity.
You’re going to worry about my fitness for this job.
You’re going to wish that they had hired someone else to direct this movie.
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