To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You director says 'there is a place for John Ambrose'
Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky are officially in the honeymoon phase of their relationship … for now. But in To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, fans get to watch the next phase of their relationship, and things aren’t quite as simple as they were back in the days of contracts and dreamy pocket spins. “It’s in the scope of what [author] Jenny [Han] constructed as a book trilogy, starting with Lara Jean alone in her room reading romance novels and fantasizing about what it means to be in love or have someone that you want to be with, to now dealing with it,” P.S. I Still Love You director Michael Fimognari says. “And dealing with it is a whole other thing.”
Much in the way that audiences get to stick with television characters for a long time, Lara Jean and Peter are just getting started. “You get these romances that start as this little bud and you watch them develop,” Fimognari says. “You watch them fail and struggle and reunite. It’s fun to see them to build and to grow and then add in new characters and new complications.”
And if John Ambrose McClaren is anything, he’s a new complication. When John, one of Lara Jean’s other letter recipients, returns to town, it causes her to question her new relationship with Peter. “We focus deeply on Lara Jean’s perspective of what it means to be in this relationship and the confusion and then the exploration of what it means to maybe have other feelings,” Fimognari continues. “We were never trying to replace Peter Kavinsky, but there is a place for John Ambrose.”
Much of what the sequel is about, according to Fimognari, is Lara Jean learning to confront her own truth without losing her optimistic outlook on love. “It’s not a cynical view of romance or adolescence,” he says. “It’s an earnest, fun, passionate presentation of it.”
To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You hits Netflix on Wednesday, Feb. 12.
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