The Idea of You ’s Nicholas Galitzine Wants to Make Sex Scenes Feminist

There is a deeper feminist meaning to the steaminess in Amazon’s The Idea of You, according to the film’s star Nicholas Galitzine. And, before you ask, the actor does firmly identify as a feminist himself. “I think we all should be, as men,” Galitzine tells Glamour.

In the film, based on the book of the same name by Robinne Lee, Galitzine plays Hayes Campbell, a hunky, 24-year-old boy band frontman who falls in love with 40-year-old single mother Solène (Anne Hathaway) after a chance encounter in his personal trailer at Coachella.

Much like its source material, The Idea of You doesn’t shy away from a steamy sex scene, and Galitzine doesn’t shy away from talking about such scenes. The actor has some experience filming especially spicy moments—memorably, for instance, when he played Prince Henry in another romance novel turned Amazon Prime film, Red, White, and Royal Blue.

“I think female pleasure is the sort of protagonist in this movie,” says Galitzine. “These scenes, obviously there is a sensuality to it, but they’re not salacious. They're incredibly connective. It's about two people, from very different backgrounds and circumstances, who share a deep simpatico and fall in love.” In fact, Galitzine says one of the film’s hottest scenes, in his opinion, is the one in which Hayes and Soléne dance around their hotel room in a bit of post-coital silliness, because it shows such “beautiful aftercare and connectivity.”

“Annie and I, and [director] Michael [Showalter], we spoke about this, and I think there is so much hope in the movie,” Galitzine says. “So many women feel this sense that their life is over at 40, and that is not what this movie is about. I use the words ‘joy’ and ‘love’ and ‘hope’ a lot because I really think it's important for people to see themselves in this light when we live so often in this very misogynistic culture.”

With regards to the story’s original inspiration, Galitzine is aware of the Harry Styles of it all—boy bander with many tattoos and a surprising depth falls in love with a significantly older woman to general tabloid uproar—but steers clear of any direct comparisons. “It's actually not a comparison I really like to make or find useful, to be honest, because I think Hayes is definitely his own character.” That being said, Galitzine’s fictional band, August Moon, and Styles’s real life band, One Direction, did work with the same songwriter, Savan Kotecha.

“I felt like I was very much in pop star bootcamp,” says Galitzine, who sings all the (original!) songs featured in the movie. “Which was very scary, ’cause we did a couple scenes at ‘Coachella,’” Galitzine explains. “Albeit, yeah, not the real Coachella. But still, for someone who doesn't really have a background in it, you're performing in front of 500 supporting artists and it’s kind of like doing an actual concert.” Unlike the professional dancers who portray the other members of August Moon, Galitzine isn’t used to festival stages, even fictional ones. “They're used to doing 80,000 people. And there’s me sort of quivering in my boots before I came out onstage. But I had so much fun doing the music and performing. It was a sort of childhood dream come true.”

Galitzine doesn’t necessarily agree with the comparisons to Fifty Shades of Grey, another racy romance novel turned into an almost-as-racy movie series, either. He’s more apt to draw similarities to films from the “golden age of rom-coms.” (Notting Hill comes to mind.) “People want to feel warm and joyous and I think there was like a golden era of these movies that we kind of got away from. I think we have sort of, maybe, taken ourselves a bit too seriously.”

Notting Hill and The Idea of You both play on the fantasy of having an actual relationship with your celebrity crush. Nicholas Galitzine’s first celebrity crush? “Jessica Alba, to be honest,” he said, and Galitzine considers himself lucky to be living out a version of that right now, himself. “You know, working with someone like Annie, who is so many people’s celebrity crush, I'm living a lot of people’s dreams.”

Originally Appeared on Glamour