Red, White & Royal Blue director explains the biggest changes between the movie and the book
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Warning: This story contains spoilers about Red, White & Royal Blue.
When Casey McQuiston's debut, Red, White & Royal Blue, hit shelves in 2019, it became a massive hit and landed on the New York Times bestseller list — so, naturally, it also garnered a movie adaptation, which is streaming now on Prime Video.
As any book lover knows, there were always going to be some changes when adapting the romantic comedy chronicling the love story between First Son of the United States, Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), and British royal, Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine).
"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," says writer-director Matthew López. "As Casey said to me, 'It's my book, it's your movie.' They're very similar and also very different things."
Amazon Studios; St Martin's Griffin Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in 'Red, White & Royal Blue;' Book cover for 'Red, White & Royal Blue'
López 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. 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."
As a writer and director, López has a bit of a thing for adapting famous works. His Tony-winning play The Inheritance is a retelling of Howard's End, and he co-wrote the musical adaptation of Some Like It Hot with Amber Ruffin. "Maybe I'm going to get a reputation for being somebody who adapts beloved works and changes them a lot but somehow hopefully still retains the spirit of the original enough that people can love both."
Casey McQuiston/St Martin's Griffin Book cover for 'Red, White & Royal Blue'
As he filmed and weighed in on Red, White & Royal Blue edits, López adhered to one guiding principle. "I knew that this movie needed to be about Alex and Henry as individuals and as a couple," he explains. "Anything that didn't help my understanding of Alex as a person, Henry as a person, and Alex and Henry as a couple, didn't belong in the movie. I had to be really ruthless about it. While individual decisions may have come with a little bit of hand-wringing, ultimately I made the decision that it was for the good of the movie to only do that which helps me understand those two characters. That is the general framework for understanding all of the changes that were made."
With that in mind, López breaks down some of the biggest changes from page to screen and why he made those decisions as a director.
Jonathan Prime/Prime Video Taylor Zakhar Perez and Umu Thurman in 'Red, White & Royal Blue'
The state of Alex's parents' marriage
On the page, Alex is the product of divorce — his father, Oscar Diaz, is a senator from California and his stepdad lives in the White House with the rest of his family. But in the movie, Oscar (Clifton Collins Jr.) and President Ellen Claremont (Uma Thurman) are still happily married.
"When it comes to Oscar, there's such a thing as too many characters in a movie," says López. "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. And personally, 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."
Additionally, in the book, Oscar is a California senator, but in the movie, he represents Austin, Tex. in the House. "I wanted him to be really connected to Alex's family home," explains López. "I wanted it to be more rooted to home for Alex, so that when we see the house at the end of the film, it is not just something that has been long abandoned. It is actually a working family home from which Oscar qualifies for his seat in Congress. There was a little bit of an emotional strategy, and then a little bit of a logic strategy."
Jonathan Prime/Prime Video Nicholas Galitzine, Malcolm Atobrah, Rachel Hilson, and Taylor Zakhar Perez in 'Red, White & Royal Blue'
June is NOT bustin' out all over
Fans of the novel will have noticed that Alex is also missing another member of his family in the movie, his sister June. But López had very deliberate reasons for cutting her from the story.
"This was probably the most controversial change," the director admits. "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."
Beyond wanting to give his actress, Rachel Hilson, the chance to have some meat on the bone of her scenes, López also had a storytelling reason for the shift. "The other thought that I had as I was putting the film together was that I liked the idea of Alex being an only child because I knew I wanted to cast older than most people assume the characters are," he adds. "I needed something that would help the audience understand why Alex is protected. I needed him to have only child energy. It's never talked about in the movie, but implicitly, Alex being an only child helps the audience understand him better."
López 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."
Jonathan Prime/Prime Video Ellie Bamber and Nicholas Galitzine in 'Red, White & Royal Blue'
God save the Queen King
While McQuiston's book features a woman on the throne, the movie pivots to a king. And there's one reason — Stephen Fry.
"I had been trying to find something to do with Stephen for quite a while," says López. "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?"
Additionally, López felt the representation of the Queen of England had been well-plumbed in pop culture (and the movie was shot prior to the death of Queen Elizabeth II).
"In entertainment, we'd been very saturated with queens," he says. "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."
Now, with the accession of King Charles III to the throne, López feels like he's set a precedent for what will be most familiar to audiences going forward. "Even if Her Majesty was still alive when the movie was released, most people will encounter this movie in their lifetimes while there is a King of England," he notes. "If the primogeniture holds, the next three monarchs of England will be men."
Jonathan Prime/Prime Video Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in 'Red, White & Royal Blue'
The villain is now a reporter
In the novel, Alex finds himself at the center of intrigue involving Senator Rafael Luna and his mother's primary opponent for the White House, Jeffrey Richards. It's the Richards campaign that leaks the various emails and photographs of Alex and Henry's secret relationship.
But in the film, it's political reporter Miguel Ramos (Juan Castano) who is the villain that betrays Alex. "The Luna stuff and the Richards stuff in the book, I knew that it would become a morass of complications that were unnecessary to understanding the conflict in the movie," says López. "I needed to create a very simple-to-execute, simple-to-understand, simple-to-extricate complication in the movie, which is why I decided to jettison the role of Luna altogether and the intrigue with the Richards campaign."
"Instead, we invented the character of Miguel Ramos, who was a journalist who Alex has had a past dalliance with, who we come to understand is one of the prime motivating factors behind the email leak," he continues. "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. There's 20 minutes right there that I couldn't afford, and that's 20 minutes that I would have to have taken from some other scene. That was a very strategic decision in order to deliver conflict, stakes, and danger with an eye toward efficiency."
Partly that was because López felt audiences already have a shorthand when it comes to reporters illegally sharing the private correspondence of the royal family. "The News of the World hacking scandal wasn't too long ago," he says. "It would actually make much more sense for an audience to assume that it was a rogue journalist who did this. So, I needed to give them a rogue journalist."
Amazon Studios Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in 'Red, White and Royal Blue'
Alex's sexuality
On the page, Alex initially thinks of himself as straight. He experimented with his best friend, Liam, in high school, but he doesn't really begin to interrogate his sexuality until Henry kisses him and it sends him into a spiral of confusion and longing.
Here, Alex has had a sexual encounter with reporter Miguel Ramos and is clearly more nonchalant about who he sleeps with and how they identify. "One, it's a slightly older Alex than what is in the book," explains López. "It is also more efficient storytelling to not see too much, because the other thing you lose in a movie that you do have in a book is interior monologue. In a movie, a character's only defined by action. I needed something that was act-able. So Alex says, 'I can wrap my head around being low-level into guys, but what I'm really confused about is being into Henry.' I wanted that to be Alex's real hang-up. I wanted to present someone who hasn't really thought about giving himself a label, but the fact that he is 'low-level into guys' is not a surprise to him. But he has not yet had any reason to self-identify until Henry gives him one."
Jonathan Prime/Prime Video Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in 'Red, White & Royal Blue'
History, huh?
One of the most iconic moments in McQuiston's book is when Alex writes to Henry in an email, "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. And it becomes the subject of a huge mural featuring Alex and Henry as Han and Leia from Star Wars. It's so beloved by fans that it's been printed on all sorts of bookish merch across the internet.
The line is still in the movie, but this time it's spoken aloud while the two tour the Victoria and Albert Museum after hours. Because of that, the mural sequence is no more. "I decided it would be more powerful to have Alex say the line in the V&A scene instead of hearing it in voiceover in the emails, which is how it is in the book," López notes. "Because it's now uttered in a private moment between them, there's no way anyone could know he said it, thereby making the mural logically impossible."
Not to mention the fact that licensing Star Wars imagery is prohibitively expensive for anyone not working for Disney.
Despite the changes, López feels the final product is true to the spirit of the novel, particularly because of how much McQuiston loves it. "I told Casey, 'I'm going to hurt you temporarily in order to do the best work I possibly can on this movie,'" he recounts. "'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. And then I promise you, at the end of the day when you see the film for the first time, if I have not failed, you will understand the method to my madness.' The greatest day of my life was the day I showed Casey this movie for the first time and they loved it."
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