Red, White & Royal Blue Isn’t Nicholas Galitzine’s 1st Queer Role
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Prince Henry is a BookTok icon, but fans may be surprised to learn that Nicholas Galitzine’s gay character in Red, White & Royal Blue isn’t his first LGBTQ+ role. In fact, he’s set to star in another queer comedy later this summer.
Galitzine plays Prince Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor in Prime Video’s Red, White & Royal Blue, a romantic comedy based on Case Mcquiston’s 2019 book of the same title. The book and movie follow the love story between Alex Claremont-Diaz, the first son of the United States, and Prince Henry, a British prince. Alex is the son of President Ellen Claremont, the first female President of the United States, while Henry is the grandson of King James III.
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In an interview with Pink News in August 2023, Red, White & Royal Blue‘s director, Matthew Lopez, explained why it was important for fans to acknowledge Alex and Henry’s different sexualities. While Henry is gay, Alex is bisexual. “I sometimes bristle when people say: ‘Oh, it’s two gay men’. Actually, no, it’s one gay man and one bisexual man,” he said. “They are in love and they are a same-sex couple, yes. [But] as [is written] in the novel, and as in the movie, the B in LGBTQ is not a silent letter. That was really important to me, because it was important to Casey [McQuiston].”
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2023, Galitzine revealed that he and Zakhar Perez ate the cake from Red, White & Blue‘s iconic scene earlier in the film where Alex and Henry crash into massive wedding cake during a fight. “You would get quite peckish throughout the day,” he joked. “The fact that you could just have a snack peeling off your body, you can have a little nibble there, was super convenient.”
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He continued, “A lot of the crew were very keen to get involved and throw cake at us in the second half when the cake’s already hit us. But it was a really fun experience getting to work within that physical comedy space, very slapstick with icing on the suit, then the whiskey being used to dab the suit, and the cake coming down on top of us.”
Galitzine revealed that even after the scene finished filming, he would find cake in pars of his body.”Afterwards, I went and stood in the shower for a good half an hour,” he said. “Even that evening and the next morning, I’d find something in my ear or behind my ears, and be like, ‘What is that?’ And it was bits of icing. I didn’t eat those.”
While Prince Henry is one of Galitzine’s most well-known characters to date, fans may be surprised to learn that Red, White & Royal Blue isn’t the first time he’s played an LGBTQ+ role. Read on for what Nicholas Galitzine has said about his gay roles in Red, White & Royal Blue and queer more movies and TV shows.
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey Mcquiston
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Nicholas Galtizine’s quotes on his gay roles in Red, White & Royal Blue and more movies
Along with Prince Henry in Red, White & Royal Blue, Nicholas Galitzine has played LGBTQ+ characters in three more movies and TV shows, according to PinkNews. In 2016’s Handsome Devil, Galitzine played closeted gay rugby player Conor Masters. In 2020’s The Craft: Legacy, he played bisexual high school bully Timmy Andrews. In the Sky Atlantic series Mary & George, he plays George Villers, the lover and and “favourite” of King James VI of Scotland and I of England. Galitzine is also set to star as the high school jock Jeff in the upcoming queer comedy movie, Bottoms, which premieres on August 25, 2023.
Galitzine confirmed he was straight in an interview with Variety in August 2023, in which he explained how he related to Henry despite their different sexualities. “I think it’s a very sensitive subject,” he said. “I think the important thing for me was to let Matthew know that I loved who Henry was as a person, and I empathized with him as a character, and I just wanted to try and deliver as honest a performance — never a caricature — as I could.”
He continued, “I think we were just always on the same page with trying to create a very textured, vulnerable-feeling person in this quite poppy and fun world that that Red, White & Royal Blue is at times. But look, there’s always trepidation. I can only hope that fans really will appreciate my performance. I put a lot into Henry in trying to make him feel textured and real, and so that’s all I can really offer at the end of the day.”
In an interview with The Film Experience in 2017, Galitzine opened up about how he related to Conor’s journey to discover who he is in Handsome Devil. “It’s a universal theme that a lot of young people identify with. It’s really difficult to stay away from all of those voices and similarities in the mainstream,” he said. “You grow up kind of wanting to be like someone else and you try and recreate that. It leads to you being an inauthentic person in some ways.”
He continued, “It’s not just if you’re a musician or an artist, It’s an issue of identity and being true to yourself. I think everyone is part of a school clique in high school or wherever — maybe you get roped into a way of thinking. In the film there’s something kind of tragic about this weird vicious cycle of machismo that all these boys buy into. They don’t really know why they do it. Hopefully Handsome Devil will shed a light on that and help young people realize it’s more than okay to be different. It’s actually pretty fucking cool.”
He also told the site about how he hoped the movie would have an impact on other gay and LGBTQ+ teenagers. “It’s a huge theme in the film so people ask about it a lot. Just before we filmed this the referendum came out in Ireland that they were going to give gay people the right to marry,” he said. “That was a huge thing in that country. It is really lovely to see how passionate members of the gay community are and how much this means to them . We had a mother at the last screening. She was saying ‘I have a gay daughter and this really touched me in a big way because it’s all about being true to who you are.’”
He continued, “I hope that there are other other gay and LGBTQ teens who see this and feel compelled to speak out and be true to themselves. I come from a very multicultural background. Being a Londoner you kind of grow up with every type of person around you so you’re more kind of comfortable with anything. But maybe people from other communities…”
As for Red, White & Royal Blue, Galitzine told GQ in June 2023 about how he related to Henry and his journey to be understood. “One of my great fears is being misunderstood,” he said. “Henry has to live with that every day…. It just felt like a beautiful story: someone who’s largely pretended to be someone else their whole life, and then this other person completely obliterates their worldview.”
He also told the magazine about what it was like to film the sex scenes between Henry and Alex Claremont-Diaz, played by Taylor Zakhar Perez, whom he’s become good friends with. “It’s a crazy thing to be intimate in that way with your friend,” Galitzine said. “And we want people to fall in love with these characters, because their love has to be real.”
Zakhar Perez added, “Our guards were down during the rehearsals. But as soon as someone would yell “Cut”? “One of us would say something stupid, like, Get off me!” Zakhar Perez also explained that Henry and Alex’s sex scenes were more planned than fans may think. “There’s so much choreography to sex…ual scenes,” he said.
During an interview with Teen Vogue in 2023, Galitzine also revealed that he didn’t read the Red, White & Royal book before filming, though he’s since finished it. He felt really real. I felt like I empathized with him,” Galitzine said of Henry. “I didn’t really feel a pressure necessarily, in that capacity. It just felt like a really beautiful story.”
He also told Teen Vogue about how he related to Henry’s feeling of being misinterpreted. We are in the business of misconceptions,” Galitzine said. “As actors, we’re constantly playing these roles, and I think a lot of people associate us with the characters that we play.” He added that actors are often seen “in this two-dimensional outline of a human being. We all have our own anxieties and struggles.” He contnued, “I try and lead with vulnerability now, [with] candor… Being misperceived in that way is quite scary.”
We are in the business of misconceptions,” Galitzine says. “As actors, we’re constantly playing these roles, and I think a lot of people associate us with the characters that we play.” Often, you’re portrayed “in this two-dimensional outline of a human being. We all have our own anxieties and struggles.” It has ironically made him more open with people. “I try and lead with vulnerability now, [with] candor… Being misperceived in that way is quite scary.”
Of Henry and Alex’s sex scenes in Red, White & Royal Blue, Galitzine described them with one word: Hot. “I’m fucking stoked that we classify as hot dudes as well, so internet high-five, Taylor,” Galitzine said. Zakhar Perez added, “I say the movie serves it hot on a platter, if that’s what you want.” Galtizine also told Teen Vogue that the Red, White & Royal Blue director wanted a range of sex scenes that “felt hot and animalistic and hungry, and then stuff to feel tender and a reflection of their love for each other.”
Galitzine and Zakhar Perez also credited Red, White & Royal Blue‘s intimacy coordinator, Taylor Hunt, for the direction of Henry and Alex’s sex scenes. “We needed to see the different colors, the different shades, the different shades of gray through this,” Zakhar Perez said. “And we had to focus on that because you’re telling a sexual journey.”
Galitzine added, “I really have to give Robbie [Taylor Hunt], our intimacy coordinator, his flowers. Not having that language as Nick,” to be able to fully craft the scene in a comfortable way, “it’s really daunting and Robbie was so great.” Their collaboration became a process of “charting when to turn up the heat; what felt truthful in one scene, as opposed to maybe not right in the other.”
Red, White & Royal Blue is available to stream on Prime Video. Here’s how to watch it for free.
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