Taylor Zakhar Perez and Casey McQuiston Discuss the Adaptation of Red, White & Royal Blue
Long before Amazon Studios released the Emmy-nominated telefilm Red, White & Royal Blue, the story had legions of dedicated fans. Casey McQuiston’s 2019 book, on which the film is based, launched the 33-year-old author’s now lengthy career as a new-adult novelist, writing about characters in their late teens and early twenties. When news of an adaptation hit the internet, fans of the novel flooded social media with their casting ideas for the story’s main characters, Alex Claremont-Diaz, the first son of the United States, and his nemesis turned beau, Prince Henry, the “spare” British prince. Ultimately, the roles went to Taylor Zakhar Perez (Alex) and Nicholas Galitzine (Henry).
McQuiston, an executive producer on the Matthew López film, is now co-writing the sequel, announced in May, alongside the screenwriter and director. McQuiston and Perez chatted with THR about what they’re looking forward to on the Emmy campaign trail and embracing the adaptation process on set.
Taylor, what was your process embodying Alex? Did you get any guidance from Casey, or did you want to find him on your own?
TAYLOR ZAKHAR PEREZ We really didn’t get to chat with Casey too much until the EPK, which was the last week of filming. Going in, I really had to find what genre this was because I know that it’s considered new adult. I know it’s a romantic comedy, but Alex is such a different beast of a character where sometimes you feel like he’s in a multicam. Other times, you feel like he’s in a single-cam, comedy-wise, and other times you’re like, this kid really is digging deep and is trying to overcome what, maybe, he hasn’t fully leaned into with himself. The Alex character is very all over the place.
[There were] lots of conversations with Matthew and [producer] Sarah Schechter about where we were at in the film. There was such a large growing arc for Alex that you see from the beginning to where we leave them at the end of the first [movie], where he learns so much, and I don’t want to say he chills out, but he sort of leaned into himself and really presses on the accelerator from there. He was sort of spinning around, and so finally finding his laser focus, and that one thing was tough.
Casey, how involved were you in the process as an executive producer?
CASEY MCQUISTON Matthew and I were in conversation pretty much from the moment he jumped on the team. He would loop me in anytime that there was going to be a casting decision or a change being made. Obviously, with an adaptation, you have to make changes to the source material, but I felt like he was always really mindful and considerate of looping me in before I was going to read it in the script. “Hey, Casey, just so you know, I’m going to kill your darling, but I have a really good reason for it this time.” I really appreciated that.
And then he was always asking me, “What are Alex’s five favorite albums that he’s going to have on his bedroom wall?” Or, “What are the books on his nightstand?” Then I would see that in the shots, the things that I’m texting Matthew are being used for set dressing, and those are the really small character details that can really make or break establishing a character. Because in a book you can establish all those things over pages and pages of words, and in a movie you have to establish it in three shots of a bedroom. It was wonderful to get to be involved on that level.