[Editor’s note: The following interview contains some spoilers for “The Idea of You.”]
Books may not come with MPA-style ratings, but Robinne Lee’s debut novel “The Idea of You” is decidedly NC-17 in its storytelling. The bestseller follows 40-year-old gallery owner and single mom Solene as she navigates a very unexpected romance with much-younger boy band star Hayes Campbell, both in and out of the public eye. The pair have a steamy connection, and Lee doesn’t skimp on the sex scenes.
So, how to turn that story — one widely believed to be inspired by One Direction star Harry Styles — into the kind of movie you could premiere at a major festival like SXSW and pop onto a massive streaming service like Amazon? A movie that could, dare we say it, appeal to a wide audience hungry for some real romance?
Turn it over to filmmaker Michael Showalter, a comedic genius also known for his more adult romantic comedies (like genre send-up “They Came Together” and smash hit “The Big Sick”). When Showalter boarded the project, he was gifted some major aces: star Anne Hathaway (cast as Solene, of course) and an existing script from romance genius Jennifer Westfeldt. As he set about crafting an R-rated “rom-com-dram” with broad appeal, Showalter bulked up some elements, pared down some, and built in some clever tweaks to the sexy (and already widely hailed) story.
Showalter is currently shooting his Christmas comedy, “Oh. What. Fun.” in Atlanta, so over Zoom and with a massive production calendar and a slightly smaller Christmas tree behind him — “It’s very cliche and embarrassing. I’m sorry. I’m making a Christmas movie. So it’s Christmas in, what is it, April still?” — he chatted with IndieWire about bringing “The Idea of You” to the big screen.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
IndieWire: How did you first hear about “The Idea of You”? A lot of people come at it from different angles: the “fan fiction” people, the book people, devoted Hathaway fans.
Michael Showalter: For me, it came as a script. I had not heard about the book. I was sent it as, this is a movie that is in development and has Anne Hathaway attached. I read the book subsequently.
The script that made it to the screen has plenty of differences from the book. As you read the book, what were you thinking in terms of, how am I going to tell this story?
I think the book is great. It’s obviously not my genre. For me, it was like, there’s a great version of this movie that’s more like the book, [but] I’m just not the right person to do that. So if you want me to do the movie, it would be a different kind of movie.
My take on it, and Jennifer Westfeldt was on the project prior to me being there, was very much riffing off of “Notting Hill.” What I think is central to what I love about “Notting Hill” is that the Hugh Grant character is an everyman, and so I needed Solene to be an everywoman, in a sense. In the book, I didn’t feel like Solene is an everywoman. I feel like she’s a great character, and she’s amazing in every way, but that wasn’t a story I was going to be able to tell.
I wanted the audience to feel some sense of “I could be that person.” I could bump into the biggest pop star in the world, and they could fall in love with me. That’s sort of the wish fulfillment adventure I think “Notting Hill” is, what is it that he says? “Of every bookstore or whatever in the city, she walks into mine.”
I was very, very clear with everybody that, there’s a great version of this movie that’s tonally more like the book. I wouldn’t be the right person for it.
Do you consider the film a rom-com?
It’s a rom-com-dram. It’s a rom-dramedy. It’s not a rom-com. Sometimes I hear myself say that it’s a rom-com and I [really] don’t feel at all like it is.
It sort of starts out as a rom-com. There’s actually things that happen pretty early on that signal that it’s not, whether the audience is picking up on it or not. It’s a pretty conventional setup: She’s going to go take the daughter to Coachella, she goes to visit the ex-husband who’s got the new younger wife, and then she goes back to her house and she’s by herself in the house, and she’s in the mirror taking her makeup off. And it’s really not that funny. You see, in that moment, that there’s a lot going on there internally for her as a character. That’s only six minutes into the movie. That moment is the first signal to the audience that this isn’t going to be your typical rom-com.
Early on, Solene also has a birthday party where she’s being set up with all these different guys who are not right for her. And yes, it’s very funny. But on the other side, it’s really sad, because she’s a great person and she should have a cool partner.
I didn’t think of it as sad, that moment, as much as hoping that you’re going, “Gee, I wish that Hayes guy would show up again, because these guys, oh, she can do better.”
I think that, for a lot of single people, that’s a pretty accurate feeling of you go to these parties or you go out to where you’re supposed to meet people, and you’re just uninspired by the people that you’re meeting.
Related to Solene’s relationship concerns, there’s a scene later in the film in which Solene’s ex-husband’s new wife tells Solene that she’s leaving him. I saw the film in a very packed but quite small screening room, and it got a huge audible reaction. That’s not in the book. When did it come in?
It was very important to me that came in. That was something I really wanted to do. I’m going to try to think of a way to articulate this, because it’s kind of a little bit of a deeper notion. This is a very common trope, the main character’s ex leaves them for a “better model.” Those movies, which are most movies, indicate that the ex is happier. So the messaging is the ex-husband left and they are happier now.
And it’s worked for them.
And it’s worked for them! And [the other character is] sort of left holding the bag. I actually think that’s not true. It was important to me, because you could easily make a movie about Daniel, in which Daniel is running away from himself. It isn’t a foregone conclusion that just because he ditched her for a younger woman, he’s happier.
I wanted to debunk the notion that just because your ex has a new boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife, that they’re happier. And, connected to that is, that if Solene was wrong about that — because she’s so convinced that Daniel is happier — if she was wrong about that, what else might she be wrong about? And therefore, hopefully in some small way, the audience internalizes that too to say, “Huh, we think we know things.” But in that moment, Solene is having her perceptions challenged. So if she’s wrong about Daniel, what does that mean about all these things she’s believed so strongly were true?
Even though in the movie it’s just this little moment, it was really important to me that this isn’t a movie about “Daniel gets to be happy, and I’m not happy,” Daniel’s still got his own shit going on. A kind of happy by-product of it is that it allows the audience to soften on Daniel a little bit at the end of the movie. He’s sort of in the box of being the bad guy. But I think when you see Daniel at the end of the movie, and you know that he’s probably dealing with some of his own stuff, it allows you to see him as a human being as well. I do try, in all my movies, to see everyone’s situation in three dimensions.
Another change in the film is the aging up of Solene and Daniel’s daughter Izzy from tween to teen, and then also changing that she never had a crush on Hayes, it was on another member of the boy band. Was that already in the script when you came on board?
Yeah, that was something that had already been figured out. I think that was a really good change for the movie that we wanted to do. [In the book], it was a combination of that she was younger, and even more so that Hayes was her favorite August Moon member. There was this element of you’re cheating, you’re betraying your best friend essentially, you’re betraying your closest loved one by having an affair with that’s the one I love. It added a layer of scandal to it that is really intriguing and interesting, but felt like for what we were trying to do, it makes it a little harder to root for Solene and Hayes.
Hayes also gets aged up, from 20 to 24.
Same thing: we are trying to make a movie is broadly appealing … and we wanted the audience to feel good about them, to feel good about their love affair and to root for them. I think if he’s 20 years old and she’s 40, again, it just adds a layer of sort of impropriety or whatever that is great, but just not for this story, for this tone that we were going for.
And by having Izzy be 16 already, you do get a sense that Solene, who is 40 in both the book and the film, didn’t really have her twenties to herself.
Exactly. 100 percent.
So, you come on board, you have the wonderful Anne Hathaway already attached. When you’re casting Hayes, what was that process like? What was it like when you got the two of them together?
Bernie Telsey, our casting director and his amazing team of casting directors that he works with, saw, it feels like every young guy, actor from all over the world, truly like UK and Ireland and Australia and American actors and just great-looking young guys.
We knew that our Hayes, it wasn’t going to be [an already big star] like Timothée Chalamet or someone, because there really aren’t that many guys in that age range that are famous in that way. It was kind of more of a search, and we whittled it down to about 10. They all came to New York for a weekend, from all over the place, and we had a very intense sort of chemistry audition process with Anne. The guys came in and did scenes. We did some improvisation, they sang songs, they danced. It was pretty intense. I was really impressed by how professional and prepared and courageous these young guys were to come into that environment and really deliver.
Nick was someone who we were familiar with, he had done some of these movies that had kind of gotten a lot of attention, like “Purple Hearts.” I’d seen “Cinderella” because I have two young kids, and he’s in the Camila Cabello “Cinderella,” and he’s very charming in that, and he does all his own singing in the movie. He’s a great, incredible musician.
All the guys we saw were great, but maybe were missing one thing, or they maybe felt too indie or maybe they were really good at the drama, but not as good at as the comedy, or maybe they were really sexy but not relatable. There was always something kind of missing. And Nick really checked every box in that he was believable as a kind of pop star. He’s believable as that, has the musical talent, is very charming, is relatable, is funny, is sexy, was great with Anne, all of those things. It was a great moment of all of us looking at each other being like, “It’s this guy. It’s him.”
The film is still quite sexy, but there are a few elements that are left out from the book. For instance, in the book, Hayes is, uh, a generous lover in a way that Daniel wasn’t, and that really blows Solene’s mind. Some of that has really been tamped down here.
There were no big conversations about that. We wanted the movie to be sexy. And I feel this way in general, not just with this movie, but [we wanted it] not [to be] particularly interested in the male gaze version of this stuff.
So in terms of the oral sex [that’s in the book], for me, what I took from it more was wanting to have a movie that was more of a female gaze. That maybe was more interesting to me than specifically what are the specific things that are going on.
In the book, the first sexual encounter they have, she’s fully clothed and she has an orgasm, fully clothed. That was something from the book that we took inspiration from. So in that scene in the New York hotel, that’s a little bit of what’s going on. She keeps her dress on. The sex they’re having is sensual, and it’s focused on her pleasure. Hopefully, that comes through. But there wasn’t a big conversation about the oral sex part, no.
You can also tell that Solene already feels very sexy, just walking into that hotel room.
I think Solene is sexually active [before Hayes]. There’s actually a scene in the movie that ended up not being in the final film [about that]. It was important that it’s not like, “Solene is being sexually reawakened by Hayes.” There is an element of that, I shouldn’t say that it’s not that at all, but [you should have a sense] that Solene could get a guy. Stating the obvious, if Solene wants to get laid, she can get laid any time she wants by a good-looking guy. That’s not her problem.
She lives in LA, she’s probably part of a cool group, she could go on Tinder or whatever. We don’t see this, but I think that there’s a hot guy who makes sculpture out of scrap metal that she knows in the art scene. He looks like Walton Goggins. He’s super into her. He surfs at 5:00 in the morning. He’s one of those guys. He’s got a great body, and he dresses super-cool and he’s got a motorcycle or whatever, and they have sex and it’s fine. It’s fine.
So it’s not about that she hasn’t had sex in years or something like that. We’re not meeting a character who that’s what’s going to fulfill her. That’s not what’s going to make her a happy person, to find a relationship. It just is something that comes into her life, and she chooses it because it feels right. She’s choosing to let her sexuality come out because she’s met someone who turns her on.
And they have good sex because they also like each other.
Exactly. And they’re having fun.
It’s funny, in the scenes in which you’re showing all the headlines when the news is coming out about their relationship, and everyone’s just like, “Why her?” In the theater, I was like, “Look at her!” But that’s exactly what would happen [in real life], we all know that even though she’s this gorgeous, wonderful, experienced woman.
And it’s Anne Hathaway! I get that people say, Hayes Campbell meets this sort of nobody from Silver Lake, but in parentheses [it’s also] “(Who happens to look like Anne Hathaway).” But that’s movies. That’s Hollywood movies. That’s the fun of it.
In the scene in which Solene is finally reading all the headlines about her and Hayes, she has this incredible reaction, where she slams the laptop shut and she screams. It reminded me so much of that scene in “Pretty Woman,” where Richard Gere claps the jewelry box on Julia Roberts’ hand, and she has this same reaction. That’s beautiful, perfect rom-com stuff. Was that something that you were thinking of? Was that intentional?
No, it was just a great moment, just a perfect moment. We tried the scene a couple of different ways. We tried one where she just screams and closes it. Because the scream is so perfect, I can’t even remember what else we had, but we had some different versions of what her reaction was. But no, that was just a great take.
The response to the film has been very strong. At SXSW, people really loved it, men and women, which you don’t generally expect with this sort of film. What was that experience like?
I mean, it’s amazing, obviously. Reviews are very hard for me. I wish I didn’t care as much as I do about it. So to get positive reviews is just a relief as much as it is just a feeling of like, thank God. You work really hard, you give your heart and soul to the work that you do, truly.
When you put it out into the world, you think you know what it is, we’ve screened the movie, we’ve done the test screenings. I think I’m my own worst critic, and so I feel like [if] I think it’s a good movie, then I think we’ve done the work. I’ve absolutely many times had contradictory reaction at the level of reviews, and that’s really knocks you back a little bit, so it’s gratifying to feel like other people are seeing what you’re seeing or what you saw or what you felt.
And it’s exhilarating! We were all just sort of floating on air for a while after that screening. But we also know there’s many more are hurdles in front of us in terms of the amount of stages that exists for a movie to really break out into a place where it takes on a life of its own, and people are watching it and talking about it and recommending it.
I’m OK that I know this is a movie that people will have strong feelings about one way or another, and that’s part of it. That’s good. But it was amazing. It was an amazing feeling, and it’s amazing to share the movie with people and hopefully have them love it as much as I do.
“The Idea of You” will start streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday, May 2.
