Nicholas Galitzine On Anne Hathaway Sex Scene

I don’t think I’ve been as excited for a movie as I have been for The Idea of You in forever. The cast is stellar, with Red, White & Royal Blue’s Nicholas Galitzine entangled in a forbidden romance with icon Anne Hathaway. To overcome any awkwardness during their steamy scenes, the pair quickly became friends before even stepping on set. 

“We sent a lot of voice messages to each other before we started, and so by the time we got to day one, we were already kind of becoming friends,” Nicholas told PEDESTRIAN.TV.

“That took a lot of the fear out of it. I think when someone is as open as Annie is, they really just calm you and make you feel very grounded, which I appreciated.”

At its core, the film is an age-gap romance, but it has flipped the script. Anne plays Solène, a mother-of-one who has, *shock horror*, just turned 40. And her toyboy? None other than 24-year-old pop star Hayes Campbell, essentially the Harry Styles of the fictional boyband August Moon.

The film is rumoured to be based on horny One Direction fanfic, and there are a bunch of spicy scenes in the film. So how did the actors bring that sizzle to the screen?

Anne and Nicholas seem so natural in their scenes together, so it’s easy to think their relationship is genuine. Though Anne believes her co-star could “have chemistry with a lamp”, there’s something special about their pairing on screen.

“After meeting her at the chemistry test, I just really managed to get a sense of who she was as a person. And we have a sort of, I think, a real connection as people, and so I really was very excited to get started with her,” Nicholas said.

The actual chemistry test wasn’t awkward, but the actor admits they can be quite a “scary” part of the job. 

“You have to put your best foot forward and really sell yourself… they want you to do well, they want you to get the job. It was such a warm room with Annie, [director] Michael Showalter and [producer] Cathy Shulman,” he recalled.

“I always kind of said to Cathy, Michael and Annie, I was just so grateful that they really kind of cultivated a space that was conducive to be creative and fun.”

Is The Idea of You based on One Direction fan fiction?

The fictional boyband, August Moon, has definite similarities to One Direction. Harry Styles Hayes is a tattooed British singer who particularly likes to woo older ladies, and the producers even tapped One Direction songwriters Savan Kotecha and Carl Folk to write August Moon’s catchy songs.

The author of the book, Robinne Lee, previously told Vogue that she wrote the book after discovering videos of Harry Styles performing on YouTube, calling them “art”. Hayes Campbell was modelled after her “dream guy”, she said, “like Prince Harry meets Harry [Styles]”.

Scriptwriter Jennifer Westervelt wanted her characters to have some distance from One Direction, something that Nicholas reiterated during our chat. 

“We just really wanted to make sure that August Moon felt like its own thing, its own band, felt original and that Hayes feels like a really textured person… We always wanted him to feel like he could just exist within this music industry that we all love. That was really my focus,” he said.

Director Michael Showalter also allowed the actors to “create” their characters from “scratch”, so no, Nicholas’ version of Hayes Campbell has nothing to do with Harry Styles.  

“I really hope that people watch the movie and listen to the music and fall in love with all the other guys… and really start to love August Moon for itself, which was one of the great joys of doing this project,” he said.

There’s a great team behind this film, which is why I think it hit all the right notes. The intimate scenes aren’t too corny, but they’re imperfect enough to make them believable. I’ve seen it twice, and look, I’m likely going to give it another watch sooner rather than later. 

The Idea of You will be available to stream May 2 on Prime Video.