Let them eat cake: 20 fascinating facts about ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’

Unless you’ve been living under the straightest rock imaginable, you’ve surely heard of, read, watched, and rewatched Red, White & Royal Blue.

This fun romantic comedy—directed by Matthew López and based on the best-selling novel by Casey McQuiston—tells the story of Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar-Perez), the son of US President Ellen Claremont (Uma Thurman), who falls head over heels into a cake with Prince Henry of Wales (Nicholas Galitzine). While the two initially hate each other and are stuck in a hamfisted PR campaign to prove they are buds, they actually start to fall in love! 

It’s a pretty classic rom-com set-up, to be honest, but the queer angle made it feel fresh and new. And, sure, enough Red, White & Royal Blue became one of the most talked about films of 2023 (at least in our very gay circles).

We’ve compiled 20 fabulous facts about Red, White & Royal Blue—just be careful of the cake.

1. The book is a New York Times bestseller.

It spent more than 20 weeks on the list, and, according to NYT, was a “BookTok sensation.”

2. McQuiston was inspired to write the novel during the (ugh) 2016 election.

The author told The Nerd Daily: “RWRB started while I was following the 2016 presidential election and reading A Woman In Charge by Carl Bernstein and The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan at the same time. I was inspired to do something inside both of those high profile yet super secret worlds, and when I had the idea that I could make a member of the first family fall in love with a member of the royal family and explore both, I instantly knew this was a book I could do.”

3. McQuiston wanted to play with certain tropes.

“I knew from jump that the Prince Charming archetype was something I wanted to play with and subvert, and so that informed what the first kid in my book would be like,” McQuiston told The Nerd Daily.

4. They also have a cameo.

McQuiston appears briefly as President Claremont’s speechwriter. 

5. Matthew López considered making it a musical.

The filmmaker told The New York Times, “I read it and said, ‘Yeah, sure, maybe. But let’s talk about the movie.’ knew I wanted to be the person who made this film by, like, Page 50.”

6. The director identified with the character of Alex.

López had a Puerto Rican dad and a Polish-Russian mom and related to the character, who is also biracial and queer. “As a young Latiné queer man, I never read something that centered someone like Alex,” he told the NYT. “If I had been presented with this character when I was in my late teens, early 20s, it may have changed how I thought about myself.”

7. While it’s a faithful adaptation, the film has some notable changes from the novel…

In the book, Alex’s father, Oscar (Clifton Collins Jr.), is divorced from mom Ellen (Uma Thurman) and has his own family. In the film, they’re happily married.

8. …including fan fave June, Alex’s sister.

“This was probably the most controversial change,” López told Entertainment Weekly. “It was the possibility of having two young actors playing Nora [Alex’s best friend, played by Rachel Hilson] 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.”

9. Casting Alex and Henry took five months.

López told the Wrap, “It took that long. We saw literally hundreds and hundreds of actors, especially for Alex. And when I first encountered Taylor and when I first encountered Nick, they instantly popped for me. They captured my attention and they really made a very strong case for themselves as these roles.”

10. Galitzine didn’t read the novel before filming.

According to Teen Vogue, Galitzine treated the script as a “bible” and only read the novel after production wrapped.

11. Zakhar Perez hadn’t even heard of it…

“I hadn’t heard of the book or read the book before the audition came,” he told Newsweek. “I think a friend of mine auditioned or something, and he sent it to me. He’s like, ‘Hey, have you got this audition?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t know what that is.’ He’s like, ‘Well, here’s the book, I think they’re gonna start casting it.'”

12. …but read it as soon as he heard about the audition.

“I really didn’t have any idea that it was so popular until I started telling people that I might be going to England for a project, and everybody was freaking out. Even my publicist was like, ‘Oh, my God, I read that during COVID. It’s an amazing book.’ I really didn’t know the magnitude of it,” Zakhar Perez told Newsweek.

13. The infamous opening scene, in which Alex and Henry end up covered in cake, took three days to film.

“It was hundreds of extras, it was cake, it was a vision, it was choreography through space, and it was a lot of dialogue. That was three days of me, just gritting my teeth,” López told Collider.

14. Galitzine and Zakhar Perez hit it off…

“Taylor and I became mates immediately,” Galitzine told Out. 

15. …which helped with the steamy sex scene.

“When you’re friends with someone, it just makes the intimacy aspect of it all that much easier because you can trust in this person,” Galitzine shared with Out.

16. An intimacy coordinator helped with the scene.

Robbie Taylor Hunt is a theater director and intimacy coordinator from the UK who has also worked on the Netflix serial killer series You, the 2022 horror Pearl, and the upcoming drag queen revenge thriller Femme.

17. Taylor Hunt has a literal degree in intimacy coordination.

He wrote his master’s thesis on the depiction of queer sex on screen.

18. He wanted Red, White & Royal Blue’s sex scene to be authentic.

This included exploring the complexities of top and bottom roles. “We tried to think about the little moments of ongoing consent, and—you do catch it in the film—a little sense of checking in between them,” Taylor Hunt told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s not just us going about the physical choreography of where body parts go and where their arms are, or where they’re pressed together. There’s also those little moments of connection when they’re checking on each other.”

19. The use of a condom over PrEP was intentional.

López and Taylor Hunt felt that Henry, a high-profile royal, would not be able to privately obtain a prescription without it leaking to the tabloids, so the scene showed Alex using a condom.

20. There might be a sequel!

McQuiston told Out: “I mean, like, of course, I would love to. I don’t think I’m allowed to say anything more than that at this point.”

Related:

Matthew López on ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’s’ R-rated sex scenes and nailing the “moment of insertion”

“There’s nothing that I could show you that you can’t see on PornHub or OnlyFans,” says the ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ filmmaker.