Sarah Schechter interview: ‘Red, White and Royal Blue’ producer

Directed and co-written by Matthew Lopez – the first Latino writer to win a Tony Award for Best Play for “The Inheritance” – “Red, White and Royal Blue” is an Amazon Studios film that received a PGA Award nomination for which its producer, Sarah Schechter, is greatly appreciative. It tells the story of a burgeoning love affair between Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez) – whose mother is President of the United States – and Prince Henry of the Great Britain (Nicholas Galitzine). It’s based on the book of the same name by Casey McQuiston that became a New York Times Bestseller. “A lot of people were interested in the book,” Schechter says. “Some people really admired it, but were scared of it. It was clearly R-rated, but we chased it hard and Amazon, from the moment we brought it to them, were in unequivocally.” Schechter spoke to Gold Derby as part of our PGA Awards “Meet the Nominees” producers roundtable. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Indeed, Schechter praises Amazon for not only jumping onboard enthusiastically – the second queer love story it has done with Schechter and production partner Greg Berlanti – but for the manner in which the studio supported the film. “The thing that they should really be truly applauded for is that they did not ever treat this film like a queer rom-com,” she maintains. “They treated it like a mainstream romantic comedy, which it is. And luckily the book was a very big success and had a lot of fans, but even luckier for us, some of the first fans were folks at Amazon…I was an executive at Warner Bros, for almost 10 years, and 15, 20 years ago, this movie never would have been made by a major studio.”

The book had in fact not yet been published when Berlanti-Schechter Films and Amazon committed. “When we started the process, it was hard to find a romantic comedy where the obstacles felt legitimate,” she observes. “A lot of times it’s like, ‘I lost your phone number.’ But it’s like, well, now we have the internet. You can find anybody. You have to find real reasons why people can’t be together, and this felt like it had the kind of scale and that kind of drama to it.” When first-time director Lopez joined on, it was driven by the fact he was a fan of the book and reached out in case there were an opportunity for him to work on an adaptation. (Berlanti had also been involved in Lopez’s play The Inheritance.”) “Says Schechter: “Matthew is a very successful playwright, but it was about finding his voice as a filmmaker and helping to surround him with people who could help him with his vision.”

Schechter fully believes that queer love stories like that depicted  in “Red, White and Royal Blue” are hardly outliers in our society. “I don’t think anyone experiences them as an anomaly,” she says. “I think it’s very rare for anyone to live their life and not know someone who is queer, who does not have a child or a cousin or a brother or a parent. It’s not about inventing representation. It’s about reflecting the world that we actually live in. And I think that’s what the film does…This is a really commercial piece that’s meant to reach a lot of people, so a lot of people can feel seen and see a reflection of themselves.”

This is also why Schechter sees it as important to (author) McQuiston that the character of Alex in the st9ry is bisexual, “so it was an important part of our adaptation to represent that,” she says. “But I think all of these really specific experiences, if you’re talking about the emotions underneath them, they’re universal, and that’s the power of cinema, right? Television can connect you to characters who are living different lives than you are but are experiencing (similar emotions).”

It was additionally a coup to cast Uma Thurman as the U.S. President. “I’m a very big fan of her work with Tarantino, so it was really a pleasure, and working with her was great and she wanted to do a great job. I think it’s also really important that we applaud the people that contribute to movies like this, whether or not they actually belong to these communities themselves. I think that’s what real allyship is.”

“Red, White & Royal Blue” streams over Amazon Prime Video.

Leave a Reply

 
UPLOADED Jul 17, 2024 10:08 am