The Love Hypothesis Director Claire Scanlon On Adapting A Beloved Book and The Rom-Com Renaissance!
“I definitely feel like we're in the midst of a rom-com renaissance.” Director Claire Scanlon brought us Set It Up, The People We Hate At The Wedding, and now The Love Hypothesis. Based on Ali Hazelwood’s bestselling novel, the new Prime Video film follows two scientists who enter a fake-dating arrangement that may become something much more real. In a conversation with Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado, Scanlon and producer Elizabeth Cantillon opened up about bringing the beloved romance to the screen, finding the right chemistry between Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman, and the film’s Star Wars connections.
Rom-coms are back and there’s a major reason why. “Romantic comedies seem to be what people want to watch, which is great because I think we need a break from what's going on in the news headlines,” said Scanlon. “Everyone needs to remind themselves of like what's really important and how we're all human.”
Scanlon feels romance screenwriters are “the ones that are bringing their A-game.” “Frankly I would say the best scripts I'm getting right now are romantic comedies and it's just as simple as that,” she said. “I love comedy. I love hard comedy. But the ones that I keep reading that really resonate and that I want to see as a viewer are romantic comedies. You have to live with a movie for a year. You got to really love it in order to say yes to doing it.”
Led by Reinhart and Bateman, Cantillon was particularly impressed by how willing the duo were to play. “Well, geez, they brought everything, right? [Tom] came knowing what movie he was in. He brought that character to life and was so fun and came to play, right?” she shared. “He's such a proper actor. He's British, obviously. He's just got a lot of dignity, but he was willing to be loose and made fun of. He was game for all of it.”
“Lili, she showed up with a lot more comedy than I had expected from her. The sunscreen scene is so funny. She just showed up and was ready to go for it,” continued Cantillon. “The script was really good and I think that the book is really good. Then Claire gave them a lot of space to feel safe and get to explore dimensions of their acting and the characters that they maybe wouldn't have in a different situation.”
It was definitely intimidating to adapt such a popular book. “There's a lot of pressure to get it right when you know that the book is so beloved and you have this great fan base,” said Scanlon. “When we did our one and only preview, we made sure that 40% of the audience were book fans just to make sure. We were ready to get eviscerated and then they all really liked it.”
But perhaps the most daunting task was bringing Chapter 16 to the screen. “Bringing that one to the forefront was intimidating and daunting, but I think we did a good job. It's never going to be exactly what people's imaginations are and you can't do that, so I always just try to think of what would I want to see,” Scanlon shared. The filmmakers got insight from Reinhart and Bateman and even had an intimacy coordinator on set.
Scanlon called the whole hotel room sequence “very beautiful” and one of the things that stood out to her was the location. “It's not a sound stage with the fake LED screen outside. That's real traffic. We had to have someone down on the street making sure there were no looky loos looking up through the window. And there weren't, it was like two in the morning, and no one could care less what was going on,” she said about filming in the hotel. “It was so beautiful just seeing the lights in the background. I was always like, ‘More shots in front of the window, kiss in front of the window.’ It was so pretty with those lights. Those are things that we had planned on, but in actual execution, it turned out even better.”
Originally a Reylo fan fiction that became the fake dating story of Olive and Adam, it was only fitting that the film ended up with several Star Wars Easter eggs. “Lili read with a number of actors, right? And Tom won the part because Tom was fantastic and Tom looks like Tom,” said Cantillon. “Then it was just […] a little spice that he was Daisy Ridley's husband.”
There’s even musical connections. “There's a song that fits really nicely at the opening of the film by Gracie Abrams and it just so happens that her father [JJ Abrams] might be the person who did Star Wars and created the whole ship in the first place,” laughed Scanlon. “Same with the homage to John Williams when [Tom] walks into the coffee shop. Laura Karpman did a great nod to him. So there's a couple of those moments that we definitely weren't going to shy away from it and pretend that it wasn't there. Lean in a little bit, but not too much. […] If you know, you know, but it doesn't matter if you don't.”
Scanlon is also thrilled to see more women making waves in comedy. “I have to say it was really interesting seeing Katie Dippold win [the Emmy] for Widow’s Bay. That was fun because that is an out there show. That is a weird show and she's a kooky, fun showrunner, clearly. I love her casting choices and I was really pleased with that,” she enthused. “I think we need more of that please, so I'm always excited when there's female showrunners. There are a lot of great roles you see for women over 45 which is awesome.”
“In the comedy space, I do feel like there was one point in time where Amy Poehler and Tina Fey would always make jokes about ‘women aren't funny’ because people would always say women can't be funny,” Scanlon said. “I think that I haven't heard that in a long time, which makes me happy. I think there's enough room for everybody at the table of comedy.”
See Olive and Adam’s love story unfold in The Love Hypothesis streaming on Prime Video.
