“People Want to See People Kiss”: The Love Hypothesis Team on Bringing the Grown-Up Rom-Com Back

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The Love Hypothesis has its origins in the world of Star Wars fan fiction, but in execution, director Claire Scanlon tried to hearken back to something older: classic Hollywood. Having not previously read Ali Hazelwood's popular book the film is based on, Scanlon drew inspiration from the likes of Bringing Up Baby (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940). "Those are my touchstones, and those are the movies that I encourage people to watch before working with them," Scanlon tells The Film Maven. "And a lot of times they haven't seen them, so it's like a discovery, which is great. I want more people to know those films."

There is a similar acerbic boy meets daffy girl with this adaptation of Hazelwood's book. Lili Reinhart plays Olive Smith, a grad student in the science field struggling to get her work recognized. An impulsive kiss with Dr. Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman) leads to the two pretending they're in a relationship for various reasons.

Scanlon's cast also looked to movies of the past, albeit more contemporary for inspiration. Cast member Nicholas Duvernay looked to Will Smith's rom-com era, specifically Hitch, while Rachel Marsh looked to movies with "strong best friend characters" for her role as Anh and utilized the likes of 13 Going on 30 and Crazy Rich Asians.

Crafting a good romantic comedy is an art form, one that many feel we've lost since the world of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. But Scanlon has certainly dipped her feet into the format before, having made 2018 romantic comedy Set It Up for Netflix, and it was that film that not only helped her grow on this project but also found her a few cast members. "The director of photography [Matthew Clark] is amazing, and I learned to bring him onto this. Jaboukie [Young-White], who got his SAG card as an assistant in Set It Up, is now a main character in this. That was wonderful to come full circle," Scanlon said.

"She's so fun to work with," Young-White said. "She lets you play and improvise. You can also trust her because she has so much comedy experience. You can trust her to know what works and what doesn't work, and just creates a great on-set environment. It's so clear that she sincerely loves rom-coms and just wants to make a good rom-com for rom-com lovers."

That ability to understand the line between adaptation and translation is something Duvernay appreciated about working with her. "She's so clear coded," he said. "I really loved her [sense of] play, but also her experience as an editor. She's directing for the edit that she knows. She's already seen the movie, and she's just kind of pinpointing little pieces that she knows is going to come together in the end."

What makes a good rom-com is also physical attraction, which seems to be a problem in an era where Gen Zers aren't really down for sex scenes. But with a book that has a pretty powerful (and hot) love scene between its lead, Scanlon and crew knew it'd be impossible not to have physical intimacy in the movie. "I have very strong feelings that people want to see people kiss in movies," said Elizabeth Cantillon, the film's producer. "I would spend a lot of time thinking like, who kisses in movies still? Oh, I guess Ryan Gosling still kisses. But I think we used to make a lot of movies where grownups kissed and so the idea that we could make one that was about grownups kissing was very appealing to me."

"What we need is representation of everything that we do in our daily lives," says Scanlon. "And as much as Gen Z says they're not having sex, they are having sex. There's a reason why Chapter 16 resonated with fans of the book. There's whole websites dedicated to Chapter 16. People are nuts on TikTok for chapter 16. I don't even think there was any question of whether or not we would do a proper version of the book." That being said, the book's original love scene is a chapter and a half, which Scanlon admits wasn't going to happen, but great care was taken to pay homage to what the scene was in Hazelwood's novel.

For Scanlon and Cantillon, the hope was to find actors who could similarly evoke the Old Hollywood/classic rom-com spirit they were looking for. "Lili definitely came on way before," Scanlon said. "She did chemistry reads and we cast a wide net. She was a trooper, man. We did it all on Zoom. She was working on a movie here in New York and she just did it on her free time. It was great to find who she clicked with, and there was undeniable chemistry with Tom Bateman. It didn't hurt that he actually embodied the character. He really looked like the descriptions that Ali Hazelwood described in the book."

Cantillon jumps in and mentions that Bateman, in a way, is akin to classic film star Joel McCrea. If there's a world where grown-ups kiss, the allure was finding a leading man who looked like a man. "Joel Mccrae was a big, tall man, right?" she said. "And Tom Bateman is a big, tall man. He's not a boy man. He's not a Peter Pan. He's an actual grown up man who's a high achiever, and he's got some issues because who doesn't? But he's not a kid."

"Tom Bateman and Cary Grant have some things in common because he's actually very physical," Scanlon said. "People forget how physical Archie Leach was. He was in the circus and Bringing Up Baby. He's just very, very comfortable in his own skin, as was Tom Bateman. So, if they like Tom Bateman, I'd say go watch some Cary Grant!"

Watch The Love Hypothesis on Prime Video now.

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