'Red, White & Royal Blue' is a modern-day fairy tale — with a queer ...

When he was working out how to shoot those pivotal moments in the development of Alex and Henry’s relationship, such as the first time they have sex in Paris, “it was very important to me that we literally never lose sight of their faces,” López explained. The actors never shot a version of that scene “where it was just a wide shot with their bodies in the bed, because we all know exactly what’s happening. What we don’t know yet is how they’re feeling about what’s happening, so that was a decision that I made to be really tight on their faces while also giving the audience a sense of where their bodies are in relation to each other.”

López said his favorite scenes — both to shoot and to watch — depict Alex and Henry opening up to each other about their backgrounds and upbringings and realizing they share more in common than they once thought. For instance, there’s a scene in which Alex and Henry, wearing nothing but bathrobes, are eating chocolate mousse while Alex asks if Henry has ever tried to cook for himself or use the gay dating app Grindr. (“Once, unsuccessfully” is Henry’s answer to both questions.)

There’s another scene in Alex’s bedroom after they hook up for the first time, in which Alex reveals he is bisexual and Henry says he is “as gay as a maypole.”

“When we were editing it, I was getting notes: ‘Can we pare it down? Can we trim it? Can it be faster?’ I tested shorter versions of that scene for audiences,” López revealed, “and I kept getting the same note back from the audiences: ‘We just want more of Alex and Henry talking to each other.’ And I was like, ‘I knew it!’ So I went back to my producers and the studio: ‘Respectfully, I’m no longer taking these notes. If it’s Alex and Henry together onscreen, it makes us happy.’ That is the full unedited scene without any trims — it’s exactly the scene we shot.”

Since the full ensemble cast was announced in June 2022, there has been social media chatter about López’s creative decisions that deviate from McQuiston’s novel: Alex’s parents, Ellen and Oscar (Clifton Collins Jr.), are still married instead of divorced; Alex’s sister, June, and family friend, Rafael Luna, who plays a senator, have been scrapped; Henry’s mother doesn’t appear; and Alex reveals that he once hooked up with Miguel Ramos (Juan Castano), a White House reporter for Politico.

Some of those changes were personal: “As a Latino filmmaker, it was important to me to show to a broader audience a Latino who is still with his family,” López said. “I made [Alex] an immigrant because in the book, he’s second generation. I was like, ‘I want a man born in Mexico who is still with his family.’”

It was never easy to cut existing characters or leave scenes on the cutting room floor, “but it was very clear what belonged in the film and what didn’t,” added López, who reiterated that, because a movie is meant to be watched in one sitting, he had significantly less real estate to work with than McQuiston’s book.

“What belonged in the film was anything that helped us understand these two young men’s hearts, fears, desires and love for one another," López said. "I wanted audiences at the end of the film to feel exactly how they felt at the end of the book, and if I could achieve that, then I knew that I would have succeeded in adapting this novel.”

Although one may interpret “Red, White & Royal Blue” as a kind of antidote to the darker queer narratives in today’s media landscape, López doesn’t “in any way intend” for the film to be “a rejection of anything that’s come before” him.

“We have moved past the need to only examine our traumas and our tragedies," he said. "It doesn’t mean we should ignore them, that we’re done with them, that we should put them away, but we all know we are more than just one thing."

Just as heterosexual-centered movies run the gamut "from tragedy to farce, to romance, to war, to espionage, to space," López said, queer storytelling should be able to do the same.

"There are queer astronauts, there are queer spies, there are queer cowboys — you name it, we are there," he said. "I want people to start thinking about queer storytelling as being able to do anything that straight storytelling has done in the past.”

As for the potential of a “Red, White & Royal Blue” sequel, the writer-director said, with a glint in his eye, “If Casey wants to do it, if Taylor and Nick want to do it, then why not?”