There’s nothing about Red, White & Royal Blue—a movie about the president’s son falling for the Prince of England—that particularly rings of realism. From the film’s glaring green-screen work to the American public unanimously supporting the First Son’s journey out of the closet, this is a work of pure fantasy. Well, that may not necessarily be true; it does track that the pouty-lipped and arrogant Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine) would be a bossy bottom. But beyond nailing down favorite sex positions, Red, White & Royal Blue is about as uncanny as they come.
The film’s most eerily unnatural aspects come courtesy of those on the American side of the pond, where President Ellen Claremont (Uma Thurman) and her son, Alex (Taylor Zakhar Perez), are trying to navigate the implications of their political dynasty mingling with the British monarchy. The concern is not because Alex is bisexual, but because the president would prefer not to be fraternizing with the Brits beyond their impending trade deal. After all, she wouldn’t want to alienate her Southern constituency. President Claremont hails from Texas, a plot point that you will never forget, because it is repeated 100 times—as all the most refined scripts make a point to do! But perhaps that repetition is a good thing, since you wouldn’t exactly be able to pinpoint her origins from Thurman’s strange accent alone.
President Claremont’s suspicious accent is just one of the many peculiar things about Thurman’s character, who is saddled with—or, depending on who you ask, gifted—some of the film’s wildest lines. The president seems as keen on getting her son’s dick wet as she is winning reelection, and she treats both things with a puzzlingly grave, equal importance. Maybe she’s the mom of the year, or perhaps she’s just some idealistic vision of American political progression. Either way, this mystifying character isn’t standing in the way of Thurman having a ball.
Thurman’s casting was one of the main things that interested me about Red, White, & Royal Blue before watching. Yet I had forgotten she was even in the film until President Claremont appeared onscreen, swinging around in a furor to scold her closeted son. It only takes about eight minutes for Thurman to pop up, but those eight minutes can feel like a lifetime when your brain has to sort through all of the character exposition that this film ladles out like a heaping helping of lunch-lady slop. All that background information—communicated through newsreels instead of actual character development—is supposed to make audiences invested when apparent rivals Alex and Prince Henry get into a public incident involving a buttercream cake at the top of the film.
“Darlin’, you’ve done some pretty stupid things in your day,” President Claremont says with her Southern lilt, making me wonder if there was ever a similar Oval Office conversation between George W. Bush and the Bush twins back in the day. Ellen thinks that her son’s mischievousness will deter the trade between the Americans and the Brits that she’s worked so tirelessly to establish. To gauge the level of that effort, she tells Alex, “I had a higher approval rating than the prime minister—hell, I was outpollin’ the Spice Girls!” Considering the Spice Girls haven’t released music in two decades, I’m not entirely sure that’s a big accomplishment, but Thurman delivers the line as if 2003 were last year.
Coincidentally, that was the same year Thurman’s most notable film, Kill Bill Vol. 1, premiered. The Kill Bill movies were the one-two punch that proved Thurman’s legitimate prowess to audiences around the world, after a string of peaks and valleys in her filmography—from the high of Pulp Fiction to the heavily panned low of Batman and Robin—failed to generate a consistent public opinion on Thurman as a movie star. And though several harrowing incidents may have impeded her post-Kill Bill career to some degree, Thurman is still undoubtedly the most capable actor on set in Red, White & Royal Blue—even with only a handful of scenes and that questionable accent.
In fact, Thurman is the only person in Red, White & Royal Blue competent enough to sell the film’s terribly unnecessary political side plot, which stretches the runtime of this glorified Hallmark movie just past the two-hour mark. (For reference, even Kill Bill Vol. 1 is 10 minutes shorter.) President Claremont is trying to keep her reelection campaign afloat, but Alex hampers things when his wide-eyed hopefulness gets the better of him in front of prying journalists. “I had 150,000 constituents,” Ellen tells Alex. “Now, I have 330 million!” Thurman rants with all the confidence of someone going for broke on a Broadway stage, which is fitting, because her voice is an amalgam of Sienna Miller in the London stage production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Cate Blanchett in The Missing. If anything, I respect Thurman’s commitment to sounding like a non-American actress doing a Southern twang when she hails from Massachusetts herself.
Things get really strange—and utterly riotous—when Alex comes out to his mother. Upon hearing that her son’s relationship with Prince Henry has gone from buttercream to butt cream, Ellen’s jaw stays agape in a half-smile for a record nine seconds. It’s the look of a mom who has always wanted a queer son and is trying not to grin with unbridled joy. She picks up her Oval Office desk phone, puts it to her ear (without pressing any buttons to call out), and says into the receiver, “We’re gonna need some pizza.” I’d call it the line reading of the year if Thurman wasn’t about to top herself several more times in the next five minutes.
Cut to Ellen and Alex sprawled out together on a couch, just a mother hugging her 31-year-old son who is supposed to vaguely act like he’s in his early twenties. “So, are ya gay, bi, fluid, pan, queer?” she asks, with “queer” sounding more like “qweh.” When Alex confirms that he’s gay, Ellen follows it up with more language from an ally’s introduction pamphlet. “The B in LGBTQ is not a silent letter.”
Then, Thurman’s eyes go somewhere else, sinking into some forgotten memory of the past. “You need to figure out if you feel ‘forever’ about him before you take this any further,” she says. It’s a completely conventional line, but Thurma delivers it with an almost shocking gravity. All jokes aside, it reminded me of Thurman’s stirring, thoughtful response when asked about Harvey Weinstein’s abhorrent crimes back in 2017. One of my favorite things about Thurman as a performer is not just her delivery, but also her ability to use her prominent features to convey a wide scope of emotion. And in this scene between mother and son, it’s as if she’s briefly glimpsing the hard road before him, before her wide eyes soften. It’s one of Red, White, & Royal Blue’s few genuinely affecting moments, so no surprise that it was the result of Thurman’s immense talent.
All that passion fizzles just a moment later, when the film returns to its silly little jokes. “I just want to make sure you know you need to wear a condom if you’re having anal intercourse!” Ellen says. “And… we can talk about gettin’ you on Truu-vah-duh,” she continues. (For the uninitiated, Truvada is the prophylactic used to prevent the spread of HIV.) It’s a pretty unrealistic depiction of coming out, but Red, White, & Royal Blue is like a Jackson Pollock painting of the unusual and surreal.
A president as stoic as Thurman’s being beloved enough to flip Texas blue already seems like a faraway dream, given that the state hasn’t swung Democratic in a national election since 1976. Throw in a bisexual son who is in a public relationship with the Prince of England, and that ambition seems even less attainable than Thurman employing the correct Southern dialect. But as much as I can fault Red, White & Royal Blue for being unrealistic, poorly written, and often straight-up dull, I can’t besmirch its willingness to hope. I too yearn for a day when things are less divided and coming out isn’t an invitation for adversity. Maybe someday we will have a President Claremont of our own, God willing. At least then, Truvada would be free.
