‘The Idea of You’ Creator Calls Harry Styles Comparisons ‘Reductive’

Welcome to modern rom-com week at The Daily Beast’s Obsessed! In honor of two big romance releases this week—The Fall Guy and The Idea of You—we’re celebrating everything we love about the last 15 years of romantic comedies.

When Prime Video unveiled the first stills from its adaptation of The Idea of You, every One Direction fan came out of the woodwork to gossip about it. One could say they were up all night making conspiracy theories about the movie’s plot, as they claimed it was about all the midnight memories Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde shared.

It’s no secret that Robinne Lee’s 2017 novel is partially inspired by Styles’ career with his (now broken-up) British boy band One Direction. Director Michael Showalter’s new movie, however, is a completely different case. Although the story follows a pop star in love with an older mother—and first-look images make stars Nicholas Galitzine and Anne Hathaway look eerily similar to Styles and Wilde during their two-year love affair—Lee says that, although fans have speculated the new movie is partially based on Wilde and Styles, there’s still no connection between that specific relationship and the story.

“People took this idea and ran with it—it feels a little reductive of what was written,” Lee tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed over Zoom in a recent interview. “I feel awkward for them. I don’t know if they’re aware of it. It was obviously not written about them or with them in mind.”

The Idea of You follows Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine)—who Lee says is inspired by Styles, but also other British blokes like Prince Harry and Hugh Grant—the frontman of August Moon, a popular boy band headlining Coachella. There, he meets Solène (Anne Hathaway), a gorgeous 40-year-old mother. The two have instant chemistry, impeccably played by Galitzine and Hathaway, and begin a whirlwind romance across several continents, receiving plenty of pushback from the general public.

So, yes, one might see how the general public would draw a line to Wilde (a 40-year-old mother) and Styles’ (a former boybander) whirlwind, somewhat-maligned relationship. Still, Lee says, this is different: “There were a lot of weird Harry Styles coincidences,” she says.

Below, Lee unpacks the book’s controversial ending, the Styles connection, and the possibility of a sequel. (Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Idea of You.)

What was your initial reaction when you heard the original August Moon songs?

It’s so funny, because, with the exception of the trailer, I hadn’t heard them all until I saw the movie. I was pleasantly surprised. I really, really like them. They did an incredible job. [August Moon] feels very much like a [real] boy band, but also their own boy band that’s a little more sophisticated than I would’ve expected. [I heard the songs] at the same time as I was seeing the movie, so everything was happening at once. I do remember nudging my husband, like, “I really like this song.” I really love “Closer.”

When did you see the movie for the first time?

About a month ago. I didn’t want to see it for a while. I’ve been working on this [new] novel for about five years, and so many things have pulled me out of this headspace. I’ve had so many distractions. When I was finally coming to finish [the new book], I was like, “I don’t want to go back and think about those characters right now. I need to focus on the characters that I’m working with.” It wasn’t until I finished that and sent in the first draft to my agent that I was like, “OK, I can see the movie now. I can take some time away from that world to come back into The Idea of You world.”

There are some pretty significant changes to the movie version of The Idea of You. For starters: Why is Isabelle (Ella Rubin), Solène’s daughter, 16 years old instead of 12, like she was in the book? It makes a big difference, in that she’s older and cares less about August Moon.

I didn’t have anything to do with the production, but I believe some of [the filmmakers’] reasoning is that having a younger daughter would alienate moms. It would make Solène less appealing or attractive as a character, because she would have—not neglected her daughter, but they felt that it would be less jarring if Isabelle was older and had her own life and was not obsessed. Solène wasn’t breaking Isabelle’s heart as much as the book.

I also want to talk about the ending. It’s totally different from the book, which sees Solène and Hayes separated. Why does the movie have a happy ending?

I wrote a French book. I’m a huge Francophile. I wrote [Solène] as a French woman. I wanted it to feel like a French film. If you know anything about French films, they can be dark. They’re very emotional. You might leave the theater being like, “OK, what just happened, exactly? How? Why?” That stuff is appealing to me. I don’t need everything to be tied up in a pretty pink bow. But it’s an American production, so they put an American ending on it—that Hollywood happily ever after, there’s hope! I don’t think that there’s not hope at the end of the book, but I definitely wanted to leave it ambiguous.

I hate to break it to you, but most of the book’s fans really loathe the ending.

But that’s why people are still talking about the book! It’s not a romance, it’s a love story. If I’d have given it a happy ending, it would’ve been more like a romance, and then it would not have stood out as much. People wouldn’t be arguing amongst themselves about whether that was the right way to end it, and whether what she did was selfless or selfish. I’m drawn to things that make me think and ponder and make me mull it over and then discuss with my friends. That’s what I was going for with this.

All things considered, do you like how the movie changed the ending?

It’s a completely different beast. The movie and the book are two different lives and two different existences. I can’t compare the two because I will drive myself crazy. “Why’s this like this?” I have to be like, “That’s a separate thing. It’s for a different medium.” You’re trying to attract a viewer and keep a viewer in his or her seat for 90 minutes. It’s a different thing than a book that someone’s going to close and put down and then come back to. It’s a different experience as one consumes it.

When you make an adaptation, changes have to be made to make it work for the screen. I have to let go of what my book is and what my idea for the story is and look at that as its own entity. Does it work? As a story, it absolutely works. Are the actors wonderful? Yes. Do you believe their chemistry and their relationship? Yes. That’s all a win.

Was there a scene in the movie that made you think, as you were watching it, “Oh my goodness, this is exactly like the book”?

The scene where [Solène] goes to pick up Isabelle from school. Isabelle gets in the car and tells her, “Just drive.” Then, [her classmate] says, “Tell your mom I turn 18 next week!” That was very similar to how I imagined it. It’s very weird to see something that you’ve written, it’s so clear in your head and then it’s like, “Oh, OK! Different car, different school, no uniform, but OK! Similar enough.”

On the flip side, were there any scenes you were particularly excited to see on the big screen that didn’t make the cut?

There were quite a few that I’d love to have seen in there and that fans would’ve loved to have seen. My readers often talk about the dining table scene. That did not make it into the movie. But as my friend told me, that would’ve been like a French film. America is maybe not ready for…[laughs] that. Or the long list of NC-17 [scenes].

There’s a scene in Miami when Hayes and Solène are fighting in the book. They keep bumping into ex-girlfriends and it throws her, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She wants out of the relationship and Hayes is like, “What are you doing?” The banter, the dialogue—I always felt like it read so well for film. To me, that’s the audition scene. Any guy who can pull this off and have those layers wins the role.

When the first images from The Idea of You movie came out, social media users compared Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine to Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde. What do you think of that comparison?

I have so many feelings about the whole thing. I have no idea why it started, but now I spend all my days trying to nip it in the bud. It’s exhausting. I did enough research of what a 20-year-old guy would be like in a boy band, a celebrity that age with that much money, what his life might be like—and I think I hit a nerve. I got it right. It was like I was predicting the future. Particularly with Harry Styles. I would write something, and then he’d go and live it out. Like, dude, you’re ruining my book! Maybe not the thing on the boat, could that have waited?

But maybe there’s only so many places guys in boy bands hook up with a girl and get papped. It was a very weird coincidence. A perfect example—[I mentioned] the dining table scene. I wrote that in 2015, and his first album came out in 2017 and he had that song, “From the Dining Table.” I had a ton of readers like, “Oh my God! Did you see this? Did he read the book?” Like, no! He hasn’t read the book.

In other interviews, you’ve described Hayes as a combination of dreamy guys like Harry Styles, Prince Harry—

Yes! He’s just a posh guy. To me, that’s what I find appealing. There’s an appeal to boy banders, for sure, but I love that English schoolboy. I’m a Francophile and an Anglophile—I love that posh British existence. Prince Harry, Prince William when he was a little younger. Jude Law in various movies, Hugh Grant. There were a couple of Eton boys in my college and it was like, “Oh my God.” They were like wild animals in a zoo.

You’ve talked about the potential for an Idea of You sequel. Is that still on the table?

I really don’t know. I need to get this next book done and out into the world, and then I can think about what this next project is going to be. Have I started writing? I have been for years now. Since The Idea of You, [I’ve had] another document, like, “This could be in there if I had a sequel.” I’ll add to it every so often when something comes to mind. I haven’t sat down and written an outline, like, “OK, I’m going to write a sequel.” Some day, that might happen.

But I always said that I don’t want to write another book just to give them a happy ending. I want it to have something to say. With The Idea of You, I had something very specific that I wanted to say. If there’s something specific that can only be told through Solène and Hayes Part 2, then I will do it.