‘Idea of You’ producer on Nicholas Galitzine’s three-week boy band boot camp
Nicholas “Nick” Galitzine (center) with other “members” of August Moon (from left): Jaiden Anthony, Dakota Adan, Raymond Cham and Vik White —GREGG DEGUIRE/JANUARY IMAGES
Nicholas “Nick” Galitzine is a red-hot commodity these days. Weeks after “The Idea of You” broke Prime Video’s record for a rom-com, hauling in more than 50 million views in just two weeks, our social media feeds continue to be inundated with stories about the 29-year-old heartthrob—from being chased by 100 schoolgirls in Greece and getting a go signal for the sequel to “Red, White & Royal Blue,” to the launch of Nick’s official first single “Comfort” on June 24.
They have even released a music video for “Guard Down” (5.6 million streams on Spotify), one of the songs recorded by August Moon, the fictional boy band his star-crossed character belongs to, in the film. Other than Nicholas, the quintet was also made up of Jaiden Anthony, Dakota Adan, Raymond Cham and Vik White.
Nick has swept his lovesick fans’ off their feet, especially after he demonstrated what appeared to be his triple-threat skills in his role as the world’s hottest pop star. In the romantic movie, 24-year-old Hayes Campbell (Nicholas) falls in love with 40-year-old single mother Solene Marchand, played by Anne Hathaway.
‘Nondancer’ Nick
But do you know that Nicholas wasn’t really much into dancing before he was cast in “The Idea of You”? This was revealed to Inquirer Entertainment in a one-on-one chat with the film’s Oscar-winning producer Cathy Schulman (“Crash,” “The Woman King”).
When we asked Cathy how long it took Nicholas to study all the singing and dancing he had to do in the film, she disclosed, “Surprisingly, not very long. Nick already came with a trained voice, but the boy band had a boot camp for about three weeks before we started shooting. And that’s as much time as they had to learn how to connect to one another and figure out their literal moves.
“The other boys in the band are all professional dancers, so we were able to essentially choreograph them around Nick so he wouldn’t have to do the worst of it (laughs).”
Producer Cathy Schulman —DAVE ALLOCCA/STARPIX
At this point, Cathy began to chuckle at the prospect of putting “nondancer” Nick through his terpsichorean paces.
Continuing to explain, Cathy said, “So, the other guys couldn’t really sing, while Nick didn’t really know how to dance! It took us three weeks to put it all together and somehow, they pulled it off! But we had an incredible choreographer named Dani Vitale, who really helped Nick figure out how to execute the dance moves.
“Dani really put Nick through it because when he started, he didn’t want to move (laughs)—he was just standing there! And so, it took a while. But it was just amazing to see that, by the end of the boot camp, Nick was doing choreographed routines [with flair]—I mean, he hadn’t even learned how to sing with a microphone (laughs).”
Modernizing rom-coms
During the interview, Cathy also explained the production’s decision to make Solene’s daughter a little older than she is in the book, from 12 to 16, as well as add that much-discussed “epilogue” that isn’t in the novel.
The Yale-educated producer explained, “I developed this project in-house at my company (Welle Entertainment) having read the book and being inspired by the central notion that love was possible as a second chance and the idea that the obstacles could be so great between two people that they could still overcome them.
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“But from the very beginning, it was crucial to me that we modernized the genre while we were developing the notion, that we try to avoid the regular tropes of romantic comedy. One of the key things there was to allow Solene’s daughter Izzy (Ella Rubin) to be slightly older and to be a sounding board for her mother so they could explore things without the audience having to constantly question the main character’s ability to speak to somebody [that young], which isn’t normal in that genre.
“Another thing was to allow the period when the connection between Solene and Hayes happened to be longer and more intense before it eventually broke. Then, there’s the decision not to wrap up their story the same way [as the book] towards the end.
“Oh, and we also decided not to have a cad in their romance. Normally, in this kind of genre, there would be another man who was the wrong man for Anne’s character. But the choice that she had to make here wasn’t between two men.
“Solene’s choice was actually between living with herself in satisfaction or allowing love back in the door—and neither one is a bad choice. We tried to undo the notion that it’s all about which man a woman ends up with versus just choosing her notion of happiness. So, I feel like the whole construct was more modern.” INQ
