Emily Henry:
Pause. I could watch this whole movie right now while you all watch me watch this movie. Hello to Doom. My book, People We Meet on Vacation is coming to Netflix and I would love to watch some of the best moments with you. So get comfy and roll the tape. 

Poppy:
Hey, hey. Hi. I'm Poppy and you're Alex. Whoa, do you go to Boston College?

Emily Henry:
This is really fun because obviously a lot has to change for a book to movie adaptation. The first two times they meet in the book kind of got smashed together to this one scene — in the book they're meeting at this freshman mixer kind of thing. And he's wearing the school's sweatshirt at the mixer. And so this is very much exactly their first introduction from the book, but then just truncated in a really fun way. To me, to make the friends-to-lovers trope work in a romantic comedy, it's really important that you actually see these two characters as friends, as true, platonic, best friends who love each other, but not in a romantic or sexual or sensual way to begin with.

Poppy:

What are you doing?

Alex:
Well, you blocked my whole field of vision.

Poppy:
Gnarly, are you okay?

Alex:
Yeah.

Emily Henry:
We want to go on that journey with them. We want to see every moment that makes them question that relationship, and this movie did that so well. The cast and the crew and the director, the writers, they did such a good job taking Alex and Poppy from what really seems like almost a familial bond, this closeness, to something a little bit more complicated.

Poppy:
Would we still be friends if we didn't go to the same college? You mean like after we graduate?

Emily Henry:
This is, I think, the first scene in the movie where Emily (Bader) kind of breaks my heart. She's just so good. She just contains so much of the character of Poppy's fears, just on her face just written there, and she doesn't have to have a ton of dialogue to explain what's going on in her head. It's just so visible. And the way that Tom/Alex looks at her, there's just such sweetness. Poppy and Alex are such an odd couple, and that's the fun of them. Their dynamic is she's kind of the annoying one and he's the straight man, but he's not actually annoyed by her. He is just as charmed by her as she is by him. And I think this scene is just the perfect encompassing of that.

Poppy:

Oh, come on vacation, Alex. Is that the best you've got?

Emily Henry:

On that first car ride home when Alex and Poppy are together and they're talking in the book about their karaoke songs, and Poppy admits she's never been to karaoke. And then she finds out that Alex actually has been to karaoke and he loves karaoke, which is something I always love about people and find really fascinating about real people when you meet someone and you think you know who they are and then you find out some detail that you're like, "Wait, you used to be a professional mascot. Back up." And I think that was the first time in the book at least that Poppy got to see Alex's weirdness come out. It's not just that Alex is this stoic stayed man. It's like this is what Alex shares with the world and there's this whole other Alex beneath the surface. He's a little bit drunk on Poppy in a way too.

He is at his most relaxed and his most comfortable. I think she's already fully in his heart at this point.

Alex:
Oh, Poppy.

Poppy:

I think I'm dreaming.

Alex:

You're not dreaming, but you are burning up.

Poppy:

But you're in Norway.

Alex:

Obviously not.

Emily Henry:
This is the moment that would be easy to discount as not that important because they don't actually go on a trip, but it's actually so important because it's like the first moment that you start to realize the trips are not the point for them. The point is being together. It does not matter where they are. It doesn't matter what they're doing. Even when she's very ill, this is what he'd rather be doing. And also a fun little fact for people who haven't read the book. In the book, she pees herself. They didn't put that into the movie for some reason. I don't know.

There was a lot of debate early on as to which Taylor Swift song we should pursue for the soundtrack. And I remember Brett telling me he had decided it needed to be “August,” and it hadn't actually occurred to me how perfect that was, but I think it's so fitting for the characters and for Poppy's head space. The melancholy and the longing of this song are so exactly what she's feeling and thinking as she's looking at this person who she loves more than anyone else in the world. Tom Blyth can look at a woman. That is just so, so, so good. I also remember being on set, we noticed that Tom did the thing which every romance reader knows about. We were all watching and we saw him clench his jaw where that little muscle pops. We're like, "I've never seen that happen just in real life." That's something that they put in books.

And then afterward, Tom was like, "Yeah, that's actually a tick of mine that one of my acting teachers has been trying to get me to quit doing." And I was like, "Don't. Don't quit doing. Don't quit doing that. That feeling is exactly what I'm often chasing if I'm reading or watching a love story, is that yearning and longing.

Poppy:
I want you to tell me it's not my fault. Tell me that I'm not the reason that you're not married right now. Tell me that it's not because of me.

Emily Henry:

It was really fun getting to meet the set designers and everything. I remember one of them was talking about having to choose the perfect plastic that would be the most satisfying for her to run the scissors through. That was not an intentional metaphor, but I think my favorite metaphors usually are probably not. I don't want that to feel heavy-handed, but I do think it works. I mean, I think the heat, it was an intentional metaphor. The idea of this heat building and building and building and needing some kind of release or catharsis, that's like the tension simmering between them, not just their romantic and sexual tension, but also everything they haven't talked about that they need to talk about — all the secrets they're keeping and the confrontation that they inevitably need to have. Thanks so much Tudum for watching this with me.

I hope that you love the film just as much as I do.