Casey McQuiston Has More <i><em>Red, White, and Royal</em></i> Stories to Tell

In a small, windowless room somewhere above the ground-floor chaos of Prime Video’s inaugural Obsessed Fest this weekend, Casey McQuiston sipped from a champagne-sized bottle of Saratoga Spring Water and took a deep, steeling breath. Even now, McQuiston is not exactly used to this—the red carpets, the public speaking, the fan fervor—even if it is now, increasingly, the norm.

McQuiston’s life has changed dramatically in the years since they first published their 2019 queer romance novel Red, White, and Royal Blue, which was adapted into a hit Prime Video film in 2023. The project starred Nicholas Galitzine and Taylor Zakhar Perez as soulmates from separate worlds: Galitzine as Prince Henry, a royal third in line for the British throne, and Perez as Alex Claremont-Diaz, the first son of the United States. McQuiston’s book had already become a bestseller during the pandemic, but the attention around the author jumped to new heights as the Red, White, and Royal Blue adaptation became one of Prime Video’s “top three most-watched romantic comedy [films] of all time” in 2023, resulting in what the streamer called “a huge surge of new Prime membership signups directly correlated to the film’s release.”

Three years later, McQuiston is doing their part to keep that momentum going. They’re hard at work extending the RWaRB universe, first with a film sequel—Red, White, and Royal Wedding, out later this year—and a spinoff novella, Red, White, and Royal Blue: The Private Correspondence, out in December. With another wave of RWaRB content comes another spike of fan attention, something Prime Video was keen to encourage during Obsessed Fest, held at Nya Studios in Los Angeles on Saturday. McQuiston appeared before crowds of fans during multiple Obsessed Fest events, teasing the film sequel and reading excerpts from both Red, White, and Royal Blue and the forthcoming novella. Midway through the afternoon, McQuiston remained energized and eager, despite the whirlwind of attention.

“What I love about fiction, with books and with film, is the relationships that people have with characters, and the way that we bring ourselves to a piece of art and then transmute it in a million different ways and make it our own,” McQuiston told ELLE during a sit-down interview. “And it’s always been my dream to contribute something to the world that people could make their own. To watch fans take it on and make fan works and talk about these characters and have all of these deep emotions that I also have about these characters…I mean, it’s kind of hard to describe how rewarding that is as a creative person.”

Below, McQuiston explains the thought process behind their new novella; the collaboration that informed Red, White, and Royal Wedding; and what fans can expect in Alex and Henry’s future.

It’s such a trip. The first time I ever talked to my film agent about optioning my book, she gave me this line that I think is so perfect: She was like, “This is going to be like The Parent Trap, where you have two twin children. One of them is going to go be raised in London by Natasha Richardson. They’re going to be your kid and you’re going to love them, but you’re going to watch them grow up from afar. They’re going to have a life of their own, and you just have to accept that.”

I think that has been my experience [with the film version of Red, White, and Royal Blue]. It does have a life of its own. The characters in the film are slightly different versions; they have slightly different circumstances. The actors have a vision, and the director has a vision, and the editors have their vision, and so there’s so much transformation that happens. Even if I feel like it’s a super faithful adaptation, which I do, it’s still always going to be different.

When I first wrote Red, White, and Royal Blue, in my head I had a sequel and three spinoffs already planned out. I wanted to write one that was just June [Claremont-Diaz, Alex’s sister]’s journals, but all of the ones that weren’t fit to print in her memoir. I wanted to do one that was Rafael Luna’s story. There were so many I wanted to do, but what I kept coming back to was how much I wanted to write an epistolary story with Alex and Henry. The thing that I know resonated with a lot of readers, but also that meant the most to me, were the letters that they exchanged in the book. My favorite chapter of the book is the one that’s just their emails.

Late last year, as we were getting into production on the sequel [film], I was like, “I really want to give book Alex and Henry their time, too. I want both [versions] to get to live on.” So I pitched this epistolary idea to my editor. I wanted it to be detailed and rich enough to give all of the greatest hits of what’s going to happen for the next 20 years of Alex and Henry’s life, but also leave room for if I ever wanted to do a full sequel. I wanted it to come out around the time of the film so that we would have, like, all of our kids fed.

I hadn’t even really thought about a film sequel at any point in the development [of the Red, White, and Royal Blue movie] because there was no sequel book. At the time that the movie came out, I was so deep into working on my fourth book, The Pairing, and so I wasn’t even thinking about [a sequel] at all.

And then the film came out and it was received so warmly, and I was like, “Oh, this is actually a really great experience.” And then Amazon reached out pretty quickly after the film came out, and they were like, “We’re really interested in doing a sequel, but are you planning to write a sequel book? And, like, how long would that take?”

And I was like, “Dude…I know we want to strike while the iron is hot, so let’s do an original story.” And we were able to just kind of hit the ground running.

Honestly, sometimes it’s nice to not just be you writing a book, because it can be really lonely sometimes. You kind of just sit in a room by yourself, and it’s so long before anybody’s giving you feedback. It’s so much less lonely to have somebody that you’re collaborating with, but it’s also harder, too, because you’re used to just doing whatever [you want] and all of a sudden you are having collaborative conversations. It was working with [co-writer and Red, White, and Royal Blue director] Matthew [López] and [co-writer] Gemma [Burgess] who came in, and also working with our producers and then eventually working with our director [Jamie Babbit]. What I learned from all of that is: I learned so much more flexibility in storytelling. I learned so much about getting out of my own head, taking the interior story and making it external. You have to give the actors stuff to do. They can’t just be brooding in a corner thinking about their anxieties. I mean, they could, but that’s a different film. That’s not a rom-com. That’s, like, a very introspective indie film. I don’t think it’s what the people want from me.

I was able to spend about two and a half weeks on set. It was such a quick shoot because our actors are so busy, and there’s such a short window to have these certain locations [available]. Because we filmed a lot of stuff on location—like big, beautiful historic estates and churches and Goldsmiths Hall, which I’m allowed to say because the paparazzi already found us there—it was truly like a safari adventure around different parts of the South U.K. It was so fun. It was so great to be on set with all of the actors. I got to hang out with the crew. We have such an incredible crew. Jamie Babbitt as our director is so incredible, and she assembled this crew of so many women, so many queer people.

I was definitely able to be more involved this time because I was a writer, but also because it wasn’t like there were as many COVID-19 restrictions [as there were] the first time around. I was able to physically be on set so much more. I loved every minute of being on set, even when I was miserably cold. I mean, one of my days on set, I got to literally just sit there and watch Lena Heady and Uma Thurman work. That in itself—I could die happy.

To me, the most important thing is character. In writing the script and then being on set, it was so important to me, to the director, and also to Nick and Taylor that we really preserved the hearts of these characters—that they felt true to themselves and to how the fans understand them, and to how the book understands them. Thankfully, my biggest priority was also the biggest priority of everyone on set: making sure that Alex and Henry are Alex and Henry. That’s the thing I can never compromise on. We can try out a million different possibilities for how their future plays out or how we get from point A to point B, as long as we’re staying true to their characters.

McQuiston signing books at Obsessed Fest.

It’s sort of this sense of: After the confetti falls and after the big whirlwind romance, what does it look like to just be together? All of a sudden, your life changes in an instant, and that’s all exciting. We adjust to it, and we now are settled into this new life together, and all of our real-life obligations and responsibilities have to come back knocking.

These are two people who are very, very important to the world—very, very important to their families—and have big dreams and big ambitions, and sometimes those things are going to come into conflict with each other. It’s about: How do we figure out a compromise? How do we navigate these things together when all of these external factors are pulling us in opposite directions? How do we decide how we move forward together?

In terms of what I can tell you about the film, I can tell you there’s so much romance. It’s so romantic. It’s so funny. It’s so fun to watch these characters not just continue to grow their relationships with each other, but with their families and their siblings and their friends and—I’m going to shut up before I spoil something.

You don’t really know you can do anything until you do it. When we decided I was going to co-write this script, I was like, “I took screenwriting in college, but I don’t know…I hope I can do this well.” And then this was my first time really acting as a producer. I’ve been telling my agent, like, “I love producing! Producing is so fun!” But I’m also aware that my experience of producing is like when you have a little kid in the car and you give them a paper plate and let them think they’re driving. [Laughs.] I get to do all the fun parts where I sit in the producer’s tent and have a little walkie-talkie and be like, “I think we should do this line this way!”

But still, even with that, I never knew what I could do. I never knew I could be comfortable in that room. It’s canceling out my imposter syndrome in real time. The biggest thing that has changed for me is: my confidence has grown in my belief that, oh, I’m an artist. I can see myself as an artist now, not just somebody who wrote a book and lucked out.

With how fast everything happened at the beginning, when my book first came out, I didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t know that I deserved any of it. Now, I feel like, “Oh, I’m a writer, and I’m an artist, and I can make art with other artists, and that’s amazing.” Uma Thurman liked my book! That’s crazy!

I have the novella that’s coming out in December, so right now I’m really working on finalizing everything for that. I’m working on my next full-length book, which is going to be a completely new story. It’s going to be my first foray into fantasy. I really can’t give much of it away, but I can say it’s [female/female] romance. It’s about two women, and it’s got a lot of fantasy elements, and the love interest is a big hot lady knight with a sword. I’m having a lot of fun with it. I am learning lots of new tricks. It’s a whole new skill set to master, but I’m hoping that I’m going to finish it soon, and I’m hoping that you guys will get to read it very soon.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.