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People We Meet on Vacation’s Emily Bader Reacts to Costar Tom Blyth Calling Her "The Next Meg Ryan"
Emily Henry’s creative vision didn’t pack its bags when it came to the People We Meet on Vacation film.
Indeed, the beloved romantic comedy author assured that the Netflix adaptation starring Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, now streaming, is exactly what she had in mind while writing the novel.
“I’m so thrilled where it wound up,” Henry told E! News in an exclusive joint interview with the film’s director Brett Haley. “I couldn’t name a specific thing that was killed off, but it’s so unimportant to me at this point.”
Indeed, the 34-year-old—who has also penned soon-to-be adaptations like Book Lovers and Beach Read—noted that she created a list early on of what she thought must be included in the film for not only herself, but for fans.
“The thing that I did fight for was that I really wanted the pregnancy scare,” she explained of the emotional moment during the Tuscany vacation in the film. To Henry, it was more important than Alex and Poppy’s trip to Croatia, which was ultimately cut. “In the book, they talk about what happened in Croatia a lot and you get to Croatia and you’re like, ‘What happened? Can’t we work this out?’”
As she put it, “Croatia was always a red herring where Poppy thinks that their relationship broke in Croatia, but where it really broke was in Tuscany.
Another plot piece Henry thought was essential for the final cut? Molly Shannon’s hilarious cameo as Poppy’s mom.
“I wanted the condom box scene,” she continued, noting that it was in-and-out several times before finally making it into the film. “It came and went, and came and went and it was in the movie.”
Netflix
However, Henry also admitted that fans may be disappointed to see more than a few of Alex’s soliloquies cut from the Netflix adaptation.
“There are some things that Alex says that I’m sure readers are gonna be like, ‘I wish I could’ve heard Tom Blyth say that to Emily Bader,’” the novelist reasoned, “but the thing is, my books are very talky and in a movie you don’t want it to feel like, ‘Okay, he’s doing a speech at her.’”
And of course, Henry and Haley addressed one of the biggest changes from book to film, which saw Alex’s brother David (Miles Heizer) host his wedding in Barcelona rather than Palm Springs, which is where Alex and Poppy finally reconcile. The decision, the duo explained, came down to logistics and budget, as there is no green screen usage throughout the film.
Netflix
“It was always really important to me that it felt like real vacations and that we’re not trying to hide something or fake something,” Haley explained. “I was like, ‘Look, let’s not try to fake Palm Springs somewhere that’s not Palm Springs, can we just own Barcelona?’ Spain ended up being a place we could shoot this film and get a lot of bang for our buck location-wise.”
Henry, meanwhile, jokingly added, “Frankly, it was an excuse for all of us to go to Spain.”
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Knopf/Doubleday
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Mike Marsland/WireImage; Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Gotham Film & Media Institute
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Back Bay Books
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Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
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Apple TV+
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Berkley
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