🚨Warning: There are MASSIVE spoilers ahead for The Idea of You!🚨
1.First, Nicholas Galitzine, who stars as Hayes Campbell, said that his chemistry test was "the most daunting audition I've ever been asked to do." He explained that he had to perform several scenes with Anne, "convince her to do an improvised dance," and "serenade everyone."
2.In fact, Nicholas and Anne Hathaway met for the first time during their chemistry read. "Annie's someone who perfectly encapsulates the type of career that I want for myself in the sense that she's incredibly versatile. She really is so gifted," Nicholas said. "She's obviously this extremely radiant, beautiful human being." He also said that he and Anne "just immediately had an understanding for each other, and both saw the potential fun that [they] could have with these characters."
3.Anne was very involved with choosing the art for Solène's gallery. She partnered with Amy Williams, The Idea of You's production designer, to make the gallery feel "authentic." Together, they sought out local artists to find pieces. Along with finding art for Solène's home and office, they also ended up building three different art shows for the gallery.
4.Nicholas, Jordan Aaron Hall, Jaiden Anthony, Raymond Cham Jr., and Viktor White, aka August Moon, bonded by having "a lot of game nights playing Mario Kart." During filming, they all stayed in the same hotel, which helped make the band's friendship translate onscreen.
5.Nicholas and the rest of the August Moon members all had to participate in "boyband bootcamp" to prep for the movie. "Boyband bootcamp looks like a lot of dancing," Nicholas explained. "Doing the choreo over and over and over again just so you remember it. There was a lot of it. We had six numbers of choreo to do, not all of it made it into the movie."
6.Nicholas actually sings all the August Moon songs in the movie and said that even though he had "such fun" doing it, he probably won't make the leap to becoming a pop star.
7.Several of August Moon's songs, including the lead single "Dance Before We Walk," were written by Cark Falk and Savan Kotecha, aka the team behind One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful."
8.The film adaptation actually has a different ending than the book. In the book, Solène and Hayes break up, part ways, and go on with their separate lives. This also happens in the movie, but we also catch a glimpse of them both five years later when they reconnect at Solène's gallery, and they get the happy ending their book counterparts never had. Robinne Lee, the book's author, wasn't actually involved with the change, though. "The book is a book, and the movie is a movie," she said. "You have to step away and let the filmmakers do what they're going to do and not get too concerned with what it is you've created and when it stops because it's a completely different medium."
9.The Coachella scenes were actually filmed in Atlanta. Production recreated the music festival in a field and hired about 500 extras to play fans. Nicholas explained, "[Coachella] was filmed at 3 a.m. in winter in Atlanta, and we had about 500 extras who we placed throughout at different points of the concert. And even performing in front of 500 people is very anxiety-inducing."
10.The movie's beach scenes were shot in Georgia, too. “In reality, we’re in Savannah, Georgia. We’re in the water, we’re freezing," Nicholas said.
11.In creating Hayes Campbell's signature look, costume designer Jacqueline Demeterio sought out inspiration from Harry Styles, Matty Healy, and Paul Klein from the band LANY.
12.And Nicholas loved some of his costume pieces so much that he ended up buying the exact same pieces for himself.
13.In the scene where Solène travels to New York to meet up with Hayes at his hotel, Anne actually ended up wearing her own pair of Alaïa shoes with her costume. "We were in a fitting, and she just said, 'I have the perfect shoes for this outfit.' It was so important for her to feel sexy in that look, and it was important for that scene," Jacqueline said.
14.The moment where Hayes kisses Solène's stomach was Nicholas's idea, but when filming, the moment didn't exactly go as planned. "I’m thinking, OK, I’m gonna do something very sexy here. I’m gonna kiss her stomach, and people are gonna go wild for it," he explained. "At the moment I go to do it, she dips her stomach below the water, and I swallow a whole mouthful of seawater and start choking." The sexy moment did make it into the final cut of the movie, though...minus the choking.
15.Finally, in the movie, Solène refers to herself as "a people-pleaser from New Jersey," and Anne revealed that she came up with that line. "I think I’m a former people pleaser from New Jersey," she said. "So much of the reason I was drawn to acting is that it was an outlet for expression that I could not find on my own."