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Taylor Zakhar Perez felt "pressure" to portray the gay love story in Red, White & Royal Blue accurately

11 August 2023, 17:56

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By Sam Prance

Taylor Zakhar Perez's character Alex is bisexual in Red, White & Royal Blue. He falls in love with Prince Henry while discovering his sexuality.

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Taylor Zakhar Perez has opened up about playing Alex in Red, White & Royal Blue and making his queer love story accurate.

Like the book it's based on, Red, White & Royal Blue has been praised by viewers and critics alike for its fun and direct take on queer representation. Despite the extreme premise of the son of a president falling in love with a British prince, the film goes to great lengths to make sure that Alex and Prince Henry's gay romance feels true to the LGBTQ+ experience.

Now, Taylor Zakhar Perez has revealed that he felt "an enormous weight" to get his depiction of Alex, who is bisexual, right.

Red, White & Royal Blue&squot;s Taylor Zakhar Perez felt "pressure" to portray the gay love story accurately — Red, White & Royal Blue's Taylor Zakhar Perez felt "pressure" to portray the gay love story accurately. Picture: Prime Video

In an interview with Newsweek, Taylor was asked if he felt a responsibility to queer audiences because he was acting out a gay love story. The actor replied: "Yeah, I mean, that was the community that I was thinking about the entire time filming."

Taylor went on to explain: "From the beginning, there was an enormous weight on my shoulders, making sure that we were accurate with representation and accurate with character portrayal. Because I think it's so easy for an actor to phone it in, I've seen it. So I think that's why I took it upon myself, knowing how important this film is for many communities."

As for how he, his co-star Nicholas Galitzine and director Matthew Lopez would approach filming, Taylor said: "We would have these incredible conversations. Sometimes we change [the script], sometimes [it stays] the same, but we were just hypersensitive to making sure everything was properly represented and properly accurate."

Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in Red, White & Royal Blue. Picture: Prime Video

Taylor also praised the film's intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt for helping him approach his sex scenes with care.

He said: "The intimacy part is so important because Alex's arc as a character as somebody that has only dated women in the past, maybe a couple guy hookups, to not liking Henry to getting kissed by Henry, and then having a relationship. It's just like the different degrees of comfort that Alex starts to have, this needs to be represented in a proper way."

Taylor ended by saying: "It just became this collaborative effort if we ever got stuck somewhere. Everything just was so beautiful. Every conversation was wonderful."