Red, White & Blue’s journey from BookTok to the big screen: Casey McQuiston’s LGBT romance novel got rave reviews on TikTok, then Amazon Prime adapted it into a film – so how do the two differ?

Aug 30 , 2023

Amazon Prime’s LGBT romance film Red, White & Royal Blue is based on Casey McQuiston’s best-selling novel of the same name. Photos: @rwrbonprime, @vkelleyart/Instagram

This summer’s hottest queer romance Red, White & Royal Blue is based on Casey McQuiston’s bestselling book of the same name, portraying the love story between Alex Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry

Directed by Matthew López, the film adaptation stars Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine as the main leads alongside Hollywood veteran Uma Thurman and British legend Stephen Fry

Casey McQuiston’s cult LGBTQ+ novel Red, White & Royal Blue has just been adapted into a film four years after its bestseller success. The film premiered on Amazon Prime on August 12 and earned an R rating thanks to some of its raunchy scenes.

According to SheReads, McQuiston conceived of the story in 2016 while watching a new season of HBO comedy series Veep and alternating between reading a biography of Hillary Clinton and a novel that loosely follows Prince William and Kate Middleton’s story.

In 2019, McQuiston subsequently published their romantic tale between the American president’s son and the younger brother to the future king of Britain – Alex Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry, played by The Kissing Booth actor Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in the film adaptation.

Casey McQuiston’s best-selling LGBTQ+ romance novel Red, White & Royal Blue has been adapted into a film. Photo: @casey.mcquiston/Instagram

The fictional pair is publicly embroiled in a rivalry that soon evolves into a forbidden love, with Alex’s free spirit clashing with Henry’s restraint. Their bond challenges tradition and the push/pull romance between the two has fans hooked, turning McQuiston into the sole winner of both best debut and best romance at the 2019 Goodreads Awards.

So what do we know about the novel that inspired this summer’s hottest queer romance film?

Who is Red, White & Blue’s author, Casey McQuiston?

Casey McQuiston on a book tour in Curitiba, Brazil, in September 2022. Photo: @casey.mcquiston/Instagram

McQuiston’s 2019 debut novel Red, White & Royal blue earned the author a huge fan base, but they originally studied journalism and worked in magazine publishing before finding success as a queer romance writer.

Born on January 21, 1991, McQuiston, who is openly queer and uses they/them pronouns, grew up in Southern Louisiana. They attended a deeply conservative Christian school and previously acknowledged in interviews that it impacted the stories they choose to write.

Casey McQuiston is openly queer and studied journalism before becoming a writer. Photo: @casey.mcquiston/Instagram

“Anybody who’s been through queer religious trauma has ways of coping with that in adulthood,” they said in an interview with Time magazine.

Publishing Red, White & Royal Blue wasn’t easy for McQuiston. They told NBC News: “It was really, really hard to get mainstream adult romance publishers to take a risk on a queer adult romcom.”