Anne Hathaway’s ‘The Idea of You‘ debuted on Prime Video on May 02
Nicholas Galitzine claims Harry Styles drew inspiration from the Backstreet Boys rather than from his fictional musician character Hayes Campbell in The Idea of You.
In the new romance, the 29-year-old Red, White & Royal Blue actor plays August Moon, a pop singer from a boy band who, after meeting by accident at Coachella, falls in love with Anne Hathaway‘s divorced character, Solène, who is 40 years old. Many fans have made analogies between Hayes and Harry Styles, the 30-year-old former One Direction member, even before the Idea of You book was published in 2017.
“I like to distance myself from that comparison because I think Hayes is his character and has his struggles, wants, and tastes, even in who he is as a musician,” Galitzine told People magazine.
“We collected a tonne of references,” the actor said.
“The boy band as a whole was an amalgam of a lot of different artists and groups. I’d love people to come to see the movie with an open mind embrace Hayes and August Moon, and become fans of August Moon individually as well. I mean, there are some catchy songs in the movie.”
Who inspired him for the role? Galitzine says they were inspired by “the sort of hysteria around them” when the Backstreet Boys “first came out” and they also appropriated a few moves from popular K-pop group BTS.
“I think the training that BTS went through was far more intense than what I was allowed to go through for three weeks before we started shooting,” laughs Galitzine. “But they have this ability to seem entirely nonchalant and chill in the way they hit their choreography. It’s almost like not so try-hard, effortlessly cool. We were trying to embody a little bit of that.”