Red, White & Royal Blue: The Sneaky Cameo By Casey McQuiston You Probably Missed

Contains spoilers for "Red, White & Royal Blue"

It's always comforting, for fans of a book set to be adapted into a film or television series, to know that the author is a big part of the adaptation process. This was definitely the case for "Red, White & Royal Blue," the queer romantic comedy written by Casey McQuiston, which was adapted by Tony Award-winning writer Matthew Lopez into an Amazon original film (Lopez also directed the movie). Not only was McQuiston involved during filming, but the author — who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns — also has a sneaky little cameo in the finished movie.

As President Ellen Claremont (Uma Thurman) and her family, including her son Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez) wait to hear if she's been re-elected for a second term, Alex spots his mother quietly working on a possible concession speech — and in that brief moment, McQuiston plays one of the speechwriters working alongside the incumbent president in case she loses the race. (She doesn't, in the end.) 

McQuiston's brief physical appearance in "Red, White & Royal Blue" isn't their only shout-out in the movie, though. While Alex and Henry enjoy a romantic vacation at the Claremont-Diaz family ranch in Texas, they read together in a hammock; Henry is reading Bernardine Evaristo's "Girl, Woman, Other," and Alex can clearly be seen reading McQuiston's second novel, another queer romance titled "One Last Stop."

"Red, White & Royal Blue" was McQuiston's first novel, and it was an enormous hit pretty much immediately — hence the adaptation just a few years after its initial release in 2019. Alongside Lopez, the writer worked hard to bring their novel to life on the screen, and as Nicholas Galitzine — who plays Alex's love interest, Prince Henry of England — told Glamour ahead of the film's release, they were on set to help out with the whole process. 

"I remember Casey coming in on a really fun day," Galitzine said. "It was a scene where Taylor and I were bickering in that sort of Alex/Henry banter way that we do, and it gave us time to talk to Casey and understand the influences that went into the book. We obviously have a lot of fan service, and I hope they love my interpretation of Henry."

McQuiston, who is currently working on their fourth novel (their third, a young-adult queer romance titled "I Kissed Shara Wheeler," was released in 2022), did step back from publicity shortly before the movie's release out of respect for the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes against major studios. In an Instagram post, they wrote, "as some of you may have already noticed, i've chosen to step back from official RWRB movie promo in solidarity with the WGA and our amazing cast. i fully support the writers strike, the actors strike, and the right of every working creative to a living wage." They went on to explain that their stepping back had nothing to do with the finished movie, which they wholeheartedly support, but that they felt as if they needed to make the right call for the striking guilds.

As McQuiston told Glamour in a different interview in 2019 — before the film even existed — the idea for "Red, White & Royal Blue" started relatively simply. "I'm a huge rom-com fan, but I'm also like, How can I do this differently? I'm a queer person. So the first subversion was thinking, What if this is a queer kid and he has to deal with what that means for his position in the world?"

This loose idea ultimately became "Red, White & Royal Blue," a story that asks what would happen if a First Son of the United States and Prince of England fell in love and carried on a transatlantic relationship in secret. Alex and Henry, the American and the Brit, are rivals at first, with Alex feeling inferior to the royal prince who was born and bred to be in the spotlight... but after they topple an expensive cake mid-argument during a royal wedding, their two governments force them to go on a press tour touting their close friendship. That fake friendship becomes a lot more, and just as they're trying to figure out what falling in love could mean for both of them politically, someone leaks their private emails, and they have to confront the world. 

Lopez's film does an excellent job of bringing McQuiston's emotional, funny, and gripping story to life — and it's available to stream on Amazon now.