Back in 2017, Robinne Lee dropped by a local L.A. news station for an interview promoting her role in “Fifty Shades Darker,” the second film in the steamy series based on books by E.L. James.
“You’re venturing out a little bit now with a new novel…” the KCAL anchor said to Lee, whose filmography already included “Deliver Us From Eva,”
“Hitch” and “13 Going on 30,” teeing the actor up to mention her career pivot. “I have a novel coming out this spring called ‘The Idea of You,’” Lee replied, grinning.
The premise was unique: A divorced mother and art gallery owner, living in L.A. on the precipice of turning 40,
takes her daughter to a concert meet-and-greet and the 20-year-old lead singer of the band falls in love with her.
The story, Lee explained, was “as much about a love story complicated by celebrity and the underbelly of fame” as it was an exploration of what it’s like to be a woman facing middle age
and challenging society’s problematic notions that you’re no longer “sexually viable” or “multilayered” past that point.
“Might we see it on a big screen?” the reporter then prompted. “I hope so!” Lee replied. “I feel like it could play really well in a theater.”
Well, fast forward to 2024: “The Idea of You” has become a massive bestseller (surging in popularity amid the pandemic in 2020) and now, it’s been adapted into a movie starring Oscar winner Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine.
“It’s been a long journey, so there hasn’t been on moment of ‘Ah, this is wonderful!’” Lee says, chatting with Variety over Zoom in the days leading up to the film’s release on Prime Video. “All these little things have been keeping me busy, so I haven’t had tunnel vision on the adaptation.”
That moment came a few days later at the film’s New York City premiere, where Lee posed on the purple carpet and took it all in. “Last night was like a dream ten years in the making. Completely and utterly surreal,” she captioned her Instagram post, adding the hashtag “Proud Author Moment.”
Gabrielle Union was there, too, but not in her usual movie star capacity. She’d been part of Lee’s journey from the beginning: the two played sisters in the 2003 rom-com “Deliver Us From Eva,” so the budding author sent Union an advanced copy of “The Idea of You” to write a blurb in support.
Union says she realized almost immediately — “when I kept stopping along the way and I’d cry and write notes” — that Lee’s story was special. So, she slipped the book to her husband, Dwyane Wade. “He had similar responses, but also dramatically different responses, and I was like, ‘This Is a movie, and this has the potential to be huge,’” she recalls.
Armed with that information, Union asked Lee if she could option the book and introduced the author to Oscar-winning producer Cathy Schulman, who led the charge to get the film made, with Hathaway signed on to star and Michael Showalter as its director.
“Robinne was kind enough to allow me to produce the first project that I wasn’t going to be starring in, and that was a huge vote of confidence on her part,” Union says of shepherding the movie via her I’ll Have Another banner. “As a friend, I wanted to do right by her because I love the book. I am a stan of the book. I wanted the movie to be close enough, but also different. So if you’re a fan of the book, or if you watch the movie first and then read the book, it will still feel like discovery.”
And Union’s instinct was correct. “The Idea of You” was the No. 1 streaming movie of the May 3-9 viewing window with 714.2 million minutes watched in its first full week of availability on Prime Video, per Luminate. (Disclosure: Variety and Luminate share a common owner in PMC.)
Read on as Lee and Union reflect on their experience with “The Idea of You” and the impact they hope the film has on Hollywood.
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Source: Tampa Bay Times
