Spoiler warning: Spoilers for Red, White, & Royal Blue follow. When I watched Red, White, & Royal Blue for the first time, I was mostly focused on the growing romance between Alex and Henry (played by Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine), the high-stakes tension of American politics during an election year, and all the changes the film made to details from the book. That’s why I almost didn’t catch an Easter egg that the film snuck in: RWRB’s author, Casey McQuiston, in a cameo that’s truly blink-and-you-miss-it.
If you’re not familiar with RWRB, it’s based on McQuiston’s 2019 novel of the same name. The story follows the relationship between Alex Claremont-Diaz, son of U.S. President Ellen Claremont, and Prince Henry of Wales. McQuiston is also the author of One Last Stop and I Kissed Sara Wheeler, establishing them as a foremost literary voice in the new adult and romance genres, and a breath of fresh air in a publishing industry that doesn’t have nearly as much LGBTQ+ representation as it should.
RWRB was critically acclaimed when it came out, not to mention it’s a New York Times bestseller and is even now part of the Library of Congress collection — so watching it come to life on the big screen has to be pretty amazing for McQuiston, who frequently gushes about the film on their Instagram.
McQuiston didn’t write or direct the film, but did get to visit the set and help writer and director Matthew López with some of the finer details about Alex and Henry. And not only that, but McQuiston also got to play a small role in the film. If you’re wondering where they appear, they’re listed in the credits as “Ellen’s Speechwriter.” So during the Election Night scene at the end of the movie, when you see President Claremont working on her concession speech (much to Alex’s dismay), one of the writers sitting next to her (with the short hair) is McQuiston!
It’s only for a second, and truly, if I hadn’t been keeping up with McQuiston long enough to be able to recognize them on sight, I might have missed them entirely. But it’s such a fun Easter egg for fans of the book especially (of which there are many).
And if reading and watching RWRB has left you craving for more stories from McQuiston’s imagination, we hopefully won’t have to wait much longer — they shared on July 28 that they had turned in their manuscript for their fourth book, meaning I’m that much closer to getting my hands on my next obsession. I guess, for now, I can just reread RWRB… again.