In 2022, Nicholas Galitzine was on the principle stage of “Coachella”, flanked by bandmates Jaiden Anthony, Raymond Cham Jr., Vik White, and Dakota Adan.
Surrounding them have been 5,000 screaming followers, chanting on the high of their lungs, “August Moon! August Moon! August Moon!” For a lot of the guys, who’re skilled dancers, this was considerably acquainted, they’d carried out for a lot greater audiences, supporting stars like Beyoncé and Britney Spears, and dancing on nationwide TV. However for Galitzine, this was all model new.
Beneath the highlight, the actor was taking part in the function of a world well-known pop star — one fifth of a massively profitable (fictional) boy band. So whereas the group was actual, it helped that they weren’t really in Indio, California for his or her set, however a pair thousand miles away on a cold December morning in Atlanta, filming scenes for the Prime Video rom-com movie, The Concept of You.
An adaptation of Robinne Lee’s novel of the identical title, the movie follows the whirlwind romance of Galitzine’s character, Hayes Campbell, and Solène Marchand (Anne Hathaway), a 40-year-old single mom who meets the August Moon frontman whereas taking her teenage daughter to Coachella.
Film magic can rework the Atlanta Motor Speedway parking zone right into a competition’s headlining stage; add an enormous banner, and convey collectively sufficient extras to create a crowd of diehard followers, and the phantasm is nearly full. However with out strong music — the type that might actually promote the concept of a fandom-worthy worldwide sensation — the solid and crew behind The Concept of You knew the entire thing would crumble.
“We pulled from plenty of completely different bands for inspiration,” says music supervisor Frankie Pine. “The apparent one was One Path, however we additionally talked about Maroon 5, the basic boy bands, but in addition simply the main artists of right now.”
Pine isn’t any stranger to assembling fictional acts. During the last a number of years, she’s labored on Nashville, and, extra not too long ago, Prime Video’s smash-hit miniseries, Daisy Jones & The Six. When it got here to August Moon, she needed to contemplate their total creative journey — one thing that might make them really feel as plausible as doable when the viewers sees the band’s whirlwind world tour montage, dancing from one bought out stadium to the following.
The Concept of You
Courtesy of Prime
Discovering the right Hayes — a personality the creator says was impressed by an amalgamation of males, together with Prince Harry, Harry Types and a few of her exes — was essential. Director Michael Showalter and producer Cathy Schulman weren’t simply searching for somebody who had that immediate spark with Hathaway (and Galitzine’s chemistry with the actress is electrical), they needed somebody who might sing the movie’s unique songs himself.
Galitzine had beforehand proven off his musical talents in 2021’s Cinderella and in covers he’d posted through the years on YouTube. As soon as he got here in to audition, all the things began to return collectively. “As quickly as we heard his voice, it was like, ‘Oh, wow, we’ve actually bought one thing right here,’” lead songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha recollects.
Kotecha was in the course of a sabbatical in Sweden when The Concept of You script got here his method. “I simply began listening to the music,” he says. Kotecha had earned an Oscar nomination for his work on Eurovision Tune Contest: The Story of Fireplace Saga in 2020, but it surely was his earlier credit that really bought Showalter and Schulman. A former X Issue vocal coach, Kotecha labored with One Path, co-writing hits like “What Makes You Stunning,” and “Kiss You,” in addition to penning songs for pop powerhouses like Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, and The Weeknd.
Kotecha drew on these experiences for The Concept of You, “I used to be treating it like Hayes was an actual particular person,” he says. “Primarily based by myself experiences, and conversations that I’d had with artists, I do know who he could be, and what he could be feeling.”
He needed the songs for example August Moon’s evolution from shiny new boy band to radio mainstays. There was “Dance Earlier than We Stroll,” their bubbly, “teenybopper-ish” first single; “Style,” the edgier, sexier monitor from their sophomore album (“Simply inform me the place to go,” Galitzine croons. “I’ll be ensuring you get there first”); after which tracks like “Guard Down” and “Nearer,” that might illustrate the band’s makes an attempt to write down songs with extra substance and texture.
Galitzine had the singing and romantic chemistry on lock, however there was only one hurdle: “A few of us have been doing prep for the final 15 years of our lives by being skilled dancers,” he tells THR, with amusing, in a current video interview, pointing to his August Moon bandmates.
The answer was a boy band bootcamp — a couple of weeks of intensive coaching working with choreographer Dani Vitale, that additionally gave the group essential time to bond. So whereas Galitzine realized how one can excellent the easy swagger required of a pop star, the others practiced firming down their regular abilities. “We needed to find out how to not do an excessive amount of,” says White.
The Concept of You
Courtesy of Prime
“I simply needed to find out how to not stick out like a sore thumb,” Galitzine provides. “For me, it was extra about creating these little moments with one another on stage, I feel that’s what actually sells it.”
Lastly, they have been able to carry out. Inside a couple of brief days, they filmed August Moon’s fictional Coachella efficiency, and the pictures from their tour. “They made it really feel so related, I truthfully felt so at residence, being in that setting,” says Adan, whereas Galitzine acknowledges that it meant stepping out of his consolation zone. “It was fairly nerve-wracking, however I feel we have been all fairly emotional when it completed as a result of we had put a lot effort into it.”
For the remainder of the group, the Coachella scene capped off their time as August Moon, however Galitzine’s work was removed from over. With the tracks almost finalized, the actor flew to Sweden to satisfy with Kotecha to file lead vocals for the soundtrack. It was a crash course in pop stardom. “We did what we’d often do in three weeks in three days,” Kotecha says. “Nick was such a trooper.”
With out time to coach and construct an actual boy band from scratch, Kotecha and a few of his associates and collaborators rounded out the second and backing vocals for August Moon. Throughout these classes, he bought to know Galitzine on walks across the studio, with the actor asking for Kotecha’s insights as somebody who had seen these sorts of artists up shut.
“He actually took it significantly, which was precisely who Hayes Campbell was,” Kotecha says. “That’s what I cherished concerning the character, he had plenty of integrity. He needed to earn it, and Nick is similar method. He gave all the things to this function and to the classes in Sweden. It wasn’t all the time simple, however he simply made the songs come alive.”
A part of what initially drew Kotecha to the venture was that Hayes and the band weren’t the butt of a joke, the script wasn’t concerned with punching down on the concept of a boy band, which lends Hayes a way of vulnerability. At one level, he confides in Solène about his musical idol inviting him to his home, solely to search out out he was simply there to carry out for his tween daughter. And when Solène asks how he discovered himself in a boy band, he pokes on the machine surrounding the formation of August Moon, explaining that he and the others have been “simply polaroids on a wall,” archetypes like “the insurgent,” or “the brooding poet” introduced collectively to kind the right group.
“All these sorts of issues simply make him extra human,” Kotecha says. “I’ve been near it a couple of instances, so I do know that there are human beings concerned, and so they all have these inner struggles with impostor syndrome.”
That’s why, for him, the music — even the soundtrack’s most lighthearted bops — didn’t really feel like a parody. “I do know that the songs that work come from seeds of reality,” Kotecha says, sharing that whereas “What Makes You Stunning” grew to become One Path’s debut single, it was written about his personal spouse. “Reality all the time comes by way of, so I take these bands significantly, as a result of I’ve seen firsthand what they imply to folks. They offer folks a group, and that shouldn’t be a joke.”
Issues got here simply, at the least till it was time to write down the movie’s title monitor. “That was the toughest one to crack,” he admits. “I feel I constructed it up in my head, but it surely was simply actually essential to make it really feel completely different than August Moon.”
After a five-year time soar, the track would want to convey Hayes’ creative development, however extra importantly, the craving ballad needed to work as a grand romantic gesture — a message to Solène that he’s nonetheless pondering of her. The final track finalized for the movie was shot a couple of months after manufacturing had wrapped, when Galitzine had already begun his subsequent venture, Mary & George. His co-star, Julianne Moore, occurred to be filming a visitor spot on The Graham Norton Present, which proved to be the right alternative for Galitzine to swoop in and file his efficiency. He knew how essential it could be to nail it.
“We scurried on and filmed it in a couple of minutes,” the actor says. “As a Brit, it’s such an iconic present, I used to be simply pinching myself whereas making an attempt to remain in character, as a result of the entire traces have been improvised between me and Graham. It’s such a quick second, but it surely needed to really feel natural. We needed to present a maturity and worldliness to Hayes that felt according to him as an artist.”
With this expertise underneath his belt, Galitzine says the door has been opened to discover extra musical alternatives sooner or later. “I really feel like I realized an enormous quantity about myself engaged on this,” says Galitzine. “It was an extremely steep studying curve.” Although he’s not able to share any specifics, he does tease, “I’m setting some issues in movement already. I positively have a watch to the longer term for this kind of stuff.”