The best ones made you care about who those people were, what they had lost, what they wanted and why falling in love mattered to them. Rom-coms used to be about more than getting two people together. For audiences who grew up watching romances and the big love stories of the 1990s and early 2000s, that emotional connection was often the whole point. That kind of romance is making its way back to the screen, and American actor and Riverdale alum Lili Reinhart is part of that shift.
Hindustan Times got an early look at the film during Obsessed Retreat: Class of ’26, set against the crisp backdrop of the Bavarian Alps just outside Munich last week in Germany. Her upcoming film The Love Hypothesis , adapted from Ali Hazelwood’s popular novel, follows Olive Smith, a brilliant scientist who finds herself caught in a fake-dating arrangement with Adam Carlsen ( Tom Bateman ). On paper, it sounds like a familiar romantic comedy setup. But Lili was drawn to the chance to make the story feel more emotional and character-driven rather than simply relying on the usual rom-com formula. During the roundtable conversation, Lili was remarkably candid about taking on the role of the executive producer on this beloved book adaptation.
I’ve actually found a lot of, like, cooking,” she revealed. “I got the script. I luckily and we had a whole year to sort of massage it before we filmed. And so I just had basically thoughts about Olive. And a lot of times what I can bring is just my own perspective. She wanted the words to feel like something Olive would genuinely say, rather than something an actor was simply reciting. She went onto say, “It’s sort of this thing I have where it’ll just feel like fake acting—it’ll feel like bad acting to me—if the words aren’t fully sitting well in my body. But it was a collaborative process, and I was able to implement who I thought Olive was from the book. You can only do so much when it’s a book-to-movie adaptation. You can’t squeeze everything in there. But I really tried to protect as much as possible, and as many of those fan-favorite moments as possible. The film may revolve around Olive and Adam, but her friendship with Anh is just as central to her journey. Her bond with her late mother also plays a major role in shaping who she is and why she chooses to work on pancreatic cancer research. “Well, food is a big dopamine release for me. We don’t need to look at anything. We’re not watching TikTok. There’s no movie on in the background. We’re listening to music and cooking. And I think that’s actually become something to look forward to. Claire Scanlon, who directed the Netflix rom-com Set It Up, is at the helm of the film. The screenplay has been penned by Sarah Rothschild, who also wrote The Sleepover, with Elizabeth Cantillon serving as the producer. The book also helped establish Ali’s signature style of blending romance with academia, STEM and plenty of workplace tension.
Ali Hazelwood’s story first began as Star Wars-inspired Reylo fan fiction before evolving into the novel that became a bestseller after its 2021 release by Berkley. The movie premieres globally on Prime Video on September 23. Because of what I can bring to the character, i said, ‘I’m an actor and I’m coming on to something, hopefully, the director or producers are choosing me for a reason. So if it’s even like one line that I need to shift it in a way so that it comes organically out of my mouth like the way that it’s written on the page. I just need to massage it a little bit so that I can fully feel it in my body before it comes out. Because i love being able to do something without my phone for like two hours, or something like prepping food, doing something that we know the recipes, “Cooking on a Sunday night with my partner has become really a beautiful little ritual that we have.
“Yeah, I definitely had notes,” she explained.
