It’s official: Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation adaptation finally feels more real now that we can put faces to our Poppy and Alex. The news broke on Friday, August 2nd, when director Brett Haley shared a video with My Lady Jane’s Emily Bader to publicly ask her if she’d officially like to play their Poppy Wright. She was then joined by the production’s Alex Nilsen, who’ll be portrayed by none other than Tom Blyth.
The screenplay is penned by the remarkable Yulin Kuang, whose debut romance novel, How to End a Love Story, was released earlier this year. Whether People We Meet on Vacation is a reader’s favorite Emily Henry book or not, there’s no doubt in my mind that this cast is going to ensure that the adaptation is beloved. People have been fan-casting various actors into the role for years, but this decision could not be more perfect.
This is especially the case because Emily Bader is fantastic when it comes to portraying complex characters with layers and layers to uncover, and Poppy Wright is most certainly Henry’s most complex heroine. Poppy and Alex’s journey is the one that grows and evolves the most, so it will be riveting to see how she’ll show the progression of the Poppy we meet and the one we leave behind.
And Tom Blyth floored me in The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes, so there’s no doubt that his embodiment of Alex’s complexities will bring fantastic content to our screens. Emily Henry herself joins the video afterward to voice her hearty excitement for the casting, which imaginably, made her anxious. (Which author wouldn’t be in this case is my question?) Still, this is a tremendous, exciting win for the romance girlies.
Related Content: Everything We Know About Netflix’s People We Meet on Vacation
As a friends-to-lovers romance that later becomes somewhat of a second chance, People We Meet on Vacation is one of Henry’s angstiest stories, but dare I hope that the production will amplify that angst even more? Bader and Blyth are both exceptional at portraying a wide range of emotions, so it’d be profoundly compelling to watch them bring to life the longing present within the characters. In other words, with these two at the helm, this adaptation is bound to be extraordinary.