People We Meet On Vacation Is The First Big Rom-Com Hit Of The Year. Emily Bader & Tom Blyth Say It’s Due To “All The Yearning”

For years, romance fans have been patiently waiting for our fave romance novels to be adapted into movies. During the onscreen rom-com drought of the past couple decades (with a few notable exceptions), romance novels were there, carrying the weight of depicting all the different ways we fall in love. For some reason, for a while Hollywood decided romantic intimacy wasn’t something people wanted to watch onscreen, but the billion-dollar book industry proves people want horny, smart, romantic stories. And Emily Henry is one of the genre’s most prolific and adored authors. Netflix’s People We Meet On Vacation, adapted from Henry’s novel and starring Tom Blyth and Emily Bader, is already a smash hit — and it’s only been streaming for a week. Blyth and Bader are Alex and Poppy, best friends who take vacations together, strictly as friends, until their carefully defined arrangement starts to feel less… defined. Their platonic trips take a turn and, well, romantic hijinks ensue. 

All anyone really wants from a good rom-com is great chemistry between its leads. When we met up with Henry and People We Meet On Vacation’s director Brett Haley at the film’s press junket in New Orleans, they told us that it was Blyth and Bader’s connection that made them know the movie would be something special. “I saw the chemistry read they did together and that was all it really took for me,” Henry said to Refinery29’s Dawnie Jefferson. Haley agreed: “The most important thing was the chemistry. And once we saw them work together, we knew that this was gonna work. I needed to see that oil and water thing happen, but I call it oil and vinegar — salad dressing when you shake it up. Delicious. That was them.” 

Blyth and Bader are great in the movie that actually improves on its source material (Henry teased that her next adaptation will be of her lauded novel, Beach Read) and embody their characters — Alex is a rule-following stickler and Poppy is a free-spirited nonconformist — with humor and heart. “Tom is nothing like Alex. He's a charismatic loose guy,” Haley said. “The only thing he has in common with Alex is that he's handsome.” Henry echoes that Blyth is “silly” in real life and we witness that vibe in person. During our interview, Blyth is funny and irreverent, getting distracted repeatedly by the chaotic noises flowing in from the New Orleans streets. And Bader, who both Henry and Haley said is similar to  her character Poppy, is playful and bubbly. Both actors were on the verge of starring in Netflix’s #1 movie (17.2 million views in its first weekend!) and unlocking a new level of success in both of their careers. It felt a bit like talking to a young Hanks and Ryan, and the duo cited When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail as their biggest inspirations for the movie. 

Here, Blyth and Bader talk about why men need to yearn more, Poppy and Alex’s attachment issues and how the movie’s already iconic dance scene came together.  

Emily Bader: Thank you! 

EB: The best trope? I think everyone's gonna have a different opinion about that but I do like enemies to lovers as well. I don't know if I could pick one, but I think people love it because it's about yearning. It's a lot of yearning.

Tom Blyth: Yearning is very in style at the moment,

EB: Has yearning ever gone out of style?

TB: No, but it's a whole thing right now. Everyone's loving yearning, apparently.

EB: I've loved yearning since I saw Pride and Prejudice.

TB: Fair enough! 

EB: That's an amazing question. 

TB: Why is it important to see men yearning on screen? You know why? Because men like to pretend that we're all tough and don't have a soft inside, but we have a big soft inside, and I think the yearning allows that to come out. Men should yearn. It puts you in a vulnerable place. And it's good to be vulnerable.

TB: Bada bing, bada boom!

EB: Bada bing. bada boom [laughs]. 

TB: Yeah, at times. Yeah. I can be quite romantic. Yes, definitely when I was a lot younger. I definitely yearned. Painfully yearned. And that's all I'm gonna say on that.

TB: I can see you wanting to push the line of questioning. I was like. No! [laughs]. No names.

EB: I'm a Poppy for sure.

TB: I think we are both more Poppy than Alex. Well, it depends. There are moments.

EB: You have Alex tendencies. Today, when you were doing the thing, it kind of made me open my mind. 

TB: We figured out I'm a grouchy traveler. I get quite stoic when I'm traveling. I just wanna get it done. It's a bit Alex.

EB: Just a little bit Alex.

EB: Kiss! 

EB: I think it's because, in their minds, if it goes wrong, the greatest friendship they've ever had goes away. And I think there's a very real possibility of that with them. If it really blew up in their faces at the end of the day, and they weren't compatible in that way, it would be hard to go back because they would've taken such a leap. They’re best friends. 

TB: I also think they've built up this expectation in their own mind of what their life is supposed to be like. Poppy's like, “I'm supposed to be free. I'm supposed to not have any things that hold me back or tie me down.” And Alex is the opposite. He thinks he's got to have stability. And he wants to live in Linfield where he grew up and he wants to be near his family. And I think sometimes putting expectations on yourself and other people is the death of change. And it holds you back and it stops you from being changeable and malleable. And that's what you need to be able to fall in love with someone and be vulnerable with someone. At the end, when they let go of their expectation of themselves and each other, they're able to realize how close they were all along.

EB: That's very good.

TB: I’m philosophizing a lot today.

EB: We had an awesome choreographer. We went to this church building when we landed in New Orleans — 

TB: We prayed for help [laughs]. 

EB: We said “Help us please learn how to dance. Give me rhythm.” [laughs] But we basically came up with ideas, things we'd seen in movies before, moves we wanted to incorporate, and strung them together with her help. She was really amazing.

TB: And the choreographer filmed us rehearsing it and doing it. And then she would show us how bad it was and say, “this could be better.” She was really supportive. We worked hard on that.

EB: And you can't improvise it because you need to shoot it from so many different angles. And it has to be the same.

TB: But it had to have an improvised feel because they're not dancers. They're two people just letting loose. And kind of falling in love while they're letting loose. And so it had to have that loose quality to it.

EB: Thank you so much. That was my big fear of mine.

TB: You didn't know you could dance either?

EB: Oh no, I didn't. I'm still not sure.

TB: Oh, you're so good.

EB: Put it on my resume!