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If you’ve ever fantasised about Bridgerton breakout Regé-Jean Page sweeping you off your feet, then I’m here to tell you that Halle Bailey is living the dream.
In fact, I would argue no one spent a better summer last year than the two protagonists of the brand new rom-com, You, Me and Tuscany.
Just to paint the scene: The pair of actors spent six weeks in the titular Italian town, immersed in vineyards, taking in the golden sunrises and pretending to fall madly in love with each other – a pretty sweet deal, to say the least.
Of course, I absolutely wasn’t jealous when Metro sat down with Halle and director Kat Coiro ahead of the movie’s release to discuss all the juicy details of the filming experience.
To catch you up, the endearing new movie, written by Ryan Engle, follows NYC gal Anna (Halle), whose life (and ambitions to become a chef) have come to a standstill since the death of her mother.
Now a housesitter living vicariously through her clients, one day she meets a handsome Italian man (aka ‘random rich white boy’), Matteo, who reveals he has left behind an empty villa in Tuscany to get away from his family.
In a spur-of-the-moment plan, she packs her bag, flies to Italy, and, through various rom-comesque circumstances, finds herself breaking into Matteo’s abandoned home, where she becomes his fake fiancée (it’s a long story).
It’s all going swimmingly until Matteo’s adopted brother, wine connoisseur Michael (Regé), rocks up on the scene and steals Anna’s heart in the process.
Essentially, much like Anna’s delicious recipes, it’s got the perfect ingredients for a sunny romance that will have you kicking your feet and giggling away with your friends.
It was just Halle and just Regé. Basically, if they had said no, we wouldn’t have made the movie, is how we felt – director Kat
During one scene, Michael and Anna are singing Mario’s sexy hit, Let Me Love You, to one another, which was an absolute delight to film, as the Little Mermaid actor recounts.
‘Just to watch Rege perform and serenade Anna’s character, it was a joyous moment on set.
‘Everybody was laughing, and we were all very impressed by Regé’s vocals. It was pretty darn good. I told him: “You killed that”.
‘Everybody loves the Mario song [Let Me Love You], and it’s near and dear to our hearts. I remember when I first heard that song. When you hear it, you’re taken back. That was a great one to choose for that moment because it’s universal and sweet.’
Hearing the fond way Halle talks about working with Regé, 38, you would be forgiven for thinking the pair had long known each other. But, as Kat explains, they were both cast separately and only met a few weeks before the cameras started rolling.
She says: ‘In some movies, you have a big list of people that you go through. Here, it was just Halle and just Regé. Basically, if they had said no, we wouldn’t have made the movie, is how we felt.’
Drawn to Halle’s ‘natural openness, authenticity and kindness that allows Anna to get away with literal crime’, they were then searching for a Black lead from a European background who could match the ‘gravity’ of the role, which led them straight to Regé.
He is such a perfect package that when I ask if they could see any potential for him to one day play James Bond, Kat agrees without hesitation.
'14-karat film fluff': You, Me & Tuscany review
By Senior Film Reporter, Tori Brazier
You, Me & Tuscany is exactly as advertised: a sun-dappled fantasy with barely an original thought in its head. But handled competently, and with two appealing leads in Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page, that’s not really a problem.
Bailey is Anna, a house sitter we first encounter trying her client’s life on for size in an indulgently glamorous montage that’s clearly as nostalgic as us for noughties romcoms. But she’s actually a broke culinary school drop-out whose ticket to a new life takes the shape of wealthy Italian Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor) during a hotel bar meet-cute.
For reasons we don’t need explaining, she heads to his empty villa in Tuscany, which treats viewers to property porn on the level of Kate Winslet’s cottage in The Holiday.
The film gives glossy travel vibes just like Emily in Paris. A man singing opera wakes her up, a friendly taxi driver is too invested in her love life (in a non-creepy way).
Obviously, her and Page’s Michael antagonise each other at first, leading to one of the film’s best lines as Anna tells him he should be nicer to her as they are the only two people – ‘speaking English’, he smoothly interjects.
But she is pretending to be his brother’s fiancée, and crossed wires, an interfering family, a fistfight, and a shirt clinging to a wet torso will all inevitably follow.
It’s preposterously unrealistic and idyllic, but I found myself not caring. In this cinematic universe, nearly every man is a handsome winemaker. And that’s exactly as it should be, just as Anna will find love in Italy rather than being arrested for the litany of crimes she’s (charmingly) committed.
You, Me & Tuscany is a cheesy and simple fantasy, 14-karat film fluff that won’t change the world – but will give your brain a welcome break from it.
RATING: 3/5
She notes: ‘He really does bring that pathos and gravitas. There’s a seriousness to him that we really needed for this film, because the film is very silly, and you needed this person to contrast Anna’s chaos.
‘So I think he would be perfect [for Bond].’
By pure chance, the newly cast pair met one another at the Met Ball and instantly hit it off (although Halle confirms she had been ‘a huge fan of him’ since Bridgerton, much like the rest of the world).
The singer reminisces: ‘When I saw Regé, I was very excited. So we made a beeline for each other, and we’re like: “We’re gonna be in Italy together next month, right? Yada yada.”
‘Then we were watching Usher’s performance all night, and Stevie Wonder came out. It was incredible. It was definitely the best first meeting icebreaker at a party like that.’ The rest, as they say, is history.
It’s no surprise that Halle describes her entire time in Tuscany as ‘unforgettable’ and ‘like a dreamland’.
‘I had never seen any vast vineyards that [stretch] far. It’s a place I go in my dreams [when] you’re lying in an open field. I’ve never seen one like that until I got to Tuscany. It was incredible. I felt like I was in a painting every single day, and I found some hot springs that I loved,’ she says.
When it came to bringing this movie to life, there was a lot to contend with, from the stunning location to the cultural context of Halle and Regé as two Black leads.
I feel grateful that I’m a part of a movie that has two black leads, and it’s crazy that we say that it’s rare for that in rom-coms – Halle Bailey
Neither of them underestimates just how much a movie like this means to the Black community, where representation like this in the romance genre is still few and far between.
Acknowledging the buzz of excitement online, Halle says: ‘It’s meant everything, honestly, to see the fans’ reaction to our rom-com.
‘I feel grateful that I’m a part of a movie that has two black leads, and it’s crazy that we say that it’s rare for that in rom-coms. It shouldn’t be that way, but it’s really nice that we have, especially a studio like Universal, backing us for a film like this.
Then adds: ‘It’s important that we do see ourselves on screen, and we do know that we can be joyful and travel and be on vacation and go through life and make mistakes, but come out greater, just like we all do,’ also noting with delight that this is the first time she has worked with a female director.
I feel very much like I have it together some days, then don’t have it all figured out other days – Halle Bailey
There are plenty of moments woven into the movie that Black women especially will be able to relate to. Like when Michael and Anna get caught in the vineyard sprinklers, and the latter makes a run for it to save her edges.
As Halle reflects: ‘It would be weird if we didn’t mention that edges in water get ruined. It would be weird if Anna didn’t wear a durag at night cause that’s just what a young black woman would do. It’s really cool to see that in a movie like this.’
And Kat was all ears for suggestions, praising the cast for sharing their insights on how to elevate the movie to the next level.
More widely, both Kat and Halle hope this movie can help young women in their 20s who are still figuring it out feel seen.
It seems to have worked so far, with the 26-year-old sharing she felt a close kinship to the role.
‘I feel very much like I have it together some days, then don’t have it all figured out other days. I just really admired how it was a real reflection of a young woman right now, today,’ she says.
Kat poignantly concludes: ‘We talked a lot about on set about how [in order] to become a bad ass middle-aged woman, you have to make these mistakes as a 20-something woman.
‘We live in a time where people are so afraid of making mistakes, so afraid of putting themselves out there, so afraid of failure.
‘But it really is through our failures and through our chaos that we define who we are, and to me, this [movie] is the beginning of Anna’s journey into becoming a full [woman].’
You, Me and Tuscany arrives in UK cinemas on Friday, April 10.
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