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Lili Reinhart ‘definitely’ had notes for The Love Hypothesis movie, tried to protect fan-favourite moments | Interview
During the roundtable conversation, Lili was remarkably candid about taking on the role of the executive producer on this beloved book adaptation.
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Rom-coms used to be about more than getting two people together. 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. 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.
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.
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. During the roundtable conversation, Lili was remarkably candid about taking on the role of the executive producer on this beloved book adaptation.
Protecting Olive while making her own
Lili was closely involved in shaping Olive before cameras even started rolling. She had almost a year to work through the script with the team, and she wanted to make sure that the character felt natural when she spoke, rather than simply reproducing lines from the page.
“Yeah, I definitely had notes,” she explained. “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. I said, 'I'm an actor and I'm coming on to something, hopefully, the director or producers are choosing me for a reason because of what I can bring to the character. And a lot of times what I can bring is just my own perspective.' 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.”
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 women who shape Olive’s story
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.
Asked who plays the Anh-like role in her life, Lili immediately named her mother. "I mean, I have to always give credit to my mom. My mom is really genuinely my best friend. She's the person that takes the brunt of whatever I'm like. She's the person, if I'm feeling anxiety, she'll be like, 'Give it to me.' And that's a lot," she reflected. “My mom does it with such grace, but she also does it with every person in her life... I just watch my mom be the most giving person to her family. So my mom is the [Anh] of my life.”
That same idea of love being behind many of Olive's biggest decisions is something Reinhart sees as central to the film. Olive's work, her friendship with Anh and eventually her relationship with Adam are all connected by the people she cares about.
"I think Olive's love of her mother has led her to pursue... a very specific thing that she's researching for pancreatic cancer for the loss of her mother, and so I think love is a driving force for her throughout the whole movie," Reinhart concluded. “And then the love that she has for [Anh] leads her to do the fake dating, which is where she actually finds her own love. So it's almost like, you know, a chain effect where she's met her best friend, then she meets Adam and then she falls in love,” she added.
Lili Reinhart’s biggest green flag
Adam may have plenty of fans debating his green and red flags, but Lili has a much simpler idea of what makes someone a green flag. For her, it comes down to how a person makes others feel, especially in a room where they could easily choose to ignore people around them.
“An underrated green flag? I just think of my boyfriend (actor and writer Jack Martin). He's the biggest green flag to me of all time,” she noted warmly. “I think there are certain people where every room that they walk into, they leave and everyone goes, 'That person's so nice.' That's such a special person. KJ Apa from Riverdale also is that person. There's just an energy that someone can have where they really make an effort to make every person in the room feel seen. And I think someone who knows every crew member's name, my boyfriend does it, I saw KJ do it. It's just this connection and energy that these type of people have that I think is the biggest green flag of all time.”
Entering her 30s with a different mindset
Lili recently entered a different phase of her life. Turning 30 made her rethink some of the labels she had attached to herself in her twenties, especially when it came to her mental health. She says she has been making a conscious effort to focus more on joy and not let difficult emotions define her.
“I've been working on joy specifically, in the last year of my life,” she shared. “I sort of, in my 20s, really sat comfortably in those labels and sort of just identified myself as those things. I sort of comfortably said, 'Well, I'm depressed.' And sometimes, I think mentally, would use it as a scapegoat in a way to sort of not feel better, because life's hard. And so when things felt too hard, I kind of would just sweep it under the rug with all of these big words and not actually do the deeper work.”
She realised that she did not want those labels to become her identity. Instead, she wanted to acknowledge what she was going through without allowing it to dictate how she saw herself.
“I had to make a decision that I don't actually want that for myself. And I can be someone who experiences depression and anxiety, but I don't have to be it. And I had to actually make a conscious decision to make that flip in my brain and then choose to work towards that and to try and view things in an optimistic way, because the automatic roadmap in my brain was the negative,” she added.
That change has also made Lili Reinhart more aware of the small things that bring her happiness. One of them is cooking with her partner on Sunday nights, a simple routine that allows her to put her phone away and be present.
“Well, food is a big dopamine release for me. I've actually found a lot of, like, cooking,” she revealed. “Cooking on a Sunday night with my partner has become really a beautiful little ritual that we have 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. 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."
About The Love Hypothesis
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. 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 book also helped establish Ali's signature style of blending romance with academia, STEM and plenty of workplace tension. The movie premieres globally on Prime Video on September 23.
