The anticipated new rom-com The Idea of You is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. If you’ve watched it through to the last scene, you may have noticed that the ending of The Idea of You differs from the book on which it’s based.
Starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, The Idea of You is adapted from Robinne Lee’s 2017 bestselling novel of the same name. The film follows the complicated love affair between a 40-year-old single mother (Hathaway) and Hayes Campbell (Galitzine), the lead singer of the popular boy band August Moon.
Ahead of the film’s release, some fans theorized on social media that The Idea of You was inspired by Harry Styles fan fiction. After all, Styles and Hayes share numerous similarities, like being in a five-member boy band, having a love for tattoos, and a history of dating older women.
But Lee debunked rumors that the book is based on fanfiction. In an essay penned for Time.com to correspond with the film’s release, she wrote: “Labeling it as ‘fluff’ or “’anfiction’—particularly when done by those who have not read it—is both reductive and dismissive.”
The author also denied that the book has a direct connection to Styles. “Assuming a novel with a fictional celebrity in a relationship must be based on an existing celebrity—in this case, the internet has decided, Harry Styles—is unimaginative at best and sexist at worst,” she wrote. In 2020, Lee told Vogue that Hayes drew inspiration from “Prince Harry-meets-Harry [Styles]”, ex-boyfriends, her husband, and “a dash” of actor Eddie Redmayne.
