Anyone But You Director Defends Goofy Homage to the Bard

The director of “Anyone But You,” Will Gluck, says someone else is responsible for the film’s “cringe scenes”.

Some may not know this, but “Anyone But You” is somewhat inspired by William Shakespeare’s play “Much Ado About Nothing.”

This film features Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell as Bea and Ben. They don’t like each other, but still, they pretend to be a couple even though they don’t like each other.

During the chat with the Letterbox director, Gluck opens up about Anyone But You’s cringy scenes:

“It’s funny because even my favorite of all the Letterboxd reviews say, ‘Oh, there’re so many cringe scenes.’ I say, ‘Well, which ones are cringe?’ ‘Oh, the goofy part when the dad and the brother over-act loudly.’ And then I just have to say, ‘That is directly from William Shakespeare.’ All the cringe scenes in this movie are taken directly from William Shakespeare. The tropes that all the romantic comedies have now, he started it back in sixteen-whatever. That’s where they began. So, yes, you’ve seen it millions of times, but this was honoring the goofiness of that.”

He further added

“I also truly believe that, for some reason, when we watch movies, we expect the characters to be the smartest people in the world, [as if] it’s the first time they’ve ever been through this, the first time a guy’s ever liked a girl in the world and never does anything goofy and silly. And yet in the real world, every interaction I have, you have, is ‘I just cannot believe you’ve done that. It’s so goofy, it’s so silly, I feel like such an idiot.’ So I try to walk the line between what would really happen—and it was even more goofy in Shakespeare, it was even crazier in the original play. So my conversation is more with the play, I’d say.”

Despite mixed critics, Anyboot performed well at the global box office, earning an estimated $200 million.