Readers who found themselves deeply identifying with and falling for January Andrews from Emily Henry‘s novel, Beach Read, know thatBridgerton‘sPhoebe Dynevor has big shoes to fill. But Collider is happy to report that Dynevor is more than up for the task. In February, Dynevor was announced as the lead for the upcoming adaptation of Henry’s debut novel, which skyrocketed the author herself to massive success.
One of Henry’s other works, People We Meet on Vacation, has already been adapted for the screen, with Emily Bader (My Lady Jane) and Tom Blyth (The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) as the romantic leads; it was a streaming success in its own right. The age of rom-coms is back, and for those who have followed Dynevor since Bridgerton and beyond, it’s exciting to see her step into the role of a modern rom-com leading lady.
For an upcoming episode of Collider Ladies Night, Dynevor sat down with Collider’s Perri Nemiroffto discuss her upcoming survival thriller, Thrash. During their wide-ranging conversation, Dynevor spoke about returning to the rom-com world with the role of January Andrews. “There’s so many reasons why I’m very excited about this project,” Dynevor told Nemiroff. The story follows novelist January, who attempts to get through a severe case of writer’s block on the coast of Lake Michigan. She runs into Augustus “Gus” Everett, a literary author, in a neighboring home. They agree to spend the summer writing in each other’s genres and, shocking no one, fall in love in the process.
With Henry working closely with writer/director Yulin Kuang on the film, the adaptation is in good hands. “Emily Henry is obviously huge in the book world. But this book in particular, Beach Read, the characters are so well-developed. They have such rich backstories,” Dynevor told Collider.
Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey’s Anatomy · House · Scrubs
Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.
🚨The Pitt
🏥ER
💉Grey’s
🔬House
🩺Scrubs
01
A critical patient comes through the door. What’s your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.
02
Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you’d give in an interview.
03
What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.
04
You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who’s worked a long shift has had to answer this question.
05
How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.
06
How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.
07
What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What’s yours?
08
At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.
Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center
The Pitt
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn’t let you look away.
You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
You’ve made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.
County General Hospital, Chicago
ER
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.
You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
ER is television about endurance. You have it.
Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, Seattle
Grey’s Anatomy
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.
You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
It’s messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.
Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, NJ
House
You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn’t fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.
You’re not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you’d deny it.
You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they’re smart enough to keep up.
The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.
Sacred Heart Hospital, California
Scrubs
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.
You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that’s not a flaw, it’s a survival strategy.
You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.
Dynevor Says It’s “Crazy” Not Knowing Who Her Gus Everett Is
When pressed about who her co-star is, Dynevor claimed she doesn’t know who the Gus to her January is. There had been an internet campaign for a long while for Logan Lerman to take on that role, but with his recently announced role in the upcoming reboot of 13 Going On 30, that possibility has greatly dwindled. “But maybe by the time this comes out, we’ll know,” Dynevor joked, suggesting an announcement may be right around the corner. However, at the time of publishing this story, Gus’ identity remains a mystery.
She did admit that it’s “crazy” to be in this liminal space, knowing she’s playing the romantic lead, without knowing who will be playing opposite her. She told Collider, “I’m also seeing all the fans and who they’d like, and often I’m like ‘Yeah! He’d be great! Is he available?'”
Ultimately, for Dynevor, “It’s always fun to go back into the romance world.” She speaks fondly of her memories of being number one on the call sheet for Bridgerton as she approaches being number one on the call sheet for Beach Read. She spoke fondly of her impending return to the rom-com world, telling Nemiroff:
“It’s been a while since I’ve been able to do that. Well, since Bridgerton, really. So it felt like all the pieces were in place to make like a really beautiful romance film [that] hopefully everyone will see. And hopefully the people that love the book will enjoy, and we’ll also get a new audience.”
Stay tuned for Dynevor’s episode of Collider Ladies Night and rewatch her time as Daphne Bridgerton on Netflix now.
Release Date
December 22, 2020
Network
Netflix
Directors
Tom Verica, Tricia Brock, Alex Pillai, Alrick Riley, Bille Woodruff, Cheryl Dunye, Sheree Folkson, Julie Anne Robinson
