{"id":621874,"date":"2026-10-06T02:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T02:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/621874\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T02:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T02:48:12","slug":"tom-bateman-on-tackling-his-first-rom-com-with-the-love-hypothesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/621874\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Bateman on Tackling His First Rom-Com With ‘The Love Hypothesis’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s only been a little over a year since Tom Bateman<\/a> filmed The Love Hypothesis<\/a>, but the actor\u2019s been going nonstop since.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 37-year-old is in Liverpool shooting his upcoming Netflix series The Woods, an adaptation of Harlan Coben\u2019s novel. \u201cIt\u2019s very, very different,\u201d Bateman tells The Hollywood Reporter on a recent Zoom. \u201cI\u2019m loving it so much, but it\u2019s such a pleasant, welcome gear shift to talk about The Love Hypothesis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBased on Ali Hazelwood\u2019s romance novel of the same name, The Love Hypothesis has already been confirmed for a sequel at Prime Video, which announced shortly after the film dropped on the streamer Sept. 23. Bateman stars as Dr. Adam Carlsen alongside Lili Reinhart, who plays his love interest PhD student Olive Smith.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore The Love Hypothesis, Bateman, had never waded into the romantic comedy waters. When his agent asked if he\u2019d be interested in trying the genre out, he explained that he loves them. \u201cI love the character. I love where he starts from and the journey he goes on where he finishes and all of those moments,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m always fascinated with the tension within scenes and almost all of the scenes were wrought with this delicious, sometimes comedic, sometimes not so comedic tension,\u201d the actor adds. \u201cThere\u2019s always something to chew on and play with and different ways to approach the scene.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBateman was hooked after he read the script. He appreciated his character\u2019s journey, but he also loved that the heartbeat of the story was between Rachel Marsh\u2019s character Anh<\/a> and Reinhart\u2019s Olive. \u201cI knew that so many of my friends, my family and my nieces, they were going to love watching this film,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to be able to do work that you know they\u2019d watch regardless if I was in it or not as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s always conversations when people get cast in these highly anticipated adaptations. Did you have any second thoughts? Are you online at all? <\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m not online, which protects me from all kinds of feedback, but I\u2019m sure there\u2019s plenty of stuff out there. No, I didn\u2019t, to be honest. I kind of take everything at face value and I just had the script. If I\u2019m completely honest with you, I didn\u2019t know it was a book. I think my agent mentioned it. They didn\u2019t send me the book or anything. I just read the script and loved the part. Once I became aware of the huge fan base that this book has, I don\u2019t know, maybe I\u2019m just hopelessly naive. I didn\u2019t have any reservations about it. I just felt so excited that I got to be a part of bringing this thing to life that was already so important to people. In this world, where there are so many brilliant films and television series and podcasts and books. There\u2019s so many brilliant things. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBateman stars as Adam in \u2018The Love Hypothesis.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLenne Chai\/Amazon MGM Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tHow do you feel about that? <\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019re so spoiled in this world that we live in if you love almost anything really. Our access to things is so easy, that to create work amongst that noise that gets seen feels very wonderful for an actor. A lot of the time, you\u2019ll do something and maybe people won\u2019t see it or even hear of it. I\u2019m guilty of it too, by the way. I\u2019d never heard of some of my favorite shows this year that I\u2019ve seen like Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, Margot\u2019s Got Money Troubles. I\u2019d never really heard of them because there\u2019s so much out there, and it happens to be a recommendation you click on and you think everyone needs to watch these. They\u2019re so brilliant. All to say, I just thought how exciting that this has got a huge fan base already, that already people are so excited to see it.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re in an interesting cycle, where maybe you\u2019re not feeling it as much, but part of the job becomes promoting the thing you make. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s exhausting in a different way. <\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve often thought there\u2019s so many aspects of this job that isn\u2019t this job, if you know what I mean? In fact, particularly, I do a lot of theater, and that\u2019s a little bit more immediate. You get to do it every day. You\u2019re sort of immersed in it, that sort of immediacy with your audience is right there too. It is different with filming. Also, with filming, there\u2019s so much of it that isn\u2019t. If you actually clock in the amount of minutes that they go, \u201cAction.\u201d You\u2019re doing the thing that you love doing. If you did it within a day, you are maybe doing an hour a day, and then you\u2019ve got down days. There is so much of our job that isn\u2019t what we do, and selling it is part of it, promoting it. But I have to say, I do enjoy it. I\u2019m not just saying this, you get to talk to really interesting people like yourself. You get to have discussions in and around the piece. It\u2019s not just the piece. You get to actually interact with people on a global level. <\/p>\n

\n\tYou haven\u2019t done rom-coms before. I\u2019ve heard other actors say they found them to be a bit difficult. Where do you land? <\/p>\n

\n\tInteresting, because I\u2019m of the belief, the character doesn\u2019t know they\u2019re in a comedy. They don\u2019t know they\u2019re in a romantic comedy. They shouldn\u2019t, unless it\u2019s a breaking fourth wall kind of obscure pastige piece. I have an awareness that you go, OK, this guy\u2019s behavior is odd. It\u2019s perceived as odd. I read through everything that people say about him in it and made a list of like, right, this is how people perceive him. They think he\u2019s this. This is what he says about himself. What Olive says about him once you get throughout the piece, it changes. You go, who\u2019s the real man? That was the work I was doing on my own before. Who\u2019s this real guy? For me, even though this is in a romantic comedy, I approached him just as I approached Hedda or Thirteen Lives.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou build this person. I\u2019m aware in the piece that people are kind of laughing at me, but I have to go, well, I don\u2019t see that. I\u2019m smart enough to understand. I know why they\u2019re laughing at me. They\u2019re wrong, without bringing the mood down, it came from a place of pain and looking after himself. This man is in this ridiculous position and situation. He\u2019s kind of just going, I really don\u2019t want people to laugh at me. I\u2019ve been laughed at before. I\u2019ve been made to feel stupid. I\u2019ve been hurt, and I have learned that the way to protect myself against that is to be like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s only been a little over a year since Tom Bateman filmed The Love Hypothesis, but the actor\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69,249315,249316],"class_list":["post-621874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-the-love-hypothesis","tag-tom-bateman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}