Bateman plays Dr. Adam Carlson in the Prime Video film 'The Love Hypothesis.' It’s only been a little over a year since Tom Bateman filmed The Love Hypothesis, but the actor’s been going nonstop since.
The 37-year-old is in Liverpool shooting his upcoming Netflix series The Woods, an adaptation of Harlan Coben’s novel. “It’s very, very different,” Bateman tells The Hollywood Reporter on a recent Zoom. “I’m loving it so much, but it’s such a pleasant, welcome gear shift to talk about The Love Hypothesis.”
Based on Ali Hazelwood’s 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.
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Before The Love Hypothesis, Bateman, had never waded into the romantic comedy waters. When his agent asked if he’d be interested in trying the genre out, he explained that he loves them. “I love the character. I love where he starts from and the journey he goes on where he finishes and all of those moments,” he says.
“I’m 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,” the actor adds. “There’s always something to chew on and play with and different ways to approach the scene.”
Bateman was hooked after he read the script. He apprecaited his character’s journey, but he also loved that the heartbeat of the story was between Rachel Marsh’s character Anh and Reinhart’s Olive. “I knew that so many of my friends, my family and my nieces, they were going to love watching this film,” he says. “It’s nice to be able to do work that you know they’d watch regardless if I was in it or not as well.”
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There’s always conversations when people get cast in these highly anticipated adaptations. Did you have any second thoughts? Are you online at all?
I’m not online, which protects me from all kinds of feedback, but I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff out there. No, I didn’t, to be honest. I kind of take everything at face value and I just had the script. If I’m completely honest with you, I didn’t know it was a book. I think my agent mentioned it. They didn’t 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’t know, maybe I’m just hopelessly naive. I didn’t 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’s so many brilliant things.
How do you feel about that?
We’re 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’ll do something and maybe people won’t see it or even hear of it. I’m guilty of it too, by the way. I’d never heard of some of my favorite shows this year that I’ve seen like Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, Margot’s Got Money Troubles. I’d never really heard of them because there’s so much out there, and it happens to be a recommendation you click on and you think everyone needs to watch these. They’re 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.
You’re in an interesting cycle, where maybe you’re not feeling it as much, but part of the job becomes promoting the thing you make. I’m sure that’s exhausting in a different way.
I’ve often thought there’s so many aspects of this job that isn’t this job, if you know what I mean? In fact, particularly, I do a lot of theater, and that’s a little bit more immediate. You get to do it every day. You’re 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’s so much of it that isn’t. If you actually clock in the amount of minutes that they go, “Action.” You’re 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’ve got down days. There is so much of our job that isn’t what we do, and selling it is part of it, promoting it. But I have to say, I do enjoy it. I’m 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’s not just the piece. You get to actually interact with people on a global level.
You haven’t done rom-coms before. I’ve heard other actors say they found them to be a bit difficult. Where do you land?
Interesting, because I’m of the belief, the character doesn’t know they’re in a comedy. They don’t know they’re in a romantic comedy. They shouldn’t, unless it’s a breaking fourth wall kind of obscure pastige piece. I have an awareness that you go, OK, this guy’s behavior is odd. It’s 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’s this. This is what he says about himself. What Olive says about him once you get throughout the piece, it changes. You go, who’s the real man? That was the work I was doing on my own before. Who’s this real guy? For me, even though this is in a romantic comedy, I approached him just as I approached Hedda or Thirteen Lives.
You build this person. I’m aware in the piece that people are kind of laughing at me, but I have to go, well, I don’t see that. I’m smart enough to understand. I know why they’re laughing at me. They’re 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’s kind of just going, I really don’t want people to laugh at me. I’ve been laughed at before. I’ve been made to feel stupid. I’ve been hurt, and I have learned that the way to protect myself against that is to be like this.
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