Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s ‘The Idea of You’ follows the complicated romance of Solene Marchand and Hayes Campbell. The story begins in Coachella, where they meet each other for the first time, quite unexpectedly. From there, the instant attraction between them develops into something more with each meeting, until they are completely head over heels for each other.
To play the role of Hayes, a popular singer from a famous boy band, actor Nicholas Galitzine did a lot of prep. He attended a boy band boot camp, brushed up on his singing, and learned complex choreography to bring the character alive on the screen. A huge part of Hayes’ persona is his many tattoos. Did Galitzine get them too?
Hayes’ Tattoos are Fake But Represent Different Aspects of His Life
While Hayes has a bunch of tattoos, actor Nicholas Galitzine doesn’t have any. The tattoos were picked to suit the character and the actor had to sit on a make-up chair for hours every day to get the tattoos. Later in the filming process, because the tattoos were so many, he would negotiate with the make-up artists about what tattoos were absolutely necessary for a particular scene. If a part of his skin was not going to be in the scene, he didn’t need to have tattoos painted on him for that day, which helped him and the team save a lot of precious minutes.
While the tattoos give a grungy look to Hayes, they are much more meaningful to him. Galitzine revealed that the tattoos were supposed to be the “tapestry of [Hayes’s] life,” giving the audience the details that otherwise don’t make it into the film. For example, the actor talked about the tattoo of a thistle on Hayes’ calf. This represents Hayes’ Scottish background. Though it doesn’t come up in the movie, while developing the character’s backstory, Galitzine gave a lot of thought to where Hayes really comes from. When it was decided that Hayes had Scottish roots, Galitzine wanted something that would represent that on the screen. He chose a thistle because it is the national flower of Scotland and its national emblem.
In the same vein, Galitzine considered other tattoos, scouring Pinterest for ideas, some of which could not be cleared and hence had to be rejected. He also talked about the line-drawing tattoo on Hayes’ back, which represents his romanticism and his desire to have an intimate connection with someone, which he later finds in Solene. Interestingly, the tattoos also become a point of comparison between Hayes and Harry Styles, who fans believe may have been the inspiration behind the August Moon singer.
While tattoos never really become the focus of the story, for Galitzine, they were an important way to understand Hayes. They were one of the few things that helped him get into the skin of the character, to feel like he really was Hayes in that moment, which helped enhance his performance on the screen.
Read More: The Idea of You: Why Does Hayes Leave His Watch for Solene?
