Hitting the Road
As Paramount+ brings to the screen an adaptation of Beth O’Leary romcom novel The Road Trip, the cast and crew tell DQ about the numerous changes they’ve made to the source material, filming on a virtual production stage, and why the main star of the show isn’t one of the human characters.
Question: How can you fit five adults and an entire camera crew into a Mini Cooper?
Answer: Er, you can’t.
That explains a key change from the source material in Paramount+’s new six-part drama The Road Trip, an adaptation of Beth O’Leary’s novel. In the book, the “star” vehicle, where much of the action takes place, is a Mini Cooper. But for the purposes of this comedy drama, the producers made the wise and pragmatic decision to switch to a far roomier camper van.
The shift makes perfect sense. In a Mini, there is no space to swing a cat, let alone a boom mic. So, on a quiet street in Clifton, Bristol, one grey day, the five main characters are piling into a camper for the eponymous trip to a friend’s wedding in the rather sunnier climes of Spain.
But there’s a snag – of course there is, it’s a drama. The claustrophobia within the van raises the already heightened tension between the two protagonists, exes Addie (Emma Appleton) and Dylan (Laurie Davidson), who haven’t seen each other since a disastrous breakup two years earlier.
The presence in the van of three other tricky customers – Dylan’s egotistical best pal Marcus (David Jonsson), Addie’s forthright half-sister Deb (Isabella Laughland) and Rodney (Angus Imrie), a nerdy work colleague of the bride – only adds to the potential for conflict. En route to Spain, it soon becomes clear there is a sixth lead character in the drama: the camper van.
Filmed in Gran Canaria as well as Bristol, The Road Trip is produced by 42 in association with Paramount Television International Studios. Debuting on Paramount+ on December 26, this romcom explores the idea that you can meet the right person, just at the wrong time.
The lead director, China Moo-Young (who previously partnered with Appleton on Everything I Know About Love), cites road movies such as Captain Fantastic and Little Miss Sunshine as inspirations. “Shooting in vehicles is always challenging. Shooting with five characters in a Mini would have been impossible,” she says of the decision to film The Road Trip in a camper rather than a Mini.
“Then there’s the [virtual production] methodology we used, shooting in something called an LED volume stage in Madrid. You shoot the environment you’re driving in, and then inside a studio those plates are played back on screens so the camera can capture everything at once, plus the cast can see the scenery – unlike conventional green screen.”
To make it even more lifelike, “you blow wind at them and bounce the vehicle on a gimbal – it’s like a hybrid of doing theatre in a van and doing something very technologically challenging and ground-breaking.”
The cast admit the LED stage took some getting used to. According to Appleton, “it was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done. It’s like a really slow video game, but as someone who doesn’t drive and is quite nervous about driving, I found it quite fun.
“It turns out if you go in a driving simulator, it really builds your confidence! I think it worked well. It meant we could focus on the acting and not being up a mountain road somewhere in Gran Canaria.”
Laughland chimes in: “It was bizarre, being surrounded by these screens and being rocked. I felt so tired on the first day. It was a such a gentle, lovely rock, and with all these landscapes going past, I felt like a baby!”
The writers, Matilda Wnek and Ryan O’Sullivan, who are a couple in real life, felt immediately drawn to the romcom at the heart of The Road Trip. O’Sullivan recalls: “Straight away, we felt it had that really strong hook you need for a romantic comedy. Some of the more fantasy escapist romcoms, not everyone can relate to – meeting your soulmate on a train to Vienna [for example].
“But almost everyone can relate to having an ex, having unfinished business, having someone who, if you bumped into them, your stomach would turn, and you’d be in heaven and hell at the same time. We just loved that idea.”
Wnek adds: “We’re a couple. We’ve been a couple for a while. We broke up and got back together, so we felt like we had a lot to bring to it. And we never had couples therapy, so we were like, ‘This is perfect for us!’”
Romcoms are having a bit of a moment on TV right now. O’Leary, who has previously had another of her novels, The Flatshare, adapted as a hit drama of the same name, observes: “One thing I love about the TV format rather than film is that a book adaptation gives you so much more room. With a film, you’re having to trim and reshape, whereas with a TV series you can actually do the opposite and delve more deeply into storylines that perhaps had less space in the book.”
Executive producer Miriam Brent agrees. “Beth always creates such a great tapestry of characters, looking at love and relationships from different perspectives in quite an Austen-esque way, and TV gives you a much better ability to explore all of those things. Now obviously with the success of One Day and Nobody Wants This and so on, it feels like, ‘Romcom on TV? Of course!’”
One element that distinguishes The Road Trip is the sheer variety of locations afforded by Gran Canaria. Moo-Young says: “Gran Canaria provides a great continuity of locations. In the north, it’s luscious and verdant, and in the south, it’s barren and desert-like. Plus there are a lot of different types of roads, which gave us the ability to recreate the gang’s journey driving across Spain.”
Also, in Gran Canaria, “you get consistent weather, unlike shooting in the UK, where you’ll get sheeting rain for three days and bright sunshine for two. Mind you, we shot in Bristol. I also went to uni there, and the only thing they didn’t tell you before you arrived was that it rains all the time!
“But I’m a huge fan of filming in Bristol. The different textures of architecture there are fantastic – from Georgian townhouses to 1970s brutalist blocks and everything in between. It’s a hugely diverse city, so crowd casting there was brilliant too.”
The final change the drama makes from the book is relocating the road trip from Scotland to Spain. Outlining the thinking behind that alteration, Wnek says: “A lot of the changes are escalations in scale. Spain yields these incredible cinematic landscapes. And of course, if you’re picturing the ensemble, trapped in a van with pretty bad air conditioning on these hot, secluded desert roads, things get more and more emotionally intense.”
How did O’Leary feel about moving the road trip from Scotland to Spain, then? “I have to say, the team have done an amazing job of keeping that vibe with a different and more visually exciting setting. And actually, I love the symmetry of their journey taking Addie and Dylan back to the exact villa where it all began. I think that’s so smart, and really adds a layer to the story.”
However, “I’m going to give you a totally honest answer to this – I slightly miss the UK setting for the road trip itself – I just loved the absolute lack of glamour of a British road trip versus the 25 iconic ones we usually see on screen.
“The M3 is so comically dull!”
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tagged in: 42, Angus Imrie, Beth O’Leary, China Moo-Young, David Jonsson, Emma Appleton, Isabella Laughland, Laurie Davidson, Matilda Wnek, Miriam Brent, Paramount, Paramount Television International Studios, Ryan O’Sullivan, The Road Trip