To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before Fun Facts

Lara Jean (Lana Condor) had crushes on a bunch of different dudes in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, including instant fan-favorite Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo). But Centineo almost played another one of Lara’s crushes, Josh—that is, until director Susan Johnson saw how much chemistry Lana and Noah had from the onset.

“When we did chemistry reads, I knew I loved Israel, and I knew I loved Noah, but I wasn’t sure who would play which role,” she told IndieWire. “I initially was thinking of Noah for Josh, because I thought, ‘Oh, he seems like boy next door,’ but then once I saw Lana and Noah’s chemistry I knew we had to go that direction. Israel was great with Janel. I thought that fit really well.”

Hollywood has been preaching the importance of representation for quite some time, but it wasn’t until recently that we finally started to see a turning point. From Black Panther to Crazy Rich Asians and even TATBILB joining in with an Vietnamese-American lead. However, author Jenny Han revealed in an essay she wrote for The New York Times that producers tried to coax her to whitewash the characters.

“Even before the book came out in 2014, there was interest in making a movie. But the interest died as soon as I made it clear the lead had to be Asian-American,” she wrote. “One producer said to me, as long as the actress captures the spirit of the character, age and race don’t matter. I said, well, her spirit is Asian-American. That was the end of that.”

There’s a scene in TATBILB where the camera focuses on Lara’s iPhone l0ckscreen, which shows a photo of her and Peter napping on a couch. As perfect as that photo was for the scene, turns out it wasn’t intended for the movie and was actually a shot of Lana and Noah sleeping on set.

“The two of them were in the green room on set at the high school location, in the area where we put the actors,” Johnson said to ET Online. They actually were sleeping on the couch in that room like that, so we just stood over them and took that picture and it’s so friggin’ cute.”

The steamy hot tub scene, you know when Lara leaps over to Peter and gives him a big ol’ smooch, seemed almost too perfect and that’s mainly due to the characters’ off-screen chemistry.

“We went to the hot tub all the time in our apartments and stuff,” Condor said to People. “The transition was super easy to bring to the camera. I’m so blessed to have worked with him—he’s an awesome guy.”

Centineo once approached Condor to go over their lines in the beginning of production, but Condor declined. That didn’t stop the two from developing a strong friendship.

The on-screen lovebirds also strengthened their chemistry by attending hot yoga classes when they first met.

“Very early on in the stages of production, we went to yoga together. It was hot yoga and I feel like that maybe was the moment where we became friends outside of work as well,” she recalled. “You know, doing yoga with a person is kind of intimate so I think doing that [at the beginning of] shooting, really helped us connect and feel comfortable around each other.”

In the scene when Lara and Chris arrive at the ski lodge, they begin to discuss Chris attending an EDM concert, which was never written in their script. Madeleine Arthur (Chris) told Shine On Media that the scene was actually “ad-libbed.”

Noah Centineo’s character Peter Kavinsky was almost played by Jordan Bruchett, who ended up playing Lara’s model UN crush John Ambrose McClaren.

Director Susan Johnson told ET, per People, that John would have a bigger role in the sequel and cause trouble for Peter and Lara Jean. “We’re so invested in Peter and Lara Jean, that seeing them go through struggles is going to be hard but also something everybody can relate to,” Johnson said. “The next shiny face comes in and you’re like, ‘Oh shoot, this guy’s really nice too. What do I do?’ ”

The cast members of the film had a lot of room to improvise in their scenes, including the scene where Kavinsky had a pillow fight with Lara Jean’s younger sister and moved the bowl of popcorn on the floor. Everyone knows that pillow fights can get messy, and Peter Kavinsky made sure his (fake) girlfriend and her sisters wouldn’t have to do any hard labor afterwards. A MAN.