Film

Sofia Carson Talks ‘Purple Heart’s Intimacy & Telling a Love Story Through the Female Gaze

Lead Photo: Purple Hearts. (L to R) Sofia Carson as Cassie, Nicholas Galitzine as Luke in Purple Hearts. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022.
Purple Hearts. (L to R) Sofia Carson as Cassie, Nicholas Galitzine as Luke in Purple Hearts. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022.

Purple Hearts is, in many ways, the perfect kind of comfort movie. It appeals to the same instinct that makes people read fanfic, and it relies on one of the romance genre’s favorite tropes – fake dating/pretend relationship. But the movie is more than its central trope thanks to a spirited, emotional performance by its leads, Sofia Carson and Nicholas Galitzine, and a great soundtrack that has at least one song that is sure to get stuck in your head for weeks.

Carson, who didn’t just act and sing in this movie, but co-wrote the soundtrack too, talked to Remezcla about what makes the movie special and how having a female director allowed the movie’s romance to really flourish in a way that romances don’t typically get to explore.

The love story in Purple Hearts really starts “kind of backwards and inside out,” just as the fake dating/pretend relationship trope demands, because Cassie and Luke don’t really get to truly know each other, much less fall in love, until they’re already married. They’re also two very different people. Luke is a military man, and Cassie is a young woman who is “fueled by her passion for justice,” someone who has “been fighting for justice within an unjust system that’s been fighting against her.” This means that before they can truly fall in love, they have to learn to see each other as people, not stereotypes.

Purple Hearts. (L to R) Nicholas Galitzine as Luke, Sofia Carson as Cassie in Purple Hearts. Cr. Mark Fellman/Netflix © 2022.
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And Cassie, in general, and her relationship with her mother, in particular, were in some ways inspired by Carson herself and her own relationship with her mother. That’s why we see their closeness and their dynamics and get to experience them switching back and forth between Spanish and English, something Carson shared director Liz Allen was fascinated by, and wanted to make sure was reflected in the film. 

But in a movie that’s supposed to rest on Luke and Cassie’s relationship, on the romance, perhaps the most important – and groundbreaking – thing was how intimate and soft the scenes between the two main characters felt. The female gaze is a real thing, and Purple Hearts proves it. Carson explained how this came to be and shared that she really fought for Cassie and Luke’s first scene in the motel, the movie’s one sex scene to be “a scene of complete and utter intimacy and vulnerability,” rather than just something physical. 

Carson also shared that there was originally another sex scene in the script, which was changed to a soft moment with Cassie and Luke in bed. It’s the kind of moment that’s so tender it brings tears to your eyes, and Carson was really adamant it would work if it was just them holding each other. “I think there’s such a power to that, and it speaks volumes rather than going to something physical.”

Purple Hearts. (L to R) Sofia Carson as Cassie, Nicholas Galitzine as Luke in Purple Hearts. Cr. Mark Fellman/Netflix © 2022.
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In the end, fake-dating trope aside, Purple Hearts ends up being about two people who learn to take care of each other and, thanks to that, discover how to care for themselves. Before, they might have felt that “they could save themselves or that it made them less to let someone else in,” but thanks to their relationship Cassie and Luke found not just love, but an understanding of their own importance. 

It all culminates in a beautiful reunion scene that Carson shared wasn’t originally in the film. “We had finished the movie with the ending of Luke being taken to prison and Cassie waiting for him at the gate, hoping he comes back home,” she told us, adding that Netflix execs felt it was “important that audiences got to see Cassie and Luke again.”

We have to agree that the scenes, which were shot only a couple of months ago in Malibu, are the perfect bookend to a beautiful love story. “It was so cathartic and so beautiful to see them together because you really fell in love with them. And it’s such a beautiful feeling to see the happy ending that they’ve never had.”

Purple Hearts is now streaming on Netflix.