“Crazy Rich Asians screenwriters break down their script for Rachel and Eleanor’s first meeting”

In conversation with Entertainment Weekly, screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim dissect a key scene from Crazy Rich Asians.

From Entertainment Weekly:

In Kevin Kwan’s best-seller, Rachel (Constance Wu) meets Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), the imposing mother of her boyfriend Nick (Henry Golding), while surrounded by Eleanor’s friends, but screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim wanted to make the pivotal sequence more intimate on screen.

“In the end, you want to pare it down to Rachel, Nick, and Eleanor,” Lim says. “Eleanor is such a key figure, it felt like she deserved her own space in this scene.”

That wasn’t the only change the two made for their adaptation: In the novel, Rachel and Eleanor’s first interaction involves an awkward offering of mandarin oranges, from the former to the latter. (Rachel had asked her mother what she should bring, and her mom was trying to be helpful by mentioning mandarin oranges as a traditional gift.) Eleanor immediately thinks Rachel’s a fool for presenting her with a gift better suited for Chinese New Year than for meeting the parents — and things only go downhill from there, as Eleanor’s henchwomen begin interrogating Rachel about her job, her family, and even her salary.

Chiarelli and Lim did their best to keep as many details as possible (the pair tried hard to incorporate the oranges, which “didn’t go so well,” Chiarelli admits), but they knew they wouldn’t be able to make the scene match exactly what happened in the book. Their goal wasn’t to adapt every word; it was to make it clear from the first meeting that Rachel and Eleanor came from different backgrounds, and therefore had different values — even if they’re both Asian. “In something like The Big Sick, you obviously get, like, ‘Oh, this is a Pakistani guy going out with a white blond girl.’ You see what the issue is,” Lim says. “With this one, she’s a Chinese woman, so why is this happening? And she’s doing well, she’s not like a surfer with tattoos. Why is Eleanor so against her? So the big thing became, it’s because she is essentially different.”

EW has an exclusive script page from the scene below:

Here is a trailer for Crazy Rich Asians:

The movie is expected to gross over $30M for its five-day opening weekend and has an A CineScore rating. Looks on it way to be a hit movie!

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For the rest of the Entertainment Weekly article, go here.