The male is always the pawn in a romantic comedy. Come together, break up, go chase her, get her, roll credits. That’s what happens in all of them.

I got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ and I don’t know if you remember ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ but it’s dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him because she is a mermaid.

‚The Story of Us‘ is about running into someone I had been in a relationship with at an awards show, and we were seated a few seats away from each other. I just wanted to say to him, ‚Is this killing you? Because it’s killing me.‘ But I didn’t. Because I couldn’t. Because we both had these silent shields up.

If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office.

Romcoms are hard in a lot of ways: they’re built to be buoyant. It’s easy to demean them.