Emily Bader Thinks We Should Ask More of Rom-Coms

When casting news first broke in August 2024 for the Netflix adaptation of Emily Henry’s enormously popular slow-burn romance novel People We Meet on Vacation, the internet went wild. After months of anticipation, we finally had our first look at Poppy and Alex, the friends-to-lovers duo that captivated so many readers. It wasn’t long before the name Emily, as in actress Emily Bader, started trending on X. With Henry’s stamp approval and an overwhelmingly positive response from fans, Bader could breathe a massive sigh of relief. She had overcome the first hurdle.

“As a book fan myself, it’s always this kind of impossible thing,” Bader tells me from her hotel room. “Everyone is always going to imagine these characters in a way that’s completely unique and specific to them.”

Emily Bader is photographed for Who What Wear's In Focus feature lying on the floor of a bedroom. She is talking on a retro phone with a tennis ball in her other hand, and her feet are perched up on a metal frame bed. She is wearing a Chloe t-shirt with a flamingo on the front and a pink silk skirt.

It’s early December, and already, Bader has begun the press run for People We Meet on Vacation. A few days before our interview, the actress, along with costar Tom Blyth (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) and director Brett Haley, crashed the first fan screening at Prytania Theatre in New Orleans, where a packed audience cheered on in excitement. The response, once again, was overwhelmingly positive. The second hurdle was crossed.

The last hurdle will be pleasing the larger Netflix audience when the film debuts on January 9 on the streamer.

Emily Bader is photographed for Who What Wear's In Focus feature sitting on the floor of a bedroom playing with a poodle who is licking her face. She is wearing a Chloe t-shirt with a pink flamingo on the front and a pink silk skirt.

Many know Bader from her breakout role in the Amazon Prime Video series My Lady Jane, the 16th-century rom-com that was canceled too soon after only one season, which stirred up backlash from passionate fans and online campaigns to save the show. It was a heartbreaking moment for the actress, who made lifelong friends while working on the project. “Jane was a dream for me,” she says. “Riding a horse in a custom corset gown down the ramps of Dover Castle in England, a place I’d never been, is fantasy.” The disappointment from not being able to continue Jane’s story was hard to shake for Bader, but the fan response was comforting in its wake. “Knowing that people will take these characters with them makes it all worth it,” she adds.

Emily Bader is photographed for Who What Wear's In Focus feature lying on the floor of a bedroom talking on the phone. She is wearing a Chloe t-shirt with pink flamingo on the front and a pink silk skirt. There is a pull quote in the top left corner that reads, &quot;I feel so much of myself in Poppy.&quot;

As they say, when one door closes, another “exciting film opportunity” door opens.

While abroad working on another project, Bader received an email from her team saying Haley wanted to talk to her about a film he was directing. “That was a first for me, to just go straight into a conversation,” Bader says. “For every actor, that’s something you dream about.” She met Haley on a Zoom call, where he talked her through the character. They aligned pretty quickly on the vision for Poppy, and Bader tells me her initial instinct with the character is exactly how she did it in the film.