Lili Reinhart wasn’t immediately sold on starring in The Love Hypothesis—but one fan-favorite scene involving sunscreen helped convince the actress that the highly anticipated romance adaptation was worth taking on.
Reinhart stars as Olive Smith in the upcoming Prime Video film, an adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s bestselling 2021 romance novel. Tom Bateman plays Dr. Adam Carlsen, the intimidating Stanford professor who becomes Olive’s unlikely fake boyfriend.
The actress previously revealed that she had initially pushed the project away because she was wary of becoming too closely associated with romantic comedies after spending most of her 20s playing Betty Cooper on Riverdale. In a recent Cosmopolitan profile, Reinhart said she had wanted to prioritize different kinds of projects rather than immediately jumping into another major rom-com.
But that changed after she finally read Hazelwood’s novel.
Reinhart said she read the book while traveling to the Venice Film Festival and quickly understood why it had developed such a passionate fan base. The story’s slow-burn romance, humor and fake-dating setup ultimately won her over.
And then there was the sunscreen scene.
The moment, which has become one of the most recognizable scenes from the novel, features Olive applying sunscreen to Adam’s shirtless back. The scene is prominently featured in the film’s trailer and has already become a major talking point among fans eager to see whether the movie would faithfully recreate the book’s most memorable moments.
For Reinhart, seeing how the scene could work onscreen helped demonstrate the movie’s appeal.
The trailer also recreates another major moment from the book: Olive impulsively kissing Adam at a water fountain before the pair enter their fake relationship. The arrangement is initially designed to benefit both of them, but their carefully controlled experiment begins to blur the line between pretending and actually falling in love.
From fake dating to real chemistry
The Love Hypothesis follows Olive, a biology Ph.D. candidate who finds herself caught in an increasingly complicated romantic arrangement with Adam, a notoriously difficult professor.
What starts as a fake relationship gradually becomes something much more serious.
The movie’s promotional material suggests that filmmakers have deliberately retained several of the scenes that made Hazelwood’s novel so popular, including the water-fountain kiss, sunscreen moment and the intimate hotel sequence. Entertainment coverage has also highlighted the apparent chemistry between Reinhart and Bateman as one of the film’s biggest selling points.
The pressure to get those moments right is especially significant because The Love Hypothesis has a devoted readership.
Reinhart has acknowledged that expectation, particularly surrounding the book’s much-discussed intimate scene. In an interview reported by Us Weekly, she explained that she and Bateman wanted to make the sequence as sexy as possible while still ensuring that it fit the tone and story of the movie. The actors also worked with an intimacy coordinator while filming the sequence.
Reinhart, who also serves as an executive producer on the movie, has emphasized the importance of trust between the two actors while filming intimate material.
A major romance adaptation arrives this September
Directed by Claire Scanlon, The Love Hypothesis is shaping up to be one of Prime Video’s major romance releases of 2026.
The movie is based on Hazelwood’s bestselling STEM romance and follows the familiar fake-dating trope through an academic setting filled with science, rivalry, humor and an increasingly complicated attraction between Olive and Adam.
The film is scheduled to premiere on Prime Video on September 23, 2026.
For fans of the novel, however, one question remains: will the movie live up to the scenes they’ve been imagining since the book became a romance sensation?
And judging by the trailer, the sunscreen scene may be only the beginning.
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