‘People We Meet on Vacation’ Finally Lets a Woman Deliver the Big Romantic Speech

A big, romantic speech is a staple of any good romantic comedy. Billy Crystal set the standard, when he listed the reasons he was in love with Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. Ryan Reynolds melted hearts and launched his career when he begged Sandra Bullock to marry him, so that they could start dating for real, in The Proposal. Colin Firth proved negging can work when he summarized Renée Zellweger’s flaws and confessed he liked her, very much, just as she was, in Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Now, the new Netflix romantic comedy, People We Meet on Vacation—which began streaming on Friday—has a new big speech to add to the list. And this time, it’s the woman chasing after the guy to sweep him off his feet with a romantic monologue.

Directed by Brett Haley, with a screenplay by Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon, and Nunzio Randazzo, People We Meet on Vacation is the long-awaited film adaptation of Emily Henry’s best-selling 2021 novel. Emily Bader, best known as the star of the short-lived Amazon series My Lady Jane, stars in the film as Poppy Wright, a free-spirited travel journalist who loves taking vacations with her uptight BFF, Alex (played by the newest Hunger Games heart throb Tom Blyth). Though they insist they are just platonic vacay buddies, after years of traveling together every summer, Poppy and Alex fall in love.

Emily Bader is not the first woman in a romantic comedy to deliver the big, climactic speech to her love interest. Julia Stiles made us and Heath Ledger cry with her love poem in 10 Things I Hate About You, Katherine Heigl poured her heart out to James Marsden in front of hundreds of wedding guests in 27 Dresses, and, of course, Julia Roberts was just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking Hugh Grant to love her, in Notting Hill. But it’s still a rare enough occurrence that I admit I was surprised when Poppy runs after Alex to confess her love in People We Meet on Vacation, rather than the other way around.

Here’s how it happens: After years of yearning, Poppy and Alex finally get together at Alex’s brother’s wedding. But when Alex asks about their future, Poppy clams up. Convinced Poppy will never commit to him, Alex leaves. Heartbroken, Poppy does some soul searching, quits her job, and travels to Ohio to knock on Alex’s front door. But Alex doesn’t answer. He’s on his way out the back door, with his noise-cancelling earbuds in, heading out for a run. So Poppy—though she despises running—chases after him.

Poppy can’t keep pace with Alex, but she gets lucky—he stops for a red light. Finally, she gets close enough for him to hear her shouts. They stand, facing each other, in the median of the crosswalk, with cars whizzing by. Poppy catches her breath. Then, finally, she starts to speak.

“I always felt like if I stayed in one place too long, everyone would see that I’m too much. Even you,” Poppy starts. “So one week a year with you—it was safe. It’s all that I thought that I could have. But I love you. I’m always gonna love you. So there’s not one thing, in my whole life, that I wouldn’t give up to build something new with you. Because when I’m sad or sick, you’re all I want. And when I’m happy, you make me so much happier.”

At this point, Poppy’s voice cracks and breaks. But she keeps going. Her big speech ain’t over yet.

“And I know I have a lot of things I gotta figure out,” Poppy continues, through tears.” But if there’s one thing that I know, it’s that wherever you are in the world, that’s where I belong. You’re not a vacation to me, Alex. You’re home. And I think that I’m that for you too.”

When Alex doesn’t immediately respond, Poppy concludes her speech in a typical charming, awkward, Poppy-way. “You can… You can talk now. Please talk now.”

But Alex doesn’t have anything to say, because Poppy has said it all. Instead, he pulls her in for a big, sweeping kiss.

Though she is not the first rom-com woman to deliver the romantic monologue, there is something about Poppy’s speech—the length, the delivery, the running lead-up, the reaction shots from Alex—that feels like a very intentional gender-swap. Certainly, Poppy’s running echoes Harry jogging through the New York City streets on New Year’s Eve, racing to reach Sally before midnight. By calling attention to this purposeful reversal, the movie challenges audiences to consider how—even in a genre often written by and for women— women are often portrayed as the more passive, less-nuanced character.

In fact, the idea of a gender-flipped When Harry Met Sally was author Emily Henry’s initial inspiration for the People We Meet on Vacation book.

“I wanted to try to do sort of a gender-flipped version of that in which the female lead would be the Harry character,” Henry explained in an interview for the People We Meet on Vacation press notes. “She’s a bit much, you could say, and she’s a little bit flighty and a bit more cynical in the beginning. Then our Sally character is the male lead, someone who’s a little bit more fastidious about how he likes things, but also a true romantic deep down who wants this lasting, stable, beautiful love.”

When asked about getting to play the Meg Ryan to Bader’s Billy Crystal during that monologue, Blyth told Decider, “We do expect it to be Alex who runs after Poppy and delivers the big speech, because that is the gender norm that’s been set in film over the decades. It’s so nice to be at a time when when we’re actually experimenting with flipping that. Especially with a character like Poppy—she’s so expressive. She’s so free with her feelings, and Alex isn’t. Getting to hear her break down his wall, him pulling her in close, and that feeling that they’re going to have a happy ever after—it’s a nice moment.”

It’s also, of course, a great acting reel moment for Bader, who absolutely crushes her speech. It’s the kind of speech that leads to roles in Oscar-bait dramas—again, often a pipeline for male rom-com leads like Colin Firth, Tom Hanks, and Ryan Gosling. Here’s to hoping for the same for Bader, and for many more romantic speeches from rom-com leading ladies to come.