There’s a moment in The Idea of You, the new Prime Video romantic dramedy, in which 40-year-old Solène (Anne Hathaway) stands in front of a mirror, feeling insecure over the way she looks in a swimsuit. It’s a moment everyone might experience in their lifetimes — even someone who looks like Anne Hathaway, as director Michael Showalter tells Consequence.

“This is the age-old thing, you know — the supermodel that says ‘I have bad skin in the morning’ or whatever,” he says. “But I believe there’s a real authenticity to [Hathaway’s] performance that people do connect to. And in all honesty, no matter what people look like, there is insecurity. Just because one person looks one way and one person looks another way, there are feelings that are real.”

Solène’s insecurities are just one of the issues affecting her new relationship with Hayes (Nicholas Galitzine) — who just so happens to be a 24-year-old internationally-recognized boy band star — in the film. After meeting cute at Coachella, Solène and Hayes’s relationship turns her life upside down — but maybe in the way she needs, after a painful divorce and years of focusing on her teenage daughter.

Below, Showalter (an alum of The State and director of films including The Big Sick, The Lovebirds, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye) reveals what was involved in recreating the Coachella experience for that meet-cute and why he loves making romantic movies. He also explains why we’re at an interesting point right now when it comes to pop music, where “some of the most popular musicians are also the most interesting musicians artistically.”

You’ve gotten to do a lot of romance lately, in terms of film work. Is this a genre you feel like you’ve been gravitating towards on purpose, or are these just the projects that have come to you?

It’s both. I love romantic comedy, and I’ve made like two movies that are literally deconstructions of romantic comedies: I did a movie called The Baxter, which was my first movie many years ago, and then a movie called They Came Together. It’s a genre that I know very well and I’m very fond of, so I’m always looking for and excited to find movies in that genre that I feel move the needle in a new direction. I’m sort of like, “Oh, that’s something I haven’t seen before,” you know?

And then I do seem to be approached about doing those kinds of movies, too. So there is a little bit of going where you’re wanted. But I enjoyed doing this movie enormously, and I will say that, having tried some other tones and some other kinds of things, there was a part of me that felt like, “This feels very natural for me, and a lot of the things that I want to do or that a lot of the things that I have to say, I can kind of do in this genre.”

Because they can be funny, they can be romantic, they can be dramatic, they can be cool, there are great costumes and the soundtrack and all those elements. Great performances, a great opportunity to work with good actors. So it kind of combines a lot of the things that I’m interested in.