Love it or hate it, the R-rated “The Hating Game” goes where rom-coms usually don’t — into the bedroom.
The romantic comedy, which stars Lucy Hale and hit theaters and VOD Friday, is based on best-selling author Sally Thorne’s novel of the same name about “enemy” colleagues Lucy and Josh (Austin Stowell), whose sexual tension and apparent disdain for one another leaves everyone else in their orbit deeply uncomfortable and begging them to get together already.
Peter Hutchings’ “The Hating Game” spices things up with an R-rating that enticed the “Pretty Little Liars” alum.
Her “Pretty Little Liars’ fans, Hale says, are now “grown” and “evolved” and can therefore handle her more provocative turn, the 32-year-old actress told the Daily News. The teen thriller ran on ABC Family-turned-Freeform from 2010 to 2017.
The film is “definitely is a bit sexier than I think people expect,” she said, adding: “I love rom-coms when they’re PG-rated. I love them when people push the envelope, but I think it’s so rare to have a rom-com [that’s] so funny.”
Lucy and Josh are assistants to the CEOs of B&G Publishing after a merger and are constantly battling, but predictably enough, fall in love soon after. Things start getting out and steamy, outside the office, too.
A quip about college fraternity rape culture halfway through the movie may seem out of place in the #MeToo era. That, Hale says, is why the line from the book wasn’t a shoe-in, though it did make the final cut.
“Nobody ever wants to offend anyone or anything, especially with a topic like that,” she said. “But at the end of the day, we decided to keep it because this movie is supposed to be light-hearted, fun. And I always like shows and movies that don’t play it safe.”
Though the actress noted there is certain humor that really should have never been commonplace, Hale pointed to the “fine line of losing something when everyone is trying to please everyone.”
“What I thought was super interesting about Lucy in the movie is that she’s very optimistic, very people pleasing, very sweet and kind to everyone” except Josh, said Hale. “They bring out the real and better versions of each other. ... That’s what I love so much about playing her, is that I got to play these two different personality types.”
As near and dear as she holds post-”Liars” parts that pushed her — including the titular role on the CW’s acclaimed but canceled “Katy Keene” and the upcoming survival film, “Borrego” — Hale said “The Hating Game” is the type of film she wishes she could do “all the time.”
“Of course, I want to do movies that are dark and challenging,” said Hale. “But if I could do a movie like ‘The Hating Game’ every year, I would, because God, I laughed so much.”
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