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Is Nicholas Galitzine Really Singing In ‘The Idea Of You’?

3 May 2024, 11:40

Nicholas Galitzine can sing and play piano in real life
Nicholas Galitzine can sing and play piano in real life. Picture: Alamy

By Kathryn Knight

Nicholas Galitzine plays boyband star Hayes in The Idea of You – and, yes, that's really him singing.

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Nicholas Galitzine is fast becoming a household name after starring opposite Anne Hathaway in The Idea of You, in which he plays a pop star called Hayes who falls for single mum Soléne who’s 16 years his senior.

One of the first scenes in the movie sees Nicholas aka Hayes performing at Coachella with his band August Moon, where he sings a song called ‘Closer’ dedicated to Soléne who he’d met moments earlier.

The scene has viewers wondering if it’s really Nicholas singing in The Idea of You and lucky for us he actually stopped by the Capital studio to spill all on the film, so we've got all the answers below.

Nicholas Galitzine really sung in 'The Idea of You'
Nicholas Galitzine really sung in 'The Idea of You'. Picture: Alamy

Is Nicholas Galitzine singing in The Idea of You?

Yep, that really is Nicholas singing in The Idea of You, something he says was ‘one of the couple of things he could bring to the table’ when he auditioned for the part. That, and being able to play the piano.

We knew this man had some hidden talents.

When he popped into Capital he told us: “I think had I not been able to dance, or sing, or play an instrument I think there would have been better people suited to the casting. But luckily I had that.”

He also jetted off to Sweden to record all the songs and underwent gruelling boyband training to prepare for his role as Hayes.

Nicholas Galitzine had to learn choreo in boyband training for The Idea of You
Nicholas Galitzine had to learn choreo in boyband training for The Idea of You. Picture: Alamy/Prime Video

Nicholas recalled: “I had these intense couple of days where I went off to Sweden to record all the songs - I think I recorded seven songs in two days which was mad, but a lot of fun.

“And then I had dance training. You always want to have more time with stuff like that and our shoot schedule was so crazy, so I didn’t match the levels of my boyband in the film who are all professional dancers and are all really talented.”

He added: “I guess I didn’t have two left feet by the end of it, so it was a crash course in boyband training.”

Anne Hathaway and Nicolas Galitzine play Never Have I Ever

The actor then swung by our sister brand Capital Buzz to paint a self-portrait while answering questions about the film – you can watch the video here – and spilled a little more about what boyband bootcamp was like.

He explained: “Boyband bootcamp looks like a lot of dancing - doing the choreography over and over again, just so you remember, because there was a lot of it. We had around six numbers of choreo to do – not all of it made it into the movie in the end.”

Nicholas was joined by professional performers Raymond Cham Jr, Viktor White, Dakota Adan and Jaiden Anthony who brought the boyband to life away from the film too by recording all the music IRL and even releasing a few as singles. They also released noughties style posters, giving us all One Direction nostalgia.

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