From Harry Potter Fanfic to Netflix Hit: Yulin Kuang’s Journey to ‘People We Meet on Vacation’

Pictures via Netflix and Yulin Kuang – Photo credit: Zack Wallnau People We Meet on Vacation is a romantic comedy that embodies the joys of the genre. Based on Emily Henry’s novel, it’s an authentic love story told with flair. Alex (Tom Blyth) and Poppy (Emily Blader), two travel buddies, fall for each other not only organically but stylishly and playfully. In the hands of co-writer Yulin Kuang, tropes are treated with reverence. A meet-cute is truly cute, a first kiss produces fireworks, and a dance sequence is performed with commitment. It is both escapist and grounded.  Kuang previously authored “How to End a Love Story,” directed numerous short films as well as episodes of Dollface and The Healing Powers of Dude. Next, she will direct an adaptation of Emily Henry’s “Beach Read.” Kuang spoke with What’s On Netflix about her passion for romantic comedies, writing about yearning and love, and why People We Meet on Vacation is her “I’ve made it” moment. You’re a fan of historical romance novels. Were they on your mind at all when writing People We Meet on Vacation? When I first read the manuscript for People We Meet on Vacation, I remember thinking that it had all the yearning of a historical romance. Often when you read a contemporary romance, there’s cellphones and modern rules of courtship. The stakes feel very low. Whereas there were some life-and-death stakes for Poppy and Alex, which is what I go to historicals for. I really loved that, so it was definitely an influence. When you’re working on a romance, is there a particular gold-standard for you?  It’s got to be Nora Ephron. When I was a scrubby little young writer, I went to a Writers Guild event where these two older, more established guys were talking about how they kept a copy of The Apartment script on their desks, in hopes that it would seep into their work somehow. After hearing that, I was like, someday I’m going to do that. I had a printed-out copy of When Harry Met Sally sitting on my desk the whole time through the early drafts, hopefully through osmosis it would make this movie better. It’s impressive for a nonlinear film how there’s still so much momentum. With all the locations and timejumps, how’d you pull that off? There were certain trips that were the emotional heart of the story. One trip in particular, I remember giving us a lot of trouble. It was Croatia — do we put it at the beginning? Do we put it at the end? And then I remember reading a later draft and I was like, oh, they just took it out and condensed it with something else. It was so clean. I found the structure to be this really compelling puzzle of the adaptation.  People We Meet on Vacation. (L-R) Tom Blyth as Alex and Emily Bader as Poppy in People We Meet on Vacation. Cr. Michele K. Short/Netflix © 2026 Being a filmmaker, how does that influence how you approach action lines and description in People We Meet on Vacation? There were a couple of things that were important to me that, once the script left my hands, I wanted whoever took up the torch next to really know, this was important. I was very particular about the sex scene. I knew that the book is sexy, and I knew that I myself always want horny, sexy romance. I wasn’t seeing enough of it. I hit that beat pretty hard, if I recall correctly, with three paragraphs of action lines. There are also other places where it’s a look and a yearning. They say you can’t film a thought, but I don’t think that’s true. If you have great actors, if you look into their eyes, you can see the yearning and the pain. I wanted to give the people who were reading the script something to imagine. It was almost less than the dialogue and more in the silences that I did the focus there. Movies are very sexless these days, so it was refreshing to see that level of intimacy between Alex and Poppy. Since you pushed for it, have you gotten pushback in the past over writing sex scenes? The last movie that I wrote that got produced was called Love on Iceland. It’s a Hallmark movie with a remarkably similar premise, actually. These two friends get back together for a trip and go to Iceland, but that was an incredibly sexless movie because that is the brand of Hallmark. They kiss, and it’s very nice, and we fade to black. You imagine maybe they went and drank hot chocolate together somewhere, and it was great, and I love that for them.  For some people, that’s what you want to have playing in the background while grandma’s making cookies at Christmas. But I wanted something else. I was always just such a horny teenager growing up, reading my fanfic, so I wanted this to have that adult flavor. It was important to me. I think that can be very healing for people. One of my favorite romance novelists, Sarah MacLean, says this thing about how we pass down our values. It tells us what is it that we’re seeking, what is it that we’re chasing? What is a happily ever after?  For whatever reason, there’s repression still built into modern society around sex. I think romance is a safe place for people to explore. “What is it about this that turns me on? What is it about this that’s appealing to me?” You can explore that in a way that feels very safe.  And so, that is part of the important work that romance as a genre is constantly doing. I wanted to make sure this movie continued that. People We Meet on Vacation. (L-R) Emily Bader as Poppy and Tom Blyth as Alex in People We Meet on Vacation. Cr. Daniel Escale/Netflix © 2026 Yearning is another big appeal of romances. What else did you want to go unspoken in People We Meet on Vacation? I think that’s the beauty of romance. It’s almost a shining bright ball of energy that these two characters are carrying between them. But we can’t talk about it out loud because of all these reasons that are keeping them in this box, locked together. I think that it’s powerful — the engine that drives a romance. Some people would call it chemistry, which I do think is part of it. It’s the chemistry of these two characters, these two actors, these people who are embodying this journey and this struggle of, I love you and I want you, but I also need to do all these things for me. It’s like, can we get ourselves on the same page so that we can be together? I think that’s so real. A lot of the times what bothers me in romance is when it’s a foregone conclusion that it’s going to be a happily ever after. Romance is the genre that appeals the most to real life. In real life, you don’t always get that right. It’s hard for things to work out. I really wanted to feel that as well — the idea that it was incredibly unlikely to work out between these two. It’s also the genre where, in a commercial movie, you most often get to just enjoy people connecting and talking. Were there any dialogue-heavy scenes between Alex and Poppy you relished writing? There’s a particular sequence early on that’s not in the book, actually. Netflix had this note where they wanted to see Poppy and Alex actually become friends the first time they met. It’s in that car and they’re thrown together and things are a little bit awkward. But then the next time we saw them originally, it was like, oh, we’ve made this leap and we’re on this journey together. But our executives at Netflix very wisely wanted to see how they actually become friends. It inspired the sequence where Poppy and Alex are on their road trip and they get into some trouble. It becomes an accidental first overnight trip that wasn’t planned. They get to know each other better over the course of that night. I think there is something magical about learning another person for the first time. And so, that was a piece I loved getting to write for Alex and Poppy. So you started off writing fan fiction. [Cringes] Hey, that’s putting in the work. Oh yeah, no, it’s hours in the game [Laughs]. [Laughs] What were you writing? How’d it lead you to the writer you are today? I was primarily writing in the Harry Potter fandom [rolls eyes]. Harry and Ginny was my fix that I wrote, because I didn’t like how they were handled in book six. I was like, if I can get my little one-shot on one of these end-of-year top 10 lists, then I’ll have a career for myself as a storyteller. And I did — I do. And so, very grateful to my past and fandom because I think at the heart of every fangirl is probably somebody who wants to create, because that’s usually what the urge sparks.  I have a friend who has a theory that you either have the fandom gene or you don’t. You’re either capable of hyper-fixation and obsessive spiraling over media and fictional characters, or you’re just somebody who likes things a normal amount and moves on with their lives. I was never the second type. People We Meet on Vacation. (L-R) Emily Bader as Poppy and Tom Blyth as Alex in People We Meet on Vacation. Cr. Daniel Escale/Netflix © 2026 When did you start feeling like you made it to the other side, going from fan to a professional writer? Honestly, it was a little bit with this one. Every time I had a notebook, on the first page I would write down my five-year plan. I’m one of those people. I would also write down a list of bucket-list projects. I called it “obituary list projects,” these projects I wanted in my obituary. One of the things I wrote in the list was a New York Times bestselling romance adaptation. That was something that I wanted to do. And so, I remember when we closed the deal, we had a kickoff meeting with the studio. When I came out of the kickoff meeting, I took an edible and I was like, I’m going to reread the book for the first time and mark it up for the actual work of adaptation. About one chapter in, I had this feeling of, oh my God, I am actually living the dream. During that edible experience of going back through the book, were you having a lot of epiphanies? What about the book was speaking to you then? I had tabs and was tabbing almost like an emotional metal detector. A theme in the book is where they talk about when something speaks to you, you find a way to make it work. Every time a line or anything spoke to me in the book, I would tab it, underline it, and keep going. It was an interesting reading experience. I don’t remember a ton of it. It was a good time. It was a good time. It was helpful later on when I was doing the work to be able to go back to it and be like, what did I on a visceral level connect with? It is surprising to hear that People We Meet on Vacation is your “I’ve made it moment,” given how prolific you are. You wrote a book, have directed and written a bunch for television. I know, it’s funny how that happens. I had a short-lived but beloved TV show on the CW called I Ship It. That was also living the dream for me because it was a network I had grown up obsessed with, and I had a TV show on it that premiered to the second-lowest ratings ever. It was promptly canceled. But there is a part of it that’s maybe the imposter syndrome, to be honest. This wasn’t something I had originated, and it took so many hoops to jump through before we got to that point that it kind of felt like, okay, now this one feels real somehow in a way that the others don’t. With episodic directing, you’re kind of a guest in somebody else’s house. I had a great time with the Netflix show that I directed, called The Healing Powers of Dude, and I loved the showrunners, Sam [Littenberg-Weisberg] and Erica [Spates]. They were wonderful hosts, but I was trying to be very respectful of their vision. Whereas when you’re the first screenwriter on a project, there’s a feeling of, I am creating a blueprint for the future and getting my hands into the DNA of something. So now that the film is out in the world, still in the top 10 and very well liked, how are you feeling? It feels like the closing of a chapter. This started back in March 2021 when the manuscript first landed in my inbox. The deal for this closed the Friday before my wedding. Congratulations again. Thank you. After I had gotten a chance to go to set and see the filming of it, it was really beautiful, so I needed to mark it somehow. That’s when I went platinum blonde. I was like, I’m going to do a year as a platinum blonde. And then this morning I was looking at my roots growing back and I was like, I’m ready to leave my platinum era. And so, it closes a chapter. It’s the ending of something and hopefully the beginning of something else, because I’m also going to be writing and directing Beach Read, which is another Emily Henry book. I’m very excited for that. Excellent all around. To wrap up, any of the short films you’ve directed that you’d like our readers to check out? Check out Irene Lee, Girl Detective. I am still really proud of that. I have a past as a filmmaker on YouTube. I was part of the first generation of filmmakers to grow up online, so I have this digital footprint that I constantly think about eradicating from the internet. But then I look at it and I remember how I felt when I was on the other side of this equation, constantly trying to find a way to get to where I am now. I’ve left up the digital footprint because it was part of the journey. If anybody asks for any advice for young filmmakers, I’d be like, go back to my YouTube channel and watch those short films. Maybe watch some of those vlogs, because that’s me when I was in the trenches, who might even have better advice than me now. I would go to these Q&As with filmmakers, and they’d talk about, “Oh, I remember when I was trying to break in and eat ramen.” And I’d be like, “Oh, fuck you. I don’t want to hear you romanticize.”  And so, go listen to my 24-year-old self. Whatever she had to say is probably full of more wisdom than I’ve got now. Now, do you hope that one day, for a full-circle moment, people will write fanfic based on your work? That happened back in my YouTube era. I created a show called Kissing in the Rain about actors that kept finding themselves kissing in the rain. I agree with you, that would be a nice full-circle moment for that to happen organically, but I was impatient.  I created the vehicle for that to happen – a transmedia experiment where I invited the audience to write fanfic for the webseries. If they came up with something that I liked, I would reblog it into the show’s Tumblr, and then it would become part of the show’s canon. We were writing the story in real time as the show was released. I’ll tell you what the full-circle moment actually was. Please. In People We Meet on Vacation, there’s a moment where Poppy and Alex go out onto the balcony, the rain’s pouring down, and they have their first kiss in the rain. This is my first project with billboards around the city, and my friends texted me a photo of one particular billboard with Poppy and Alex in the rain. I think it says, “On vacation, you can ruin the friendship,” which I love as a tagline.  And so, I drove out to where that was and did an entire photoshoot. I wore a white cable-knit sweater because it was my nod to When Harry Met Sally, and then these red shorts I got from Hustler because I was like, I have hustled my way into Hollywood. Getting to take a photo in front of that billboard of these two characters about to kiss in the rain, I would say was a full-circle moment for me.