‘Purple Hearts’ Star Sofia Carson and Director Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum Defend Netflix Film After Backlash: ‘Our Intentions Are Very Pure’

variety.com:

Emily Longeretta The numbers don’t lie. Currently in its second week, Netflix’s “Purple Hearts” has been watched for more than 100 million hours.

The drama, starring Sofia Carson and Nicholas Galitzine, follows a liberal musician who agrees to marry a Marine in order to get health insurance.While the movie has become a huge hit on the streaming giant, it has also faced criticism about misogynistic and racist themes; during one scene, a Marine makes a toast and says, “This one is to life, love and hunting down some goddamn Arabs, baby!” While Carson’s Cassie calls him out before storming off, Galitzine’s Luke brushes it off and it’s soon forgotten, as are his more conservative views she was once unhappy about.Although director Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum has focused on the positive reactions to the film, she has seen the criticism. “I hope that people understand that in order for characters to grow, they need to be flawed in the beginning.

So we very much intentionally created two characters that had been bred to hate each other,” she tells Variety. “They are flawed at the beginning and that was intentional.

In order for the red heart and the blue heart to kind of turn purple, you have to have them be kind of extreme. Some of the people that they’re surrounded with are even more flawed than they are.