How Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder's Dracula wedding inspired Maureen Lee Lenker's debut novel

As an entertainment journalist, Maureen Lee Lenker has spent much of her career covering film and the romance genre for Entertainment Weekly. So, perhaps it's no surprise that her debut novel combines the best of both worlds.

Lenker, an EW senior writer, is making her fiction debut with It Happened One Fight, a screwball rom-com set in the heyday of 1930s Hollywood. The book follows movie star Joan Davis as she tries to take charge of her career and distance herself from her frequent costar, the irritating Dash Howard. But after an on-set prank gone wrong, she realizes that she and Dash are legally married — a major problem, considering that Joan has just gotten engaged to a different actor.

Begrudgingly, Joan and Dash agree to star in one final film together, moving the production to Reno, where divorce is legal after six weeks. But the more time Joan spends on set with her costar, the more she starts to wonder whether this fake marriage might give way to real feelings.

It Happened One Fight boasts the kind of swoon-worthy romance and acid-tongued banter that made 1930s rom-coms so delightful, and EW has the exclusive first look at the book's vintage-inspired cover (designed by Jenifer Prince). The book is on sale July 11, 2023, and is available for pre-order now (via The Ripped Bodice, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble).

Here, Lenker previews her ode to old Hollywood and opens up about the real-life actors that inspired her story, from Joan Crawford and Clark Gable to Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Where did the idea for this story start?

MAUREEN LEE LENKER: Actually, it's a funny story. The idea for this book came from an EW interview I did back in summer 2018. I interviewed Keanu [Reeves] and Winona [Ryder] for Destination Wedding, and I was asking them what they thought about weddings and what their favorite kind of weddings were. This became the interview where Winona just decided to announce that she and Keanu got married for real on the set of Dracula. Keanu just ran with it and was like, "Okay, if you say we're married, we're married!"

I just got this idea, like, what if that was real? What if two movie stars got married for real, accidentally on a set? And I'm a huge fan of classic Hollywood. I'd been wanting to write a series or a book set in that world, and this was perfect because it was much harder to get a divorce or an annulment back then. So that was the spark of the idea: Keanu and Winona, but enemies-to-lovers in the golden age of Hollywood.

I know you've long had a fascination with old Hollywood. What kind of research did you do to immerse yourself in this time period?

I've been a classic film fan for forever. I wasn't allowed to watch PG-13 movies until I was 13 and R until I was 17. So that left unrated black and white movies and Disney films. And honestly, I kind of want to do the same thing to my kids because I feel like it inadvertently made me a cinephile in the weirdest way. [Laughs]

So in some ways, I think I've been doing the research for this book my whole life. It's very inspired by the screwball comedies of that period. It Happened One Fight is, of course, a play on It Happened One Night. My main characters are based on Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. My leading lady is kind of a mix of Bette [Davis] and Joan, but Clark Gable was definitely the inspiration for my hero. I read biographies of Gable and Crawford to help me flesh out ideas for backstory and motivation. There are a lot of little Easter eggs within the book about their lives and other things within Hollywood history. Hopefully, people who are fans of the period will have fun picking those out.

The biggest area I had to do research in was Reno. The book takes place in Reno because they have to go and make a movie there for six weeks, while they wait for their divorce. I basically knew that as a concept in The Women, but that was my only understanding of it. But the city of Reno has these amazing historical records online with photographs of what the town looked like and how the divorce process worked. They had all these divorce ranches, too. You could go and stay in town in a hotel for six weeks or find an apartment. But they also had divorce ranches, where women would go and flirt with cowboys and learn how to do cowboy things. Then, after six weeks, they would get their divorce and go home. So, I did a lot of research into that. Clark Gable actually spent some time on one of the famous ones in the late '40s, I think.

It's true. You watch a lot of classic Hollywood films, and everyone talks about going to Reno for their divorce. It's such a fascinating part of American history.

Yeah, and it's a weird little town because it's a very transient population. There are all these people coming in for six weeks, in and out. I just delved a lot into that and into all the crazy traditions of that period. They would take pictures of women kissing the courthouse pillars, when they were going in to get their divorce. There was this tradition of women throwing their wedding rings off of the bridge over the river in Reno, after their divorce was finalized. I didn't know any of that, and once I did, I was like, "Well, this all has to go in the book because this is ridiculous." [Laughs]

You mentioned being strongly influenced by Joan Crawford and Clark Gable. What were some of the other influences you were thinking about?

One thing I love about the '30s is there were so many leading ladies like Joan and Bette, who were these really brassy dames who were in control of their images. They were constantly fighting with the studio heads for better projects and to be taken seriously as actresses. Honestly, I feel like that's something we've lost culturally, a little bit. There are plenty of women who have their own production companies and are doing their own thing, but this existed within the context of the studio system in a very specific way, and that doesn't exist today. So that was my starting point for my heroine. I wanted someone who had that self-assurance and was maybe a quote-unquote "unlikeable heroine" because she knows what she wants and will stop at nothing to get it.

And in terms of Clark Gable, the more I read about him, the more I was struck by what an invention "Clark Gable" was. This is true of so many personas, but it made me think how exhausting that would be, to have to maintain this image of this extremely hyper-masculine womanizer. I think some parts of his identity came a little more naturally to him than they come to my hero, Dash. But there's a lot in the book about the mask that Hollywood requires you to wear and how much of that is real and the paradox and conflict within that.

Oh, and my villain is a gossip reporter, who's based on Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. I borrowed a lot from their lives and the extreme amounts of power they wielded in Hollywood at this time.

I kind of love the idea of you making your villain an entertainment journalist… especially given your own career.

Yeah, I have thought about that a lot. [Laughs] I feel like if my contract extends and I end up having more books in this series, at some point I'll need to write a redemption arc for her. That's the thing: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper were horrible human beings who did really unforgivable things. They supported the Hollywood Blacklist. They ruined people's lives. So they're excellent fodder for a villain in a story because they were not good people. But it is also weird being an entertainment reporter, writing a story where your villain is basically an entertainment reporter.

You've spent much of your career covering Hollywood and film, and you've also written quite a bit about the romance genre in publishing. How did that shape your approach to this book?

On the romance side of things, it helped me to know how publishing works and what the tropes are that readers love — and what are the things that I love. They say if you want to write in a genre, you should study what is being done and see what's working. I feel like I haven't had to do any extra work for that because it's part of my job. I just love reading it and studying it and talking about it.

In terms of the classic Hollywood stuff, that's just my catnip. I'm really excited for people who don't know this world to discover how relevant and contemporary it is and hopefully check out some of these films that they've never seen before. And I'm also really excited for people who are already fans of the era to find all the little Easter eggs and references and hopefully appreciate my invented version of this world.

The 1930s are an especially fascinating period of film history, especially with the Hays Code and the strength of the studio system. And like you said, there were so many extraordinary women who helped shape Hollywood in the 1930s.

That was one reason I chose the 1930s — because women were really instrumental in the early days of film, and there were a ton of female film pioneers who don't get talked about enough, both behind and in front of the camera. Once film became a business proposition and a money-making entity, women were basically edged out. But the '30s are still at this point of conflict, where women are trying to hold onto and assert some of that power as the studio moguls are elbowing them out. I really wanted to play within that space because as time goes on, the '40s and the '50s are a lot more restrictive for women. That was one reason I chose this era and wanted to play within it because I am very passionate about women in the industry today and the opportunities they get and the ways in which they can claim and wield power. I thought it would be a cool opportunity to explore that on the page, but in a time that's both far away and not so distant from our own.

The 1930s are also the heyday for the screwball rom-com, which I imagine would be a fun genre to write.

It really is. Although I will definitely say that there is nothing harder than knowing you have to be funny. [Laughs] We obviously come up against that in our job because we're trying to come up with puns or write things that are clever in an article. But it's really hard to be like, "Okay, I'm going to write a comedy, and it needs to be funny." But once I found Joan and Dash's voices, the banter came very easily between them. I could see Clark Gable and Joan Crawford delivering these lines, and that really helped me as I was writing.

I also definitely cribbed some turns of phrase from some films I watched. Like I noticed that in a lot of movies, Jimmy Stewart would say, "Don't flip your wig," so I put that in. Then, in a movie called Love on the Run with Clark Gable and Joan Crawford, at one point he says, "Screwball, thy name is woman." So I wrote that down because I was like, "That's such a good line. I could never come up with that." [Laughs]

But immersing myself in the films of that era was really helpful. People speak differently now than they did then, and especially in the screwball era, there's that rat-a-tat pattern to the banter that's really specific. So for scenes where they're really going toe to toe, I wanted to make sure that I did everything in my power to capture that.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• New romance novels perfect for Halloween season
• Hot Stuff: The summer's 8 best romance novels are thrilling, fun, and resonant romps
• Winona Ryder might have married Keanu Reeves for real on the set of Dracula