Josephine Skriver says A Court of Thorns and Roses should be animated like Arcane, not live action

Josephine Skriver has a simple solution for the inevitable ACOTAR casting war: don’t cast it. On Booked, Blonde & Busy, she said A Court of Thorns and Roses shouldn’t be a live-action movie at all, it should be animated in the lush, expensive, nobody-looks-like-this-for-real mode of Arcane.

That is not just a cute fan preference. It’s the rare adaptation take that survives contact with reality. Sarah J. Maas’s world is a trap for live action: wings, violet eyes, immortal cheekbones, mountain courts, emotional telepathy, and men who are somehow ancient warlords and also the internet’s collective boyfriend. Put that on a CW-looking set with the wrong wig and the whole thing turns into community theater with abs.

Okay, actually hot take that I don’t know if most people agree with. I don’t think it should be a real life action movie.

Let the fae stay drawn

Josephine Skriver wasn’t coming at this like a tourist who read one spicy fairy book and bought a Velaris sweatshirt. She talked like a full citizen of BookTok: ACOTAR rereads, Throne of Glass theories, Nesta grievances, audiobook speed confessions, and the grim knowledge that every fan-cast is also a group fight waiting to happen.

I wanted to be like full Arcane kind of like give me that universe of like draw it for me.

She’s right. Animation gives ACOTAR what live action would spend years trying to fake: scale, sensuality, magic, and faces that can be beautiful in a way that doesn’t require finding six actors grown in a lab under the supervision of a horny jeweler. Arcane worked because it didn’t apologize for being stylized. It made heightened emotion look native to the form. ACOTAR needs that. It is, spiritually and structurally, not a story that benefits from a beige castle hallway and a wig budget.

Skriver’s funniest proof came earlier, when she diagnosed why romantasy red flags feel different from real-world romance red flags. In fantasy, she said, murder, stalking, kidnapping, and possessiveness somehow get processed through the genre’s enchanted nonsense machine. The line is absurd. It’s also the whole genre in a shot glass.

They will do everything. They will murder your parents. They will like lock you up, kidnap you. They will torture your whole village. They’ll be like a mass murderer. But, they will never cheat cuz you are theirs.

That’s exactly why live action is dangerous. The second you put those dynamics into bodies that look like people from a streaming-service teen drama, the spell gets weird. A fae lord can be monstrous and romantic because the form keeps telling you this is not your office situationship with a sword. Animation preserves the distance. Live action dares the audience to ask whether everyone involved should call a therapist.

Her Rhysand note is the part fans will fight about

Skriver also planted a flag on Rhysand casting: he should be non-white. Not as a vague diversity afterthought, but because, to her, the Night Court reads visually as something closer to an Arabian Nights fantasy than the default pale, brooding TV prince assembly line.

for me he has to be non white. There’s that entire court is so like like Arabian night kind of vibe the way the clothes they would describe it the way he’s kind of dark

That take has teeth because ACOTAR fandom has been fan-casting these characters for years with the intensity of a papal conclave run by Tumblr. Skriver’s version of Rhysand is not a boy. She explicitly wanted a man, tall, masculine, and old enough to sell the fact that he has been alive for centuries. Please, she basically begged, do not give her a little kid with purple contacts.

The call here is easy: Skriver’s animation argument is stronger than most fan-casting exercises because it solves the problem underneath the problem. It’s not just who plays Feyre or Rhysand. It’s whether any live actor can enter romantasy at full volume without looking trapped between prestige TV and a perfume commercial.

If ACOTAR ever truly makes the jump to screen, the first question shouldn’t be which beautiful person gets the wings. It should be whether the show has the nerve to leave beautiful people out of it.