If you’ve watched Julie and the Phantoms, then you know there’s clearly something going on between Julie and Luke. Their connection when they perform with the band is undeniable, and we can’t help but notice those longing looks. They never admitted their feelings for each other in the first season, but both Charlie Gillespie and Madison Reyes know that Julie and Luke totally like each other.
“Come on, it’s hard for them. They don’t stay it because it’s impossible,” Charlie told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY. “That’s the way Luke feels, at least. They can’t talk about it because what’s the point of talking about it when it can’t happen? And that’s hard on both of them. They really like each other. Come on, we can all tell. But he’s a ghost. She’s a girl. It’s hard to imagine dating a ghost.”
As for Madison, she is well aware of Julie’s feelings for Luke. “I’m not gonna say that she loves him,” she told HollywoodLife.“But she definitely cares for him a lot more than she did before. Especially when you see the relationship getting to the end. That girl definitely has some hard feelings for that boy. I don’t know how she’s going to handle it because he’s a ghost. I’m sorry to break it to you. I mean, we have this whole thing that they can now touch now. So maybe it’ll work out, but I don’t know. It’s still very weird that no one can see him. But I’m very glad that she kind of realizes that she likes him.”
At the end of the season, Julie and her three ghosts realized that they could now touch each other. The reason behind it wasn’t explained. This opens up a whole new world for Luke, Alex, and Reggie. HollywoodLife asked Charlie whether or not Luke might take his chance with Julie given this latest development. “Even if they couldn’t touch, we’re just going to go for it at some point,” Charlie said. “I don’t know what he’s waiting for. I don’t know what the writers are waiting for.”
There were plenty of moments throughout the first season where it was evident Julie and Luke like each other. But that’s not enough for Madison. “We need a hardcore confirmation. We need it to be said that Luke likes Julie and that Julie likes Luke,” Madison told HollywoodLife. Madison is all-in for a Julie and Luke romance, that’s for sure. “Me and Charlie literally came up with the ship name: Juke,” she continued. “Juke all the way. I didn’t even like that whole thing with Nick. I felt like it was just the cliche popular kid and the cool girl, but he doesn’t like her, he likes the popular girl. Julie can do so much better. Julie does not need this. She’s amazingly talented. I’d rather take the ghost than the popular kid who now just starts to like me because he finally realizes my work.”
Madison also opened up about the song “Perfect Harmony,” the song she and Charlie wrote for Julie’s daydream scene with Luke. “Being able to write that with Charlie kind of helped us realize how the two of them might feel because writing a song with somebody is totally different than writing a song by yourself,” Madison explained. “I mean, we really got to experience that deeper connection while we were writing the song. You really had to be vulnerable and put yourself in the mindset of how these two people are slowly starting to like each other might feel. It was really funny, especially when we’d get flustered and we wouldn’t know what to do. We didn’t want to get stumped because we were so passionate about writing the song. We had a lot of help from Owen [Patrick Joyner] and Jeremy [Shada]. They supported us with being the only people that really knew about it besides my dad, so we got a lot of support. It really just helped with us realizing how these two people felt, and we kind of looked at each other and said that they’ve got to get their stuff together because they definitely like each other.” Julie and the Phantoms is currently streaming on Netflix.