Just how gay is Challengers? The stars of the erotic tennis drama unpack its queer themes [Queerty INTERVIEW FEATURE]
One of the first official looks we ever got of Challengers—the latest film from Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino—was the image of stars Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist sitting on a hotel bed, anxiously and eagerly looking at one another.
The energy between them practically jumped off the screen. Something was about to go down.
But what that “something” was wasn’t exactly clear. Would Challengers lean into the queer tension of its central trio and deliver a true ménage à trois? Or we we about to see another love triangle romance where two guys duke it out over the affections of the same woman?
Trans comedy writer Harper Steele took a road trip with Will Ferrell—their journey has the power to save lives
If you wanted to call Will Ferrell one of the greatest comedic voices of his generation, few would argue with you. From Saturday Night Live to his run of blockbuster hits, the funnyman has been cracking us up for the better part of the last 30 years.
But, as the old saying that goes, “behind every great man is a great woman,” and it’d be wrong to praise Ferrell without also giving flowers to Harper Steele, his long-time comedy partner and friend.
To be fair, Steele’s might not necessarily be a name you recognize yet, but she’s been the brains behind some of Ferrell’s most brilliantly batty work, ever since they first started working together on SNL in 1995…
Just how gay is Netflix’s Ripley? Andrew Scott says the series’ queerness isn’t so black-and-white [Queerty INTERVIEW FEATURE]
“There’s something that’s so enduring about this character,” Andrew Scott says of the classic queer-coded antihero Tom Ripley, “and I think it’s because we have so many questions about him.”
When we heard the actor was tapped to play the eponymous role in a new adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley—Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 crime novel about fictional conman Tom Ripley—our first question was: “Oh this is about to be so gay, isn’t it?”
And now that we’ve had a chance to see Ripley, writer-director Steven Zaillian’s gorgeous series that hits Netflix on April 4, we’re pleased to report out prediction was right! Though not at all in the way we had expected…
Adam Lambert has never shied away from being his authentic self, and he’s not about to start now [Queerty Digital cover story]
On a bright, bitter cold day in Park City, Utah, Adam Lambert trudges to a photo op, stepping carefully around icy patches of the sidewalk.
Even bundled in a knee-length puffer coat, he’s giving glam and can’t help but catch the eyes of passersby, many of whom cut through snow to get closer, to ask the former American Idol contestant for an autograph. Lambert pauses to offer warm hellos, but the life of a rock star never stops moving — except when our entourage nearly collides with a marriage proposal.
“Oh my gosh, congratulations,” he says excitedly to the newly affianced couple. The eyes of both widen as they realize, “Wait, Adam Lambert’s the first person to tell us congrats!” As if their special moment wasn’t already memorable enough...
Marcel The Shell is the tiny queer icon we need right now [Queerty INterview feature]
In these dark times, it’s important to hold onto the little things in life that give us hope, provide us with comfort, and bring relief. In that sense, Marcel The Shell—a “little thing” if there ever was one—has made his feature film debut at the perfect moment.
With big heart and humor, Marcel The Shell With Shoes On‘s story about carving out a place for oneself in a daunting world feels like a small miracle. And in its adorable star, the film gives us an emblem of hope, of ingenuity, and perseverance—a tiny icon with an outsized appeal for the LGBTQ community…
Melanie Lynskey Is Still Finding Her Magic [Backstage COVER STORY]
At long last, the veteran character actor is getting the spotlight and awards buzz she’s always deserved.
Nearly 30 years after making her debut in “Heavenly Creatures,” Melanie Lynskey is finally getting the star treatment she deserves—whether she’s ready for it or not.
“The other day, somebody came with me to a photo shoot, and he was like, ‘Have you ever thought about [anxiety] medication?’ ” she says, laughing. “I was like, ‘To be honest, I have!’ I was just that awkward and terrified the entire time. I hate being the center of attention.”
Though her career spans everything from Sundance-approved indies to cult comedies to Oscar-nominated ensemble pieces to a massively popular network sitcom, Lynskey is still adjusting to her newfound spotlight. A self-described character actor, her work is often understated and quietly moving; she plays the kind of roles someone on Twitter is bound to lament that “no one is talking about enough.” In a recent interview on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” (which was somehow her first late-night talk show appearance), she joked, “I’m used to doing something and then having a couple people be like, ‘I saw that!’ And then it just kind of floats away.”
Lilly Singh Designed the Life and Home of Her Dreams [mydomaine cover story]
Lather, rinse, get aligned on long-term career goals, repeat. With one simple innovation, Lilly Singh transformed a daily routine into a font of inspiration: “I would like to say I’m the inventor of the Shower Vision Board.”
Since the beginning of 2022, Singh has had her vision board fastened to the outside of her glass shower looking in. “It forces me to see it every… every-ish day,” she jokes. There’s a squeegee nearby, too, so not even steam can get in the way of her ambitions.
A modern-day multi-hyphenate—her credits include actor, author, YouTube creator, TV host, and producer, to name a few—Singh finds her energy being pulled in countless directions…
Needle Drop: 12 Times Girls Chose the Perfect Closing Music Cue [primetimer]
Lena Dunham's HBO series made a habit out of great closing credits songs.
For all of the laughter, tears, and frustrated think-pieces it would inspire over its six seasons, one of the most indelible moments of HBO's Girls came early in its run, at the end of its third episode, "All Adventurous Women Do." A distraught Hannah Horvath (series star and creator Lena Dunham) listens to music as she hovers over her laptop, contemplating the perfect tweet to sum up her feelings about a recent HPV diagnosis and learning that her ex-boyfriend is gay. She drafts up a few self-pitying thoughts, only to quickly delete-delete-delete…
troye Sivan Time-Travels Back to His Youth in Three Months [Thrillist]
Troye Sivan, a world-famous pop star whose songwriting conveys an emotional clarity beyond his years, grew up through his music. Now, at 26, his first leading film role takes him to a place he thought he’d never see again: his youth.
“I'm so happy I'm not a teenager anymore,” Sivan confesses. It’s a surprising thing to hear from someone who broke through with the single “Youth” and, as recently as his 2020 EP In A Dream, was singing wistfully about those days of “sleeping and spending nights wasting time.” Sivan knows he can be guilty of looking back with rose-tinted glasses, but now he reflects on the causticness and uncertainty of his own adolescence, “when you meet someone and you feel like the world is ending.” In hindsight, teenage angst can seem silly or overblown. “I definitely don’t miss it,” he laughs…
"I'm going to give them the gayest movie ever made": An oral history of Another Gay Movie [The a.v. club]
Ever since the teen comedy came of age in American pop culture, sex has been the subgenre’s predominant guiding principle: What it is, who wants to have it, how soon can they have it, are they doing it right, and can they put this here? While earlier, more chaste films could only allude to the deed, the ’80s ushered in a new era of bawdy teen romps that were unafraid to be horny on main. But, in the evolution from Porky’s to American Pie and beyond, the lusting was mostly left to the straights, especially white young men looking to get laid at any cost. If you were a young viewer learning about sex for the first time from these films (as so may were) it was almost as if these straight white boys were the only ones allowed to feel this way…
Jennifer Coolidge on Promising Young Woman and her viral “hi” video: “All my best stuff is by accident” [The a.v. club]
Jennifer Coolidge is the kind of actor who can make any line interesting; her unique delivery and innate sense of comedic timing have produced some of film and television’s most quotable scenes of the past 25 years. There’s Paulette’s immortal “Makes me want a hot dog real bad” from Legally Blonde, there’s Sherri Ann Cabot’s “We both love soup” from Best In Show—one of many unforgettable lines from her fruitful collaborations with Christopher Guest—and now there’s “Hi,” from an eight-second video that seemingly came out of nowhere to thoroughly tickle the internet. Leave it to Jennifer Coolidge to make even the simplest greeting iconic…
If Luca and The Falcon And The Winter Soldier are gay to you, then they’re gay [The a.v. club]
If the subtext you picked up on gives you a greater appreciation of the text, shouldn’t that be welcomed?
Anthony Mackie, cover your ears: Luca is gay. While it’s not made explicit, Pixar’s latest—the sun-soaked tale about the transformative friendship between two young sea monsters who disguise their true identity to explore life on land among humans—makes for a rich parable for the queer coming-of-age experience, and one that feels more genuine and more heartfelt than any of the Disney corporation’s meager attempts at “exclusively gay moments” in recent years…
Getting to Gabriel: How Malignant’s creative team brought a new horror icon to life [The a.v. club]
Any movie monster is good for a jump scare or two, but only a special specter can slash its way into the hearts of audiences. Malignant’s Gabriel—armed with little more than a sharp trophy, a leather duster, and the all-too-rare element of surprise—earned a place in the pantheon of beloved horror icons when the film seemingly came out of nowhere earlier this fall to delight critics and set the internet abuzz. Malignant is a deliciously wicked genre romp from modern horror maestro James Wan. In between Aquaman duties, Wan and co-creators Ingrid Bisu and Akela Cooper conjured up the film as a love letter to Giallo cinema…
The Other Two was set for an encore. Then came the pandemic. [The a.v. club]
Creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider share how they navigated a hiatus, a network change, and growth spurts for the comedy's second season on HBO Max.
When The Other Two wrapped its first season on Comedy Central, it did so with a giddy, tantalizing twist. This week, the acclaimed comedy comes to HBO Max for its long-awaited second season, jumping right back into the action with Molly Shannon’s Pat Dubek now a bona fide star in her own right, and it’s almost like no time has passed at all. Except it has—it’s been nearly two-and-a-half years since we last saw the Dubeks, and The Other Two’s had to contend with the forces of nature to make its way back to our screens…
With one thrilling sequence, Ana de Armas steals Bond’s spotlight in No Time To Die [The a.v. club]
Despite offering definitive closure for Daniel Craig’s tenure as 007, No Time To Die chases its final credit roll with a card that promises, “James Bond will return”—a sly callback that should delight longtime fans of the series. Of course, if the filmmakers wanted to really bring the house down, they should’ve capped things off with: “Ana de Armas will return.” Since Cary Joji Fukunaga’s movie—the 25th official James Bond film from Eon Productions—sees the spy at his most haunted and dour, it’s de Armas’ all-too-brief turn as green CIA operative Paloma that brings a welcome spark to the largely somber affair. In barely the time it takes to shake up a martini, Paloma trades quips with Bond, kicks some SPECTRE ass, then says her goodbyes…
Follow the Old Town Road: 20 songs that got a boost from TikTok fame [The a.v. club]
Given that Lil Nas X’s hit single landed him a record deal, a couple of Grammys, and millions of fans, other artists and labels have been keen on following suit. As a wider audience (a.k.a. older folk) flocks to the app out of quarantine-induced boredom, TikTok’s become something of a testing ground for new pop songs, and an unlikely home for deep cuts and forgotten singles to find a second life. Money has power on TikTok, just like any social network, but you can’t necessarily buy “virality”—there’s no logic to what’s going to take hold with the app’s trend-setting user base. Artists like Drake will drop a new track with a corresponding dance, shamelessly positioned to spread like wildfire on the platform, while, other times…
From Deliverance to Ani DiFranco, Bring It On’s filmmakers reveal the influences behind its most memorable scenes [The a.v. club]
By design, teen comedies often burn bright and fast: The young stars, top 40 needle drops, and cool-kid slang all tap into the current zeitgeist, forever tethering them to the year they were made. No matter how outdated they look, there’s an appeal to revisiting them as time capsules. But few have the everlasting charm and re-watchability of Bring It On. Though made with a meager budget and dismissively written off as “just a cheerleader movie” (a label it flaunts with pride), Bring It On claimed No. 1 at the box office after its August 25, 2000 debut, eventually becoming a certified hit with more than a $90 million worldwide gross. Twenty years later, its fan base hasn’t dwindled, especially among those who came of age around the turn of the millennium…
Bowen Yang and Hot White Heist creator Adam Goldman discuss: What makes the heist genre so queer? [The a.v. club]
There’s a moment in any heist narrative when the goal is stated, loud and clear: break into the vault, bankrupt the casino, plant a false memory three dream-layers deep into the target’s mind. Inevitably, someone will label the mission “impossible,” but there’s always a way; all it takes is a well-laid plan and a team of aces, each with a unique skillset to help pull off the job. The new Audible Original podcast Hot White Heist thrives in that familiar mold, spinning a high-stakes action-comedy yarn across six episodes as a ragtag group comes together to accomplish the impossible. But the fact that the series pulls it off with an entirely LGBTQ+ cast and crew? That’s a queer inception.
The 10 best things we saw at the Academy Museum Of Motion Pictures [The a.v. club]
Laura Dern can take off that hardhat, kick her feet up, and relax because construction is finally complete on the Academy Museum Of Motion Pictures, which is set to open its doors in Los Angeles to film fans around the globe on September 30. An endeavor nearly a century in the making—the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences had plans for the museum dating back to 1929—the space is said to be the largest in North America “devoted to exploring films and film culture.” Indeed, the Academy Museum is massive; designed by world-renowned architect Renzo Piano, the 300,000-square-foot campus is composed of two main buildings, including a spherical theater and rooftop terrace…