Andrew Haigh Answers All of My Burning Questions About 'All of Us Strangers'
"I've realized that is the joy of cinema: You don't have to necessarily see your own experience reflected back to you as long as there is some humanity in the experience that you can connect with."
This past summer, cinema as an art form said “gay rights!” Passages. Bottoms. Monica. Nyad. Down Low. Theater Camp. The Stroll. Rotting in the Sun. Red, White & Royal Blue. That chant is continuing, albeit with a bit more aching melancholy, thanks to director Andrew Haigh’s hauntingly affecting All of Us Strangers, a loose adaptation of Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers. The film, opening in New York and LA on December 22 before going into wide release, centers around Adam (Andrew Scott), a screenwriter, and a chance encounter he has with his mysterious neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal), that leads him to visit his childhood home, where his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) appear to be living just as they were on the day they died 30 years ago.
There’s a ton of anticipation for All of Us Strangers for many reasons: It’s Haigh’s first feature film in six years and his first gay romance since his breakout, 2011’s Weekend, which was called “one of the truest, most beautiful movies ever made about two strangers,” amongst its many complimentary reviews. That, and early buzz calling the film “a sublime masterpiece” and “potentially the sexiest gay romance of the year.” And then there’s the Paul Mescal of it all. Where he goes, I follow. If he’s a bird, I’m a bird. As Brenda famously said in Scary Movie 4: “Maybe I could help him in a room in which there are no others.” His performance as Harry has already garnered him a Best Supporting Performance nod at the 26th British Independent Film Awards.
This was a film that, like Aftersun and Past Lives, reverberated in me for some time afterward. The question of “Did you like it?” felt so arbitrary in relation to what it is that pinged for me in this film. I have an obvious proximity to the subject matter as a writer, as a gay man, as a gay man who had a challenging relationship with his parents, and who, too, grappled with the death of one of them (in Adam’s case he lost both). But I, too, felt for Adam’s parents, robbed of their ability to get to know their adult son, to come around to understanding, accepting and loving the person he grew to become, and of course their own lives independent of him. All that, and the deeply familiar (albeit buried) memories of an unhappy childhood.
Director Andrew Haigh hadn’t read Strangers — he hadn’t even heard of it. He was sent a copy by the producers who suggested he give it a read. He let it percolate for a while, and in that thought pattern started to drift back to his past. The more he thought about it, the more he considered ways in which he could put himself into the story. In retrospect, he’s uncertain about what it was that spoke to him on such a personal level. His parents, for instance, are very much still alive. But somehow it spoke to his understanding of loss and the grief that’s born out of that, as well as the more universal idea of the ways in which we store and metastasize childhood pain. Because it’s a story about the past, Haigh used his own past as a jumping-off point, looking at childhood photos, digging deep into his memories and visiting his childhood home, a home he hadn’t been back to in thirty-something years — the home that they ended up shooting the film in.
The result is not autobiographical, but rather an amalgamation of Strangers, Haigh’s life and Haigh’s meditation on the liminal space between memory and grief. Below, a chat with the writer/director.
What made you want to make this film?
I have to feel that a film is 100% right for me to tell at the time I'm telling it and after my last few projects, I felt like I wanted to go inward and do something that felt more personal. I wrote most of this during the pandemic when I was in LA, which was a long way from a lot of my family back home [in England] and I think that had an effect on me, as it did for lots of people; going into the interior, thinking about my family, thinking about my memories, listening to old music, being sucked back into my past. I think all of that fed into why I wanted to make this film at this time.
When you're digging into your past, do you ever find that you have trouble knowing what is your true past vs. what is your adult reinterpretation of events from your past?
I think that's an eternal struggle for almost everyone because I think immediately where you go to is nostalgia. And for a lot of us, if you just remove that nostalgia, there’s more pain underneath it — there certainly was for me growing up. I wasn’t a particularly happy kid at all, so going back into my past was not the easiest process. I think as you go forward in your life, you keep saying to yourself, “Oh, I'm fine. I'm good! I'm alright now. I'm great!” But it doesn’t take much for that pain to resurface again, which is what this film is about, I suppose.
That’s very relatable for queer people, but I also think it's relatable for non-queer people, which is why I think this film simultaneously feels very for “us” and also reaches wide — a great tightrope the film walks. You mentioned listening to music from your childhood during the pandemic, which brings me to one of my favorite needle drops that appears both in the film and in the trailer: “Always on My Mind” by the Pet Shop Boys. A bop! What is it for you about this song?
I absolutely adore The Pet Shop Boys. I always have, since their first album back in ‘85. There's something about their music that works on lots and lots of levels, so you can listen to this nice pop song and wonder if it’s romantic and what it’s about, and then you dig into the lyrics and you’re like, “Oh! It's saying something else.” And it’s no surprise to me that [the singer] is queer because the lyrics say multiple things. I just love the idea that this is a pop song that essentially feels like the apology we all wanted growing up as queer kids of “I never understood you” and “you were special” essentially, and so it just felt so poignant and sort of ridiculous at the same time. It’s so absurd that the mother would be singing along to this song that has a real emotional resonance to Adam in this strange, liminal space. It just felt like such a good opportunity.
Can we talk about the space between you and Adam? It's my understanding that Adam is not you, and yet there are details that tie you, Andrew, to this story. For instance, shooting the film inside your childhood home. Are there perhaps qualities or experiences or shades of Adam that you drew from your own life?
I definitely drew from my experience hugely. It's a funny one, because when anybody that knows me watches the film, they’re like, “Oh, yeah. That's Andrew,” in terms of how I see things and how I feel about the world and how I feel about my past — it’s there on the screen. And the specifics of my story; when he's talking about being picked on at school to his dad, that's what happened to me when I was in school. When he's talking about running away to his mom — that was my life: always trying to run away. My understanding of queerness in relationship to family is very much the perspective the film is talking about. I will say that my parents are still alive, so there is a fundamental difference there which I was always slightly apprehensive about taking on because this is also a film about grief, but I also do still understand the nature of grief [despite not having lost my own parents]. I have lost people in my life and my parents are old and my dad has pretty severe dementia, so I think there's lots of things that I'm sort of throwing into this film about a child — which is still me — wanting to talk to his parents.
So many of us queer people feel so isolated growing up and we think we’re the only one, and then in adulthood, we often-not-always realize we’re not the only one; so many queer people have these shared experiences. Is that something you think about when making a movie like this and talking to people like me who can relate?
I really do. I remember when I first came out, I was 26, and going out to a gay club for the first time and seeing lots of other gay people was almost overwhelming for me. I think I cried, because I was like, “Oh, my God! There's people that are like me.” And of course you get to know them and you realize they’re not all like you [laughs], but still, we have a shared experience, especially queer people of a certain generation when it was very difficult to come out and to feel good about yourself. And it's not even because we’re a bunch of people full of self-loathing; we were made to not like ourselves by the world we lived in. It's a really important point: It’s not our fault we grew up in a period of shame; the shame was put on us. I think all of us feel the trauma of this which we start to pretend has gone away, but it hasn't always gone away.
Do you think that young queer people today experience that shame? The world today is not an entirely safe place, I know, and it's not as though things have entirely shifted. Yet shame is not something that I hear so much from young people today because queerness is out there in abundance and so often celebrated in our culture, especially pop culture.
I think there’s definitely been a shift, and thank God for that! And I know there’s some younger people that don’t like the film and they worry that it’s perpetuating this idea that we’re all full of shame and self-loathing, and I'm actually kind of happy for them that that's what they feel because it's not their experience any more and they can go into the world without feeling that shame. Thank fuck that’s often the case now! But it’s not the case for everybody, because there are still a lot of people who grow up in a country that isn’t so accepting or in a religious family, but I do feel that it’s changed enormously. I think it's probably important that the younger generation realizes that part of the reason why it's easier for them is because the older generation worked hard at trying to change things. I feel that for the generation above me. I think it's very important that the community respects what came before.
I want to talk about the sex scenes in All of Us Strangers, but I want to start by talking about the sex scenes in Weekend because I think there's a correlation here. I remember people really being taken aback by the sex scenes in Weekend and I think part of that taken aback-ness was the realization of, “Oh! They have sex like we have sex!” Can you talk about the design of the sex scene in Weekend and how it correlates to All of Us Strangers?
I've always tried to make sex scenes feel natural and honest and real. Look, lots of people have lots of different types of sex in whatever way works for them, but for me, it's just about showing sex as I see sex. And it is so funny: I remember when Weekend came out and liberal straight people would come up to me and be like, “Oh, I just didn't realize that a man could fuck another man while they’re looking at each other!” I realized people just have no idea what actually happens in the bedrooms of queer people. And I always want my sex scenes to be about something else, so it's not just sex; it’s connection. It's about two people trying to connect. It’s about two people trying to understand each other and when you have that as the focus, I feel like the sex scene then becomes about something and that's why you relate to it. It's not just two people banging away for the sake of it — not that there’s anything wrong with that.
In this film, it took me a while to understand that Adam was receptive to Harry’s advances. When Adam finally lets him into the apartment, there's this really tense and exciting moment where it’s unclear if we’re flirting and if we can go for it, and if we go for it, are we kissing or are we fucking…
That scene is so interesting to me because it was always about one person allowing the other person to just take control and allowing one person to be vulnerable and that being okay, and then having this quite long, sensual lead-up to when they first kiss and I found that pretty sexy and I think it's pretty sexy to watch, but there’s also a gentle kind of tenderness to it. I'm always trying to find ways to bring sex scenes to life; making it a little bit hot and a little bit tender and all of those things that sex can be.
I would say you succeeded! I would love your thoughts on the state of gay sex scenes on the whole because there are more unconventional (unconventional for mainstream media, that is) scenes depicting gays sex across multiple major shows and films coming out currently. Are you seeing a trend in relation to the depiction of gay sex?
I feel like heterosexual sex is not being shown on screen to the same extent currently, and maybe with queer content, people are willing to experiment. I think that's a shame, too. I read something recently about how younger generations don't want to see sex on screen anymore and I found that really intriguing because it's part of almost everybody's life, so if you don’t show it on screen, you're basically saying I don't want film or TV to reflect real life. And then what’s the option? You see porn? That’s not necessarily a good representation of sexuality. For me, sex on screen (as long as it’s filmed safely and consensually) is really important.
There are some incredible actors in this film. Having actors of this echelon creates interest around the film and it helps people to see it. And though they obviously receive a tremendous gift by getting to work with you, their presence helps not only make a good movie, but helps to market it as well.
I think having them is a gift because a film like this will get seen by more people because of those actors. I could have cast this with unknowns, but it would have been very hard for anyone to see it. You can’t escape that as a filmmaker, because you know that who you cast makes a difference in terms of how many people will see that film. I'm very aware of that and it is fascinating because when I first cast Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, I heard that people on the Internet were excited about the two of them getting cast together and whether they were going to be boyfriends and if there was going to be any sex between them. I'm savvy enough to realize that it helps the film, so I’m very pleased because none of them had to do this film. They certainly weren’t being paid a lot of money to do it, but I feel like they all really, really believed in it. Paul especially: taking on a supporting role, which he didn’t need to do. He really wanted to work with Andrew and really wanted to be in this film, and all of the actors felt like that. That shows that he is an interesting actor. That’s the thing: Actors who care more about what it is they’re doing rather than what their career will become is the kind of actor you want to work with.
There's been a huge debate online about queer actors playing queer roles and the necessity for that, and I don't like ascribing sexualities to people when we don't know them but I did see some controversy online from some pockets of the Internet saying that Paul is a straight actor playing a queer man. Where do you come down on this conversation?
I'm not insanely dogmatic about the debate. I really do understand why people feel a queer role needs to be played by a queer person because for many, many years, queer people were not getting the jobs and straight people were instead and there is an element that queer people might be able to understand a queer role much better than a straight person would, but I think it depends on the role. So with this, for example, I would never have cast a straight person in the role of Adam. I always knew I wanted Adam to be played by a queer actor. There's so much nuance I wanted to unpack and so much feeling that I wanted to get to that I knew I had to choose someone that was of the same sexuality. I think outside of that, I am more flexible. There are lots of things that define a character. And I don't think Paul would be very happy about being described as a straight person. The real question is: Do you believe that they like each other? And there are lots of things that make that up; it's the writing. I'm gay. Andrew’s gay. The producer’s gay. There's a bunch of gay people on this. It’s not like we’re a bunch of straight people making something about a queer experience. And there’s another strange thing: We always want people to walk in our shoes and to understand what it's like to be queer, so sometimes I feel like casting someone that isn't queer in a queer role is sort of doing that. And when I’m working with them, I love that. We get to have conversations that I wouldn't necessarily have otherwise. They can understand what it's like to be queer in a different way. So I'm flexible with it.
I often think it comes down to chemistry, and this movie has a lot of it. Both Andrew and Paul and Claire and Jamie have tremendous chemistry. As a director, do you think chemistry can be cultivated or does it simply have to exist from the jump?
I think there has to be some chemistry at the beginning; there has to be something there. And that is the job of the casting director: making sure that you’re choosing people that basically want to work with each other, and I feel like that's exactly what happened in this film. Every single person wanted to be in the film with the other person. When you go into a project people are really excited about, they’re ready to generate that chemistry. But you do have to work at it. And if you choose the right actors, they realize that if they want to have chemistry, they need to try to activate it. So Andrew and Paul spent a lot of time together. They hung out together. They’re still really good friends now, so obviously there was something there that worked. And then it's just my job to just keep that alive when I'm filming it, and partly that can be about just creating an environment on set without tension so there isn't room for that chemistry to dissipate. You want to keep everything up in the air.
How do you decide when to insert yourself? As you said, part of creating that chemistry is having Andrew and Paul spend time together just the two of them, but it can also be helpful for the three of you to spend time together, right? Because you're ultimately directing. How do you delineate between “they should go off and be together” versus “we should be together the three of us.”
It's just instinct. Now, the more that I make projects, I watch everybody as I'm working; even if it's just prior to shooting or whatever, I'm constantly watching and what you have to do is work out if someone needs you in that moment, and if they don't need you, you let them be. So whether that's on set when they’re acting or in their changing room or walking down to the set, you just have to work out if they need you now or are they doing something by themselves that they need to work out? And it's the same with giving direction: If something's brewing, then me giving some stupid note will probably ruin whatever is bubbling under, so I let that happen, and then if they need me, I’ll step in and give advice. It’s always just about feeling and having empathy for the people around you.
Let’s talk about the coming out scene between Adam and his mother. I found that to be one of the most poignant parts of the film because his mother does not react the way a queer person wants their mother to react, and yet there's an empathy I have for her in that moment in watching her in real time. I always feel this way, but I have a lot of empathy for parents in general because they have an idea for their kid's life and you're coming to them and saying something that upends their idea of what they thought your life was going to be and it's human to take a beat when your mode of thinking gets derailed, but I love that Adam and his mother both stay in the room in that moment and are able to sort of untangle it. Can you talk about writing that scene, shooting that scene — everything that is in that scene?
It took a long time to get that scene right. I was writing it endlessly because I knew it was sort of doing two things: It's Adam coming out to his mother, but it's also reigniting all of the feelings that he used to feel living in the ‘80s because everything his mother said to him is what every single person said during the ‘80s; what queer people were being bombarded with constantly. It was about having sympathy, as you say, for both of them. As queer people, there’s so much complexity involved in it all because we often want the other person to feel okay as well and be like, “Oh, don't worry! I'm telling you this thing but I know it's complicated and I’m fine!” But actually you're not fine and you need them to see through what you're giving them. And then for the mother, you’re right: It can’t be easy for parents to suddenly have a different idea of their child. That's really, really difficult — especially back then. I mean, Jesus! It’s a very different situation. So I was trying to be generous to both of those people and both of those characters, realizing it's complicated and messy and very hard to come to some kind of conclusion, and I feel like Adam leaves that experience feeling complicated about himself and whether he does feel lonely because of his sexuality. Has his mom accepted it? Sort of, but not really. I think that’s lots of people's actual experience. When I came out to my mom, it was a pretty similar experience.
After seeing this film, I realized that queer people today seem to talk about their coming out stories far less. Do you find that people are talking about it enough?
It's funny: I don't anymore. I think that in the ‘90s when I was going out on the scene in London and you'd meet people and go home with them, you’d always end up talking about your coming out story. But that was in the ‘90s when lots of us had just come out. I think as you get older, you stop talking about it, and that's fine, but when you do start opening up, you realize that this idea of “coming out” — you’re always coming out. You’re coming out to the taxi driver. You’re coming out to the hotel that you check into, or you’re in a meeting with a bunch of people that don’t quite know if you are or aren’t. It's a constant coming out. I was amazed in myself how suddenly I can be nervous again in a certain situation. I’m 50! I've been out for a long time. I’ve made queer films, and still my heart starts racing and I’m like, “What's going to happen? What's going to happen?” Even in California! I checked into a motel near Lone Pine in California and you could see the look on their face when [my partner and I] wanted to share a room. You’re always still having to do that and go through that process.
Warning: Spoiler for the the film. Skip this question if you don’t want to know the film’s ending!
It wasn’t until days after I watched it that I understood that the only time that we see Harry alive is when he first meets Adam and then when Harry gets to the elevator, it’s the only time we see Harry alone, and then that is the end of Harry’s life, sadly. And again, that took me days. I believe that that was intentional, and that this film leaves a lot to the audience to interpret. Are you someone who wants everyone to come to the conclusion but it’s just a matter of when? Are you someone who you doesn't necessarily need them to come to a conclusion? Are you someone who believes there's multiple conclusions to come to?
I kind of go back and forth with all of that. I certainly knew that I wanted this film to feel like when you wake up from a dream and you think you understood it but you’re not sure if you did, and you find that the more that you pick at the dream, the more it raises new questions. And I love that. I love that you can leave a cinema and you can start to ask other questions. And on the logical front, your sense of the film is correct, but everyone has different interpretations. People have come to me and said, “Is Adam dead all along?” and “Is this purgatory” and “Is any of it real?” I mean, it's a film, so none of it's actually real, but it’s all the manifestation of a feeling, so if people see different things in that, they should. And I'm aware that some people will want a much happier ending and I'm aware of the things that people instinctively want — including myself.
Zooming out of the making of the film and into the post-production: You're in a really unique situation right now because of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike in that you are largely shouldering the promotion of this film. What has that been like for you? Promotion isn’t traditionally a big part of the job of a director.
Look, I would love for the actors to be here with me doing these things. But speaking to other directors, it’s kind of been quite nice. We’re like, “People are listening to us for a change!” [Laughs] Now, it’s not about the handsome actors: It’s about the back room stars that no cares about. But I want the strike to end and it's sad that the actors don't get to talk about what they've done, because they’ve done a wonderful job. But yeah, it's been a slightly strange situation. I’ve been on a lot of stages by myself talking about the film.
I want to talk about your show Looking. Recently, I’ve observed a phenomenon that I believe started with the television series Girls where people were re-watching the show during Covid and everyone was like, “Oh, my God! Girls is amazing!” because they weren’t familiar with the series before. I feel like there's a similar conversation that's happened with Looking, spurred largely by Twitter, of people going back, re-watching the show and saying, “I think we unfairly judged this show!” Are you aware of that conversation at all?
I wasn't quite aware that people were re-evaluating, which is nice because at the time, it was quite painful when everyone was saying, “We don't like the show! It’s rubbish. It's crap.” I'm really proud of that show. I think it's a kind, sweet show about messy lives, which was always our intention with it. And I’m glad that people are watching it again. As with Girls, when something comes out and is wanting to be popular, there will always be people that say, “We don't like it! We think it's terrible. Why is this representing us?” I think there was a lot of frustration because people did not feel it represented their lives, and I think that as time goes by, you care a little bit less about that. It’s representing their lives; it doesn't need to represent all of our lives. [Laughs]
Last question: What is a piece of cinema or television that you love that is very unexpected to hear?
That is totally easy for me: 9 to 5 — Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton. I have probably seen that film more than any other human being has ever watched the film. I probably started watching it when I was about eight years-old, and sometimes in my summer holidays, I would watch it every single day for the whole holiday. I love that film. I know every line. I made my brother watch it; we both know every single line of it. I met Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda once and nearly started crying, I was so overwhelmed. I love that film.
So then my actual final question has to be if someone came to you and said, “Andrew, we want to remake 9 to 5,” what would you do?
I would have to change it. It would have to be set in, like, a Welsh mining town [laughs] — something very different. Whether 9 to 5 is a good film, I don’t know, but it certainly has made me laugh enormously every time I’ve watched it and I feel like I am those three women. And it’s interesting because I do feel that through watching that film, I learned that I could somehow put myself into the headspace of all those characters and I'm clearly not a woman working in an office in the 1980s, and I've realized that is the joy of cinema: You don't have to necessarily see your own experience reflected back to you as long as there is some humanity in the experience that you can connect with.