Speaking to Them magazine alongside her “Love Lies Bleeding” co-star Katy O’Brien, Kristen Stewart briefly reflected on making the 2020 holiday romantic comedy “Happiest Season.” Set up at Sony Pictures and released in the U.S. direct to streaming via Hulu, the Clea DuVall-directed film was widely touted as the first lesbian Christmas rom-com produced by a major Hollywood studio.
“The identity was beaten out of my goals there,” Stewart told Them about “Happiest Season.” “I was getting so many studio executive notes about my hair and my clothes. I was like, ‘You did read the script. You did hire me. What are we doing here?’ It was fucking annoying.”
“And it’s fine, because I guess there are ways that you need to shroud things for everyone to easily digest,” Stewart added. “And I’m down with that. And honestly, fucking hats off to Clea, because I don’t have the patience [to do] that.”
Stewart was making a point that no shrouding was necessary on her new movie, “Love Lies Bleeding.” In “Happiest Season,” the actor starred opposite Mackenzie Davis as one of half of a lesbian couple whose relationship is put to the test when they visit the family of Davis’ Harper for Christmas. Stewart’s Abby learns that Harper never came out to her family, so the romantic couple is forced to act as straight platonic friends over the holiday visit.
It appears Stewart had some ideas for her “Happiest Season” character that didn’t fly by the studio executives, although she did not get into specifics. She told Them magazine that she views her role in “Happiest Season” as the “hidden vegetables” of a family-friendly movie that’s all about tolerance, and now it’s “pretty fucking sick” to make her queerness as loud as possible in A24’s “Love Lies Bleeding.”
The sexually-charged A24 crime thriller stars Stewart as Lou, the owner of a gym in small-town America whose blossoming relationship with a bodybuilder (O’Brien) is complicated by her family’s criminal ties.
Director Rose Glass told Variety before the film’s premiere at Sundance that she “always wanted Lou to have this moody boyish charm, to be butch and androgynous in a way which not many actors of Kristen’s profile are. Weirdly, I can’t think of that many roles like this she’s done, and yet to be honest, it feels like it’s maybe a bit closer to who she is.”
“When I watched the movie, I was like, ‘This is really cool to see me look like this again,’” Stewart added about her role as Lou.
“Live Lies Bleeding” is now playing in theaters from A24.
