Tired of your favourite onscreen characters meeting tragic fates? Bury Your Gays is a must-watch
BY NIC CROSARA, STILL BY DEADBEAT STUDIO
If you’re a lover of film, you’ve probably mourned the tragic death of a vast range of LGBTQIA+ characters on screen. From The 100, and Orange Is The New Black to Jane The Virgin, no sapphics are safe. And often, these characters meet their bleak fate shortly after managing to find love. Oh, and the world of TV can be even more brutal. Not only are our favourite characters killed off, but now the entire show is axed prematurely. This is something that inspired lesbian writer-director Charlotte Cooper to make the fantastic short Bury Your Gays.
The film has deservedly been shortlisted for the Best British Award at this year’s Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival. Getting the chance to speak with the director ahead of the festival, it’s immediately so clear how much passion she has for LGBTQIA+ storytelling.
DIVA: Congratulations on being shortlisted for the Best British Award at this year’s Iris Prize LGBTQ film festival. How are you feeling in the lead up to the festival?
Charlotte: I’m so excited that we have made the shortlist for the Iris Prize. The Iris Prize is the Oscars of LGBTQIA+ films, and I’m super, super excited. I sort of dreamed about having a film in that shortlist, so to get one with my debut is brilliant.
More congratulations are in order. Congratulations on getting married. I was hoping that you could tell DIVA’s audience about what you spent your honeymoon budget on…
So, if you’re ever getting married, don’t do it two weeks before you shoot a short film! I got married in December, and then the short film was in January, and, you know, making a film is really tough to fund. So, Leanne, my wife, said to me, “You know what, just to say to people that our honeymoon fund is also the short film fund”. So my poor wife hasn’t yet been on a honeymoon, but she does have a lovely short film.Yeah, so all our honeymoon funds went on the short film.
She sounds like a great cheerleader.
Oh my god, she’s the best, she’s the best.
And the film is about the “bury your gays” trope, and it’s something that we have both discussed for years. We both watched the end of Killing Eve, and were so disappointed by that ending. [It was then that we were both like] “We have to call out this trope, we have to draw attention to the bury your gays trope”.
I hope we see less of it going forward, but I feel like it’s almost having a resurgence, so it’s good timing for this film.
It constantly trends on Twitter, but also the bury your gays trope also encompasses the idea of gay misery and being gay is to suffer. Hollywood is obsessed with watching their gay characters suffer. We are having a resurgence because the world is no longer prioritising our rights, which is ridiculous. So we need to keep fighting and keep pushing.
Well said. And you have such an amazing cast in this film. What was it like working with them?
We have a brilliant cast. We’ve got Jude Mack, who is actually gonna be one of the leads in the next series of Ted Lasso. We’ve got T’Nia Miller, who everyone recognises from The Haunting Of Bly Manor, she’s in Marvel’s upcoming Vision Quest series. We’ve got Harry Trevaldwyn from How To Train Your Dragon. The wonderful Sophie Melville, who’s currently in a play at the moment at Trafalgar Studios. We’ve got Ella Rae Smith, Amelia Clarkson, Ryan Dean, Sule Rimi. We’ve got loads of people and they’re all wonderful.
Jude was playing a character and was having to fight against this external character that she was trying to play, fitting into these different scenes of these different genres, but then also playing her inner monologue. It was really tricky. And her comedy timing is just perfect. They are an absolute genius.
Are you able to tease anything else that you’re planning on working on?
With Bury Your Gays, we’re currently in development of turning it into a longer form idea. So that’s really exciting. And then, personally, I’m just working on lots more different projects. So you’re going to see a lot more from me coming up!
Do you have a final message you’d like to give the DIVA audience?
Lesbians are great. Let’s keep supporting our lesbian TV shows, because our shows keep getting cancelled. My wife and I were so upset after things like A League Of Their Own got cancelled. So we need to keep supporting authentic storytelling, keep supporting lesbian-led TV shows. I think there was an article at the moment that has a list of like 164 lesbian TV shows that got cancelled in the last couple of years. So we just need to keep supporting these TV shows because A League of Their Own was my favourite show. And my wife and I, we love all these fantastic lesbian shows, but they keep getting cancelled. So we need to keep watching and supporting them.
Pssst… sapphics, do not fear. Since our interview, Iris has kindly treated these newlyweds to a romantic stay at a hotel as a thank you to Leanne for sacrificing her honeymoon for such a vital film
Bury Your Gays will be screening at this year’s Iris Prize festival and will be broadcast on Film 4 and streaming on Channel 4.
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