George MacKay and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett to star as lovers in gay drag queen revenge thriller
Femme tells the story of a London drag queen who is violently attacked by a group of men.
By Will Stroude
Words: Jack Pengelly; Images: Wiki Commons (left) and WarnerMedia
George MacKay and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett to set to play lovers in an upcoming gay revenge thriller.
Femme, based on a 2021 BAFTA-nominated short film of the same name, tells the story of a London drag queen who is violently attacked by a group of men.
When the queen spots one of her attackers in a gay sauna, she realises that he doesn’t recognise her out of drag and begins to plot her revenge.
Directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping are looking forward to bringing a new, LGBTQ lens to thriller cinema, stating: “We are huge fans of thrillers, but we felt that the predominantly hyper-masculine genre often excludes the queer perspective.
“By putting a gay protagonist at the heart of a thriller, we aim to invert expectations, and push stories from the margin, and ourselves as queer artists, into the mainstream.”
While neither of the film’s leading cast is openly LGBTQ, both have a history of portraying gay characters: George MacKay starred in 2014’s Pride where he played Joe Cooper, a young man who joins the activist group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.
Nathan Stewart-Jarrett has a longer history of portraying gay characters, starring as Belize in Angels In America during its National Theatre run alongside Andrew Garfield.
More recently he played a gay school councillor in HBO’s Generation, and also opposite Bill Skarsgard as his love interest in AMC’s Soulmates.
Production for Femme begins in June.