Director Gregg Araki on Gen Z, sex and why ‘the highs and lows of it are kind of what life’s all about’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Gregg Araki, you kinky bitch. Fans of the renowned queer filmmaker have been thirsting for “another homo movie by Gregg Araki” for over a decade. His last feature, White Bird in a Blizzard, came out in 2014, meaning he’s been edging us for 12 years. Twelve years! Thankfully, he is finally giving audiences the release we’ve been yearning for.

On 28 August, he makes his highly-anticipated return to the silver screen with his saucy sex-comedy I Want Your Sex. The title alone screams Araki. Audiences are sure to be left howling at the audacious antics of this loudly-coloured and provocative dom/sub romp, starring Olivia Wilde (The Invite) as a dominatrix artist, and Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza) as her latest young, submissive play-thing.

Araki is best known as one of the pioneering auteurs of the queer new wave movement of the early 90s. His sensibilities as a storyteller are often steeped in nihilism and ostracised teenage angst, as seen in his highly revered Teenage Apocalypse trilogy and Mysterious Skin. But I Want Your Sex is less interested in punky melancholia and more about giving viewers an insatiable amount of pleasure. So don’t forget your safe-word.

Attitude sat down with the 66-year-old director to discuss the sexual-dehydration epidemic of Gen Z, Olivia Wilde-Summer and collaborating with Charli XCX.

Attitude: I Want Your Sex is something of a cinematic homecoming for you. What was it about this project that made you want to return to the big screen?

Gregg Araki: It’s funny; people think I’ve been gone for so long. I’ve been working this whole time. I did Now Apocalypse. I wrote and directed all 10 episodes of that show, and it was kind of my dream TV show. And for me that was like making three movies. It was hard. It was a lot of work. But in the meantime, I’ve been working on I Want Your Sex for like 12, 13 years. The original spec script came to me in like 2012 or 2013, and it was a very different movie. It was a female intern, a male boss, and there was a version of that movie that almost happened in 2015, but it fell apart, like indie movies always do. So in the meantime, I’ve just been developing it, rewriting it, changing it. So much of what the movie is now was very organically evolved, and changed over the years. There’s a whole different movie that emerged, and one of the things was that article that Erika Tracey (Olivia Wilde) talks about. How 30% of Gen Z hasn’t had sex in a year. It’s a real article that I read when it came out, maybe two or three years ago, and it became a major theme of the movie. 

Your filmography is known for being raw and anarchic but I Want Your Sex is a genuine crowdpleaser. Arguably it’s your most “mainstream” film to date. Was that something you set out to do? 

Absolutely. It’s probably one of the most fun movies I’ve ever made. But obviously because it’s my movie, it’s still controversial. It has provocative themes. But at this point and time in the world, I really wanted to put something out in the world, that was fun, optimistic. It’s a film that’s full of queer joy, and it’s meant to be enjoyed. It’s 90 minutes. It’s a comedy. It’s full of bright pop colours. It has Charlie XCX in it.

What made you want to tell a more crowdpleasing story?

Of all my movies, I think it’s probably one of the most optimistic in the sense that there’s dark fucking shit going on in the world, and I don’t want to put anything into the world that is dark or dystopian. I really want the movie to light up people’s lives a little bit, and also provoke them to like to think and talk and like to discuss the themes and all the ideas that are going on. 

What do you hope audiences take away from watching I Want Your Sex?

The movie was always conceived of as a sex positive love letter to Gen Z, talking about how sex is such an integral part of life, but that specific part of it, where it set up this generational divide between Gen X and Gen Z, and how Gen X view sex. 

I feel like the character Erika Tracey speaks for me a lot. Like when she says the speech about how your generation is all about FOMO, but you don’t care about missing out on the sexual prime of your life. Like that’s me going, “what’s going on?! Why are you kids not going out and dating each other and having sex and having adventures and getting your heart broken and falling in love”. All the stuff that being young is about.

So if you’re Erika Tracey, does that make Cooper Hoffman’s character Elliot stand in for the entirety of Gen Z?

Yes. Cooper’s character Elliot I think is very eloquent in describing where his generation is coming from. It’s a very specific place that’s different from any previous generation because of COVID, because of social media. They’re the first generation who’ve always had a phone in their hand. They have these helicopter parents that protect them from anything that makes them uncomfortable. And so there’s a lot of factors that go in that make Gen Z very different. 

Is there anything you would like to say specifically to Gen Z?

I don’t want to lecture anybody and I’m not telling people what to do. But I would like people to open the conversation and talk about it, and just communicate it, and get into arguments about it. 

I have a lot of my peers who have kids that don’t date, that have never been on a date, have never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. I’m not saying that all Gen Z is like this because there’s a lot of Gen Z that’s out there getting laid, and good for them. But there are a large percentage, a chunk of people that don’t fuck. They just think relationships are too much work, are too much trouble, are just annoying because dating is fucking annoying. It’s a nightmare. It’s like that whole cliché about how you’ve got to kiss 100 frogs to get a prince. It’s true most of it’s going to be shit. Most of it’s going to be heartache, bad dates, bad sex, bad whatever. Assholes. But the highs and lows of it are kind of what life’s all about. 

The good, the bad and the ugly so to speak? You seem to have acquired a lot of wisdom.

I’m in my 60s now. I look back on my life and I have no regrets. I’ve made mistakes and I’ve had bad relationships. I’ve had my heart broken. I’ve had it all, but I don’t have any regrets about any of it. It’s all been part of my journey as a person. It’s all such an important part of my journey as a person and my identity as an artist. Life goes by so fast. I think of these kids, and when they get to be 50 or 60. They’re going to go; “I wish that I had taken a chance when I was younger, when I was 25 and beautiful, and had the world at my fingertips, and I could fuck anybody I wanted”. By then it’s too late. Life has passed you by. I don’t want them to miss out on something fundamental. I don’t want to be all Oprah about it, but live your fucking best life while you can.

Olivia Wilde is the Queen of 2026 Sex Comedies with this and her own film The Invite. What was it like working with her? 

It’s officially Olivia Wilde Summer. She’s incredible. I’ve been a fan of hers since The OC. I’ve been following her career all these years, and I feel like she’s never really had that part where she could really sink her teeth into it. And I think that’s why she loved Erika Tracey so much, because it was such a juicy part and so much to play with.

She’s certainly having quite the year. Her character Erika is the complete polar opposite of the sexually frustrated Angela in The Invite, and yet she’s so convincing and captivating in both roles. Did you know this when you cast her?

When I first met with her she was so smart, cool, and so fearless. Just ready to jump in and do it. It was just meant to be. From there we got Cooper, and it was all the same thing. Such an amazing actor. At first, I couldn’t see this kid opposite Olivia. But then I met Cooper – he has a lot of gravitas for someone so young. But when I saw them together in those dynamics, I knew when we had them together that we had it. That’s the hard part. The easy part is watching them work and filming it and capturing it.

Our readers will be dying to know: what was it like collaborating with Charli XCX?

(Laughing) All the gays want to know about Charli. I mean, Charli’s fantastic. This was one of the first movies she ever did. Like before brat, because she’s made like 10 movies since then. She did a self tape, and she was fantastic. Like her accent was perfect, and I love that the character was the exact opposite of Charli. This super repressed med student that hates sex. It was incredible. She was on the Sweat tour when we filmed. I didn’t understand how Charli could do this movie. She’s touring the fucking US right now with Troye Sivan. How is she possibly going to do this? She has two days off in between San Diego and Los Angeles, and she’s going to come in on her day off. Are you kidding me? Like, isn’t she tired? 

But she’s just so incredible and so versatile, but also so dedicated and such a hard worker. She just works all the time, and she’s so serious about her art, so serious about acting, so serious about her music, all of it. Hats off to Charli. I just saw her recently, we did a little event when her new album dropped and she never stops. She never fucking stops. It’s incredible. So I just feel so grateful that she made time for our movie, and she’s so fantastic in it too. 

Speaking of Charli’s new album, Music, Fashion, Film, the album cover features a trifecta of three music, fashion and film icons with John Cale, Marc Jacobs, and Martin Scorsese. If you had to do the same album cover, with the same concept, which three icons, living or dead would you pick? 

Ah man. Fuck, that’s a tough one. If I had to do that, shit. OK, so music, fuck, I don’t know. I guess I have to pick somebody. Oh God, this is too hard. This is too hard. OK, music. I’ll say Slowdive. Even though it’s my obvious answer because they’ve been in all my movies. They’re also in this movie. I love them so much. I wanted to pick Madonna, but everyone says Madonna. I wanted to pick something a little different, so I’m gonna say Slowdive.

Great pick. One down. How about fashion?

I’m gonna pick Arianne Phillips and Monica Chamberlain who designed the costumes for this movie. My favourite story about Ari – she’s such an icon on her own – is the mesh top that Mason [Gooding] wears at the art gallery scene. It was rubber, but it’s actually leather. I guess it’s like mesh, and Mason’s got that crazy body, and it’s like a one piece with shorts. When I first saw it I was like, “Oh, this is cool! Can we get something like this for Mason for the art gallery?” And Ari texts me back “Oh, that’s Chris Siriano. He’s a friend of mine”. And literally two days later, it was like straight off the runway in our office. That’s my Ari Phillips story. And same with Olivia. Like all of that shit Olivia’s wearing is like crazy couture shit. She’s got that weird cape on in that S&M scene that I think was the same thing, like off of Paris runway. So that’s for fashion, and then film. Can I pick two? 

Of course, it’s your album. You have full creative control.

Then I’ll pick Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch because they both passed away in recent years, and they’re both huge, huge influences on me. I feel as a citizen of the world, sad that they’re gone. But at the same time, as a filmmaker, I think of them and how they were both just one person, like one man, and they both changed the face of cinema forever. Like one person did that. Both left huge legacies. So I’m sad they’re gone, but they will never be gone. Like their impact on culture is immortal.

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I Want Your Sex arrives in UK cinemas on 28 August 2026.