CHEERLEADER FOR CHANGE
We’ve all become very well acquainted with Zoom these last few months. From work meetings and virtual gym classes to family quizzes and lockdown birthday parties, the video communications platform has been a constant in 2020’s sea of change. Today, rather than taking me half a mile down the road to my local yoga studio, Zoom is transporting me to Los Angeles, California, for a chat with bona fide lesbian royalty and interview wish list material, Clea DuVall. Seeing her name flash up on my screen is a little surreal, and in case you’re wondering, yes, I am digitally starstruck. I guess 2020 isn’t a complete bust, after all.
While Zoom might have been a constant this year, Clea has been a constant in the lives of queers across the world for the past 20, since the release of cult classic But I’m A Cheerleader, in which she stars as rebellious gay teen, Graham. Jamie Babbit’s brilliant satirical comedy, set in the True Directions conversion camp, is beloved and iconic, helping many of us in the LGBTQI community to accept ourselves. Clea has since spoken about struggling to come to terms with her own sexuality, feeling “convinced” she was “defective” and “less than”, and has said in previous interviews that at the time of But I’m A Cheerleader, being out felt like an “impossibility”. Accepting the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award in 2018, she talked about the heartache of living half a life. “Lying made me a worse actor, friend… how could I show up for anyone if I couldn’t show up for myself?” How does it feel, two decades on from But I’m A Cheerleader, to have written and directed
“COMING OUT IS CHALLENGING AND PERSONAL. HOWEVER IT HAPPENS AND HOWEVER YOU GET THERE, THAT’S YOUR JOURNEY”
Happiest Season, a film with a lesbian love story at its heart? “It feels
