There are nearly 40 speaking roles for LGBT characters in this acclaimed film about a forgotten part of recent British history. The filmmakers explain to BuzzFeed News why it was vital to keep their characters’ sexuality authentic without it ever defining them.
Faye Marsay, George MacKay, Joseph Gilgun, Paddy Considine, and (second row, with megaphone) Ben Schnetzer in Pride
Nicola Dove / CBS Films
In many ways, the new feature film Pride — which is now in theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco — shares its cinematic DNA with several other beloved films from the U.K. Like Billy Elliot, it's set during the fiercely contested, year-long miners strike in the mid-1980s that, for many, came to define Margaret Thatcher's tenure as prime minister. Like The Full Monty, it's about regular working-class folk banding together to buck convention and make the best of a bad situation. And like Kinky Boots, it's about the surprising results when those working-class folk find themselves relying on LGBT outsiders who can help them realize their dream.
According to screenwriter Stephen Beresford, however, there is an entirely different sort of British film that was a common reference for the filmmakers while they were making Pride: "We used to say it's the lesbian and gay Lawrence of Arabia," Beresford told BuzzFeed News during the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. The reason, he said, was simple: "Endless characters."
Based on a true story about a group of British LGBT activists who formed Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (or LGSM) and came to the aid of a small Welsh mining town, Pride does indeed stand as one of the few major motion pictures to be populated with more than just a small handful of LGBT characters (if any at all). All told, in fact, Beresford said there are a whopping 38 LGBT speaking roles in the film, including newcomer Ben Schnetzer (The Book Thief) as crusading activist Mark Ashton; Dominic West (The Wire) as hard living actor Jonathan Blake; Andrew Scott (Sherlock) as Jonathan's unobtrusive partner Gethin (who also owns the bookshop that serves as the group's HQ); Faye Marsay (The White Queen) as the up-for-anything Steph, one of the only lesbian members of LGSM; Joseph Gilgun (Lockout) as Mark Ashton's right-hand man Mike Jackson; and George MacKay (Defiance) as Joe, a university student inching his way out of the closet, who often serves as the audience's entry point into the larger narrative.
Freddie Fox, Joseph Gilgun, and Ben Schnetzer in Pride
Nicola Dove / CBS Films
With so many lesbian and gay characters packed into a true story, one that was unknown to virtually every cast and crew member before they started making it, the importance of authentically capturing their queer identities became of paramount concern to the filmmaking team — and that much more complicated too.
"I was anxious about making the film, doing it justice," said director Matthew Warchus, best known for his Broadway stage productions of God of Carnage and Matilda. "As a straight man, it's not as though I can walk in to a gay club in London now and understand everything about gay politics in the 1980s — such a different world. And yet I didn't want to get anything wrong. I didn't want to make generalizations and rely on clichés at all."
Tipping into camp caricature was all too easy with a story rife with the differences between gay and straight people. "I can imagine a version of this [movie] that's like The Birdcage," said producer David Livingstone. "We always kept talking about how camp is not [automatically] gay. Camp has always had a place in the cinema, with In & Out and The Birdcage. You can do that version of it, but we were keen not to make that film. We wanted to make a film about real people."
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