Interview: ‘Pillion’ Director Harry Lighton and Star Harry Melling Bring Kink to the Mainstream
“I’ve had dreams about the Castro and having a film here. It’s a proper ‘pinch me’ moment.”
Harry Lighton is beaming, just hours before his directorial feature debut Pillion is to be the first new release premiere at the restored and refurbished Castro Theatre in San Francisco, with what would no doubt bring out a very enthusiastic leather-clad audience (and reader, it most certainly did). It was a break in the rain, a single day of sun in the middle of a Northern California storm, when I sat down with Lighton and his film’s star Harry Melling.
You might know Melling from his turn in the Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, or maybe as Edgar Allen Poe in The Pale Blue Eye. You can go back further to his dastardly Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter films. However you’ve come to know Melling you can put aside because as the shy, reserved Colin in Pillion whose flower blooms in the face of biker stud Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), this is Melling as you’ve never seen him before and, as he’s never seen himself.
‘Pillion’ Review: Alexander Skarsgård Puts the Dom in Domesticity [A-]
For Lighton, his short films (like Wren Brothers, which earned him BAFTA and BIFA nominations) and working with director Oliver Hermanus (The History of Sound) as his assistant on Living (2022), 2nd Unit Director on Mary & George, helped shape his voice for his feature debut.
After a rapturous world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last summer (where it won Best Screenplay in the Un Certain Regard section), Lighton earned the Best Adapted Screenplay award at the 2025 Gotham Awards, British Independent Film Awards wins for Best Film, Debut Screenwriter (as well as the film winning Costume Design, Makeup and Hair). Then came a Directors Guild of America (DGA) nomination for Best First-Time Theatrical Feature Film and three BAFTA nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay. “Very much wasn’t on the bingo card,” he says in retrospect of the honors.
Interview: Alexander Skarsgård on His New Dom-Com ‘Pillion’ and Presenting Kink with Care
Pillion, based on the book “Box Hill,” by the gay novelist Adam Mars-Jones, finds Colin in his early 30s, still living with his parents and in general subverting his own needs and abilities at every turn. He has a lousy job as a traffic warden giving out parking tickets, being yelled at and insulted every day. He sings in a barbershop quartet in a pub with his father Peter (Douglas Hodge) and a mother dying of cancer (Lesley Sharp), both almost too eager in their support of their son’s love life. While on a date with a guy he’s not interested in, the attractive and taciturn Ray makes a pass at him, writing down a place and time to meet, on Christmas no less. What starts as an adventure into the world of gay BDSM turns into a journey of self-discovery and self-worth in one of the year’s best films. At times romantic, at times heartbreaking, it’s a spectacular ride.
I spoke with Harrys Lighton and Melling on the last leg of the U.S. press tour of the film about their new ‘dom-com,’ working it out with Skarsgård, top tier song choices and the mainstreaming of kink.
Erik Anderson: I love that you are both Harrys.
Harry Melling: Yes. Harry squared.
EA: My husband’s name is also Erik, we used to get called Erik squared so I am very used to-
Harry Lighton: Oh, you’re one of those. (laughs)
EA: (laughs) Yeah, I was talking to Andrew earlier, it’s either boyfriend twins, or we have the same name.
HL: (laughs) I went out with someone who’s called James, and my twin brother’s called James, so that was even weirder.
EA: Okay. I have to agree that that might be a little weirder. First, huge congratulations on the BAFTA noms and Gotham wins and BIFA wins. How did that feel?
HL: Thank you so much. Trippy. Yeah, very much wasn’t on the bingo card when we set out to make this film. It’s been a crazy, crazy experience.
EA: I love it. I was so happy to see it embraced as widely as it was. Harry, when you were looking to what you wanted your first feature to be, was there a defining element of “Box Hill” that really clicked with you and how did it fit into your own experience in gay culture?
HL: There was two elements to the book. The first was that it explored transgressive sex even within gay culture, and that’s something which I’d explored in my shorts and which I spent a lot of my adult life thinking about. And the second was the tone, was the way it moved joltingly often between humor and sincerity and tenderness and brutality. I thought that it was a really interesting radical treatment of BDSM to tie it to that tone.
EA: [points to Harry Melling] And what was it about Harry here that you knew he would make the call that you needed?
HL: He’s so good. He’s just so good. I was sent the Ballad of Buster Scruggs by someone who said, have a look, and it blew me away what he was doing with no arms and legs in that film? And then-
HM: You wanted to to see what I’m like with arms and legs.
HL: And then I just did a deep dive and every performance I watched, I saw a number of extremely varied performances and all performances, very different from what I wanted from Colin, but they all had something in them. And I guess the thing which tied them together was that he was incredibly magnetic in a way which didn’t feel alpha male. It didn’t feel like he was in a macho way, demanding that attention. I’d just be looking at him in every frame and I was like, “That’s what I need from Colin is somebody who can be both high and low status in a way.”
EA: Harry, the very nature of Tom’s sub relationships and BDSM is really one that’s built on a very high level of trust and not unlike actors and how they have to be with each other. How did you establish that bond and more importantly, trust with Alexander as a whole?
HM: Working with Alex was just so easy, really, to be honest. We didn’t have a lot of time to rehearse prior to making the movie. So the first time we met was doing the wrestling scene rehearsal, and when you do something like that, it’s so physical, you just build trust very easily and very quickly. And it set the tone really for how we were going to operate, which was, let’s just jump in. Let’s see what arrives on the day. Let’s have lots of options. So I think it’s true to say that in certain scenes, Harry would say, “Let’s lean into the comedy here a bit more.” And then in other takes, we’d take it back just so Harry had enough to play with the edit. So it was really a very playful, exciting process from start to finish. And when you’re working alongside someone like Alex who’s going to offer you different versions of things and is listening to what you’re offering him, you start to commune in a way that is very exciting. So the trust was there from the off really.
EA: I imagine the blocking during most of the scenes, the alley or the singlets required a lot of that as well?
HM: Yeah, I think we had this amazing intimacy coordinator, Robbie Taylor Hunt, who just from a choreography point of view really helped us shape those scenes and also sell those scenes because it’s all about angles and positions and mouth shapes. That’s what sells it. So that aspect of it was handled by Robbie. But me and Alex, I think were so excited about doing these sex scenes and doing these wrestling scenes because it was literally, it was pushing the narrative forward. It wasn’t an interlude where we were making love. It was very much pushing on the story of Colin and Ray, Colin going into experience and learning what he wants and Ray very much establishing himself and feeling fulfilled with his desires. So I was very excited to get to those scenes always.
EA: Oh, they’re impeccable. Almost to your point in thinking of how some of them are shot, you’re almost as a viewer, you’re looking to see if you can see more. If there’s something just like in your wire in your brain when something is obscured and you think if you move over, you can see it. I love that. It’s the right kind of provocation titillation.
HM: Mm-hmm.
EA: I definitely want to talk about the songs in this because they are incredible. First, “Bad Feeling” as the transitional montage for Colin, I think is extraordinary. Tell me how you came to that.
HL: Well, the answer to that is thanks to Joachim Trier, The Worst Person in the World, I saw that movie and well, I love the movie, but I just remember being like, “God, that song is incredible for when you’re trying to ramp the audience up into a frenzy.” And so we actually put it in the edit and I was like, “Oh, I don’t think I can use this, because Joachim’s used it.” But then we spent a couple of months trying to find something better and then gave up.
EA: I also love that we go from Colin’s full head of hair to shaved just in that montage, and it’s not like we see him sitting down and making this choice. And that was such a great non-traditional way to show us. Fantastic choice.
HL: Thank you.
EA: And then obviously Tiffany. Was that something that you were hoping you were going to be able to get the rights to, or was it something else?
HL: In the years towards making a film, I’ll have a playlist where there’s songs where I’m like, “Well, maybe this will have a role.” And Tiffany was firmly on that playlist, but initially the wrestling scene didn’t have any needle drop, didn’t have any soundtrack, and then me and the editor were like, “Okay, I think there’s a way of warming up this scene where we can provide a bit of fun so that the sex scene afterwards hits harder.” And I was like, “Well, I want a song.”
It is playing from the speakers in the room rather than from the God director. And I was like, “Well, I want a song which nods at the fact that Ray’s a part of gay culture and isn’t just some heavy metal.” And Tiffany leapt out and worked perfectly the first time we put it to the wrestle. When it ramps up for that final move, Tiffany has the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But then getting the rights to it was a longer story. I kept being worried that until the last minute, it seemed like we weren’t going to get it. And then fortunately, some people higher above than me managed to wrangle it, and I’m forever grateful for Tiffany for letting us have it.
EA: I think we all are. This is for both of you in thinking about how the general public might feel about a sexual subculture, this balance of being true to the culture as well as the desire to make it maybe more accessible to somebody from the outside that is…
HL: I never wanted to make the sexual aspects of it more accessible to the mainstream. I was very deliberate about from the outset and discussed with the producers about the fact that I wanted the sex to be very uncompromising. But now I wanted the sex to sit alongside aspects of the narrative, which are more commonly found in what you might call mainstream cinemas. So dinners with the family and rom-com elements of Christmas. I think it’s just very true of people who are living kinky lives, is that you’ll go from a orgy to roast dinner with your parents and it won’t necessarily feel like a contradiction to you, but it might feel like a contradiction to people you speak about. And so I wanted to leave it to the audience to have to try and reconcile those two competing modes.
EA: Sure.
HM: That’s one of the exciting things about the script to me was the fact that it was looking at something that I’m sure is not going to be hugely familiar maybe to a lot of people, but it always at all points felt like we weren’t ever diluting that. But at the same time, we were making something familiar enough for an audience that weren’t privy to that subculture to have an access to. They could relate. Hopefully everyone’s fallen in love at some point. So that to me was very much Colin’s journey and story. So hopefully that’s an access point and the family’s an access point, and then hopefully along the way, they’re introduced to this incredible subculture and can understand and empathize with those characters. So that’s what I was so excited about with this script.
EA: I love that. Okay. I have a theory on something on kink.
HL: Shoot.
EA: It’s similar to how I feel about the state of drag in how it’s seen in the world. Do you think mainstreaming of a subculture hurts or helps it or?
HL: What’s your theory?
EA: Maybe hurts isn’t the right word, but I think one of the things about being a part of a subculture is a little bit of the exclusivity of it where you’ve already been othered and cast aside. So why not be able to have something that is yours that really feels like yours that you don’t have to share? I think it’s the acceptance versus tolerance.
HL: I think it is just definitionally like Catch-22. I think that visibility brings rights and it brings acceptance, but then it also brings a certain amount of dilution. And that’s just I think the nature of mainstreaming. And it is why actually, it was important to me that we didn’t dilute the depiction of kink in the film at all, because I knew that the film would have a chance to reach audiences who aren’t part of that culture, and I didn’t want them to misinterpret the fact that there’s desire to be had in these sexual acts, which are proudly not conventional.
EA: Yeah, I love that. I’m excited for you guys to be at the Castro tonight.
HL: Oh, I’m very excited. I’ve had dreams about the Castro and having a film here. It’s a proper ‘pinch me’ moment.
EA: There is no bigger gay mecca of cinema than that theater, so I think you’re going to have a fantastic time. I love that New York, you went to the Eagle as the after-party and you’re doing the stud after-party here. You really just… A24 is killing it with this tour.
HL: [to A24 rep] Thanks, guys.
EA: Absolutely flawless. So I’m excited for you and hope you guys have a really good time.
HL: I’m so excited.
HM: Thank you so much.
HL: It was really lovely to meet you, thank you.
Pillion is currently playing in select theaters and will expand on February 20.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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Academy Announces 27 Recipients From Wētā, ILM, DreamWorks Animation and More for Scientific and Technical Achievements 