Interview: ‘Leviticus’ Director Adrian Chiarella and Star Joe Bird Talk About Their New Queer Horror Revelation
“And please quote me when I say Jeremy Blewitt is incredible.”
To quote Leviticus director Adrian Chiarella, “He’s the best hype man.” It’s true, the film’s star, Joe Bird, loves to talk about his co-stars and director, who helped shape his performance in the new queer horror film that’s about to take everyone by storm.
In Leviticus, Australian high schoolers Naim (Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) are young friends and lovers entrenched in a deeply homophobic and religious community who are ripped apart by a demonic entity that appears as themselves. Since the film’s premiere at Sundance, the story has resonated on all levels for audiences; as a chilling horror in the vein of It Follows and Let the Right One In, and a queer story that’s less about coming out and more about coming into one’s own.
I sat down with Chiarella and Bird on a traditionally cool, summer morning in San Francisco to talk about the journey of Leviticus from its Sundance debut and healthy festival run, to the online fervor around the film and its performances (fancasts of Bird and Clausen are aplenty) and much more, all during Pride Month on the day before its theatrical release. I also come up with a scripture-based theory that may or may not be a little bit crazy.
Erik Anderson: Since Sundance, this has been a really wild press run for you guys and for Stacy. How has that been this last six months?
Joe Bird: Actually, it’s like my first press tour because the strike happened on Talk to Me so the press tour didn’t happen. So as an experience this first time it’s been really fun.
Adrian Chiarella: Yeah. Exactly. I don’t know, it’s weird. It feels like the movie’s already come out because everyone’s already talking about it so much online and everywhere.
JB: And it’s like it came out in Australia yesterday and then all my friends are like, “It’s out. ” And I’m like, “It’s not. It doesn’t feel like it’s out. “
AC: And there’s all these already… Even though the film’s not out, there’s fans of Joe and Stacy already that are doing their fan arts, and their fan edits, and their fan fiction, and all this stuff. So, it’s already built this life before the film’s even out in cinemas.
EA: Very, very much so. Would it be a disservice to call it Demon Twink: The Movie?
AC (laughs) Oh my God. [looks to Joe] Well, how do you feel about that?
JB: Cosmic. Anything you want to say about the film, say it. It’s pretty fitting.
EA: I think I saw a Letterboxd that called it Haunted Rivalry and I thought that was genius.
Adrian Chiarella: Controversial though, isn’t it? For some people.
JB: Well, I think the whole Heated Rivalry comparisons, I think what the comparison is that these were two small queer projects in Canada and Australia that broke into the mainstream. So, I think that’s the beautiful thing and the comparison of the two.
EA: I think it almost naturally happens that one gay thing will automatically get compared to another very quickly just as a short form of connection.
JB: Yeah.
AC: Yeah. Exactly.
EA: Adrian, how long was Leviticus an idea before reaching the point of becoming your first feature? What were the horror or queer films that were your touchstones?
AC: Oh, yeah. I loved horror movies growing up. I remember watching stuff like The Thing was one that has just been with me the whole time, that John Carpenter film. And the way that just you can create a sense of chaos and total dread out of not knowing if the person in front of you is really who they are. And I really wanted to do a queer love story around that. I thought that would always, thought that would be really great. And I also loved a lot of horror from Japan, like Kiyoshi Kurosawa stuff and the original Ring, those kinds of films.
EA: Of course. Joe, you weren’t a stranger to the horror genre, but how much did your experience in Talk to Me prepare you for Leviticus and what are your touchstones?
JB: Yeah. So, I filmed Talk to Me when I was 14. It’s like five years ago now. Oh, actually no, I was 14, going on 15, so about four years or three. I don’t even know the math. I think I definitely learned a lot on that job because the best learning is on the job is what they say. And that set was such a wonderful experience because even though I was the youngest person there, no one ever made me feel like I was a kid and that I shouldn’t be there. And then I worked on other projects before jumping into another horror in Leviticus. So, I did definitely learn a lot of stuff from there and I kept doing acting classes and then some horror. I tend to think that horror… They’re really dramas in a way because you want to care about the characters and then these horror elements happen.
So, I wouldn’t necessarily say I watch horror films to influence my performance, but I brought this up a few times. But I remember watching Anora and Mikey Madison’s performance and that was so incredible because she has this guard up the whole time and you can tell exactly how she’s feeling, but not at the same time. And I thought that was such an interesting choice and that definitely influenced me in this film because I thought they were similar in a way.
EA: I love the idea of a non-horror performance being an influence because that seems actually a much smarter way to handle that.
JB: Cool.
EA: I love that. All right so. I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole.
AC: Oh, good. Yeah. The movie inspired you.
JB: We love a rabbit hole.
EA: I feel like it’s crazy. I feel like it’s crazy, but I don’t know. Let’s see.
JB: Well, you love rabbit holes, Mia Wasikowska, she loves rabbit holes too.
AC: Yes. Wait. Where are you going with this, guys? (laughs)
EA: So okay, obviously when I thought about the film’s title and how Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, depending on which Bible and testament that you use is the core of the theological foundation for modern day homophobia. So, I went back to the movie and from 18m22s seconds to 20m 13s is the sequence when Haim tells Hunter’s parents-
AC: Oh.
EA: … and then kicks off the whole ritual.
AC: Oh. And you see until the end of the ritual. Really?
EA: It’s right to the beginning of the ritual.
AC: Wow.
EA: Was that intentional or am I crazy?
AC: Oh my God. (laughs) What should I say? Should I-
EA: You can say whatever you want!
JB: Well, I think Adrian is very smart and that a lot of these choices that when… I feel like you took so much knowledge in that you might have subconsciously done these things but…
AC: He’s the best hype man. (laughs) He just makes it all sound like I really, really knew what I was doing. No. But that’s a lovely coincidence. I love that observation.
EA: Good. I like it.
AC: I have to put that as a special little insert. Or something and people can go like, “Yeah. I absolutely approve of that.” Yeah.
EA: It is also wild because cherry-picking is something that religious zealots really do with the Bible and strategically omitting other sections because you can go right to Leviticus 19:15 where love your neighbor as yourself is also there.
AC: Right. Right.
EA: Oddly, I think my religious upbringing is coming out here a little bit which was also super, super strict. Did you have a religious upbringing or you that maybe has…
JB: Yeah. Well, I went to a Catholic school until year 10 to the rest of high school and so it was Lasallian, which I don’t know how popular that is, but it’s not like they were teaching any bad things. It was all about just faith and you’ve got to believe in yourself. But being in that environment though, I did notice homophobia a lot in my classrooms, school yard, lunch, and it reflects this film and the fact that I didn’t know who it was hurting, how much it was hurting. And then it’s in this film it’s invisible and that’s very similar to people who experience homophobia when they go tell someone about it. They’re often maybe dismissed or going, “Oh, you’ll be fine. Move on. ” But the thing is it can really affect people and it can kill people as well. So, I think it’s a really great message to spread and Adrian has done this metaphor beautifully.
AC: And for me, I went to a religious school too. I went to an Anglican school and a lot of homophobic bullying from other kids. But I went to school in a time when in Sydney where I grew up we had this thing, the Mardi Gras, which in Sydney is the pride parade and the Monday after that happened every year the headmaster would stand up and say, “Now this thing happened on the weekend,” and he’d really talk about how horrible it was to us, and that’s yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not that long ago. I’m not that old. It’s not that long ago.
JB: He’s ’23.
AC: (laughs) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I do remember that in my lifetime having to hear that stuff and having those verses from Leviticus quoted us. So, you do feel it from both sides when you achieve growing up in those environments.
EA: For sure. Joe, I’d like to ask you about the physical and emotional demands of your performance because you go often from gooey-eyed romance to really horrific violence in the same scene. Can you talk about the level of trust you needed in Stacy and in Adrian to do that?
JB: Trust was definitely needed between us three, but also the whole entire set had that trust within them because it’s also when you’re in scenes, you’re just not performing. You’re also performing for the camera because there’s a photographer in mind and needing you to stand in a specific spot so you’re not blocking something and then you got lighting and all that. So it’s like you’re working with everyone and that trust needs to be there for everyone, but especially with Adrian and Stacy. Adrian got me and Stacy to do a lot of stuff in pre-production one-on-one and then also with Adrian as well. We did rehearsals. And yeah, it was just a lot of time spent together. It builds that trust and that connection, but you also have to be willing and open to that as well. So that’s a testament to Adrian and Stacy as well for allowing me to come into their lives.
EA: Because everything is blocking based, would you say a love scene or a fight scene is more difficult?
JB: Well, the thing is they’re mixed into one.
AC: They’re all together.
JB: Yeah. And I think what was so great about it was our stunts coordinator and our intensity coordinator, Amy Cater and Warwick Sadler, they worked closely together in that whole, when we would go into physical stuff and into that romance stuff because again, like these boys, they often are expressing their emotions physically because they don’t know what to say. So that level of intimacy is there in that stunt. So yeah, it was just once you accept that they live together, it just comes naturally and we just had a lot of conversations and a lot of rehearsal time to really block it out. We had incredible stunt doubles who taught us what to do, and then we would then on the day we would then do it ourselves, and yeah, it was just a really fun time.
EA: And Adrian, there’s very much an attempt to look at and break down toxic masculinity between these boys. They’re literally throwing rocks at each other as a form of identification and connection.
AC: Yeah. We wanted to explore different shades of homophobia and one of those was internalized and I think with that character of Hunter, who Jeremy Blewitt played, we talked about his backstory and how he really manifested his feelings and explored his feelings by being quite violent towards Ryan and it started small when they were just on the breaking out into puberty, he would have maybe just thrown like small things at him like pens, and shoes, and things. And then as the feelings got stronger, he started throwing bigger and bigger things. We gave him a whole monologue about that, but it’s just the focus was really Naim and Ryan. So, we didn’t really fit into the whole piece, but that was a really solid piece of backstory for Jeremy to play through the film with them.
JB: And please quote me when I say Jeremy Blewitt is incredible.
AC: Yeah. Yes. If nothing else goes in there.
EA: Yes. He is. I love that he created that backstory because that is such a classic thing even when you’re very young.
AC: Right.
EA: You have an attraction to someone that you don’t know is an attraction so you do things like you pick on them or pinch them or whatever.
AC: Right. Right.
JB: What’s so incredible about Jeremy’s performance, he’s playing that internalized homophobia to the max compared to all these other characters and you can just see everything going on in his head, but he’s not expressing it with words. I think that’s just what’s so… It’s prevalent in society in this day and age and that’s what real teenage boys do.
AC: And ultimately that is for me from a screenwriting point of view and I had to think about like why is he ultimately the one, well, one of two victims we see on screen, that is why he’s the most vulnerable to this monster that preys on your desires.
JB: Yeah.
EA: There are a few touches in the film that I really have to mention that I loved. One, both Naim and Ryan having the silver rings on each of their fingers.
AC: (smiles) Everyone picks up on that.
EA: And when they have their hands at that…
Joe Bird: I remember it was my first costume session with our costume designer, Zohie Castellano, and I just bought a snake ring from this place called Lovisa in Australia. It’s like $5 and she was like, “Oh, I love that ring. I think I have something similar.” And the fact that she gave to Stacy and I was like, “Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if, I don’t know, at one point in the film they swap in. It’s seen as an act of, “Okay. They’re a team now.” And maybe they’re not together together, but it’s acts as that like, “Okay. We’re in this together now.” Because when we did that on the bed scene where he’s stroking the ring, it’s him thinking about Ryan and whatnot. But just little minor details, but I’m really glad that you picked up on that.
EA: I loved that. The other, which maybe I feel is intentional, we’ll see, was Naim’s hand on the steamy window, which gives them a Jack and Rose from Titanic moment.
AC: It was more like, where else is his hand going to go? It’s such a tight space (laughs)
EA: True. But it just created a moment I think that for people that are going to watch it, it’s going to resonate.
AC: Right. Right.
JB: Originally there was a scene towards the end in the petrol station where Arlene was filling up-
AC: Oh yeah, she put her hand there.
JB: That’s where she put her hand on the same area and that made Naim go, “I want to be- It ended up making the final cut, but I just think it was intentional. Everything he does is intentional.
EA: Good. It absolutely just clicks.
Adrian Chiarella: Right.
EA: It’s such a beautiful moment and I guess for both, since from its inception to where we are now, what did you want and hope Leviticus to accomplish for you creatively and for the audience?
AC: Well, for me creatively, I wanted to really explore this idea of homophobia as a fear and I wanted to do that through my favorite genre, which is horror, which is the genre of fear. But I hope even though we took that path, I hope that people are able to see something positive about this relationship and where we lead the film.
JB: Yeah. And I think what was creatively filling for me is that I really want to be a part of stories that have something to say and really stick with people and hopefully inspire them and we’ve been hearing a lot of the, “I wish I had this when I was a teenager,” or “This film means a lot to me.” And that is just the best thing to hear from the work that you’ve done that people are responding. And yeah, it’s really, really incredible.
EA: That’s awesome. Thanks so much guys.
AC: Cool. Thank you.
JB: Thank you, Erik.
Leviticus opens in nationwide in the U.S. from NEON on June 19.
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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