Geraldine Visawanathan
Ready for Her Next Lesbian Movie
It’s quite the compliment to her time filming Drive-Away Dolls that Geraldine Viswanathan, after playing her first onscreen queer role, would “do anything” to make it happen again. “If I can weasel my way in there, honey, I’m going to. I’ll hold the boom. I’ll do catering,” says Viswanathan.
She might be in luck, considering the filmmaking team behind Drive-Away Dolls. Ethan Coen, of the Coen brothers, and longtime film editor Tricia Cooke, who is Coen’s wife and also an out lesbian (they’ve been in an open marriage for over 20 years) told me recently that they are just getting started.
Drive-Away Dolls is the creators’ first lesbian B-movie in a planned trilogy of sorts, and stars Viswanathan as Marian, who’s yet to be laid, much to the dismay of her freewheeling best friend, Jamie (Margaret Qualley), who has recently gone through a nasty breakup with her girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein). Together, Marian and Jamie head out on a road trip down to Florida, where it may be the ’90s but “don’t say gay” is still implied when they have a run-in with government officials for reasons that definitely seem like something Florida political figures would waste their time prosecuting.
Chris Azzopardi: How have you been describing this movie to your friends?
Geraldine Visawanathan: I describe it as a Coen movie, first and foremost, and I say it’s a wacky lesbian screwball road trip comedy caper where we’re driving down south and we have a package that some people really want.
CA: What are your thoughts on this film being released during a politically precarious time for queer people?
GV: I think Drive-Away Dolls is very quietly revolutionary. Initially, when reading it and while making it, it was just: Let’s make the most outrageous, funniest, wildest, queerest comedy that we can. Now, as the movie’s releasing, it does feel like there’s this added significance in this moment that we’re in.
The way that sex and sexuality are treated in this movie, it’s something that I wish I could have seen on screen growing up, where it’s shameless and approached with lightness and silliness and authenticity.
CA: You mentioned we don’t see many lesbian women on screen, but then, of course, you are Indian, so that kind of intersectionality is even more rare. Can you talk about the importance of that representation?
GV: I feel like my first movie being Blockers, it felt significant to be the most outrageous and most sexual character in that movie. And then to be a South Asian young woman talking about how she wants to get laid—historically, South Asians are very desexualized and not really in those roles. I know that Ethan and Trish wrote this movie in the ’90s, and I feel like the fact that we’re making this movie now…maybe that’s one of the benefits of making this movie now? I don’t know if I would’ve been in this movie in the ’90s.
CA: Is Marian your first queer character?
GV: I did a play in Sydney that was a lesbian love story, but that’s theater. It’s a different world. It was like a lesbian rom-com with two girls. Super cute. It was set in high school and it was called Ellie and Abbie; we did it at a local theater. But yeah, this is my first time on screen.
CA: With a film about young queer people, what is it like to be the one sharing that narrative with kids who might be looking to see versions of themselves on screen?
GV: It’s super meaningful. I think if there’s any throughline in my career, it’s just liberation and freedom and self-acceptance, and it just feels like this is a part of that. And I love just working with women. I don’t need to play a straight love story ever again. No shade to straight men, but I’m good. I don’t need that.
CA: Did you draw from any personal experience or research to authentically capture the essence of Marian’s queer identity?
GV: I definitely did. I think it’s all invisible work. It’s all work that I did for myself to help me understand Marian, but I thought about my sexual awakenings and relationships and even people that I’ve been friends with and then been like, “Wait a minute.” Yeah, there was plenty that I related to with Marian, even though on the surface I thought I didn’t.
CA: This movie is a love letter to lesbian bars. Was part of the research for this movie to go to any lesbian bars?
GV: Yeah, that’s what’s so cool. We did a press junket in this lesbian bar, Henrietta Hudson in New York, and it’s one of two lesbian bars in the city left. So to have a love letter to those safe spaces is, again, so quietly revolutionary. ▼
Chris Azzopardi is the Editorial Director of Pride Source Media Group and Q Syndicate, the national LGBTQ+ wire service. Reach him via Twitter @chrisazzopardi