Casting queer actors in queer roles in Fire Island added “so much” authenticity to the film, according to James Scully.
Directed by Andrew Ahn and written by Joel Kim Booster, the rom-com centres around two best friends (Booster and Bowen Yang) as they embark on a weeklong vacation to the titular gay hotspot, “with the help of cheap rosé and their cadre of eclectic friends”.
Scully stars as a “friendly” paediatrician called Charlie, who he describes as a stark contrast from his breakout role as Forty Quinn, an “angry, uneven drug addict”, on the second season of Netflix’s thriller series You.
In an interview with GAY TIMES, the actor says he was keen to star in the film because it was an “opportunity” for him to be as “loud and proud about being gay” as he is on social media.
“I was like, ‘This is an opportunity to get on camera and do that,'” he admits. “Then it will also hopefully give me a platform and an opportunity to have conversations where I double down on that perspective.”
Premiering 3 June in the UK on Disney Plus, Fire Island has received widespread critical acclaim for Booster’s script, the cast’s performances and its glorification of LGBTQ+ culture.
For Scully, the film – which is void of straight characters and narratives – proved that the entertainment industry is no longer obligated to present queer culture “in a way that is palatable to straight audiences”.
“Just being like, ‘No this is what queer culture looks like. This is how queer people are. I guess, sorry if you’re not into it.’ The whole point is we’re not really trying to live how you guys live anymore,” he explains.
“We don’t really want to do that. I bet we’ve watched movies about straight people doing weird sexual things to each other and talking about the wildest shit for a hundred years now. We want a seat at the table, at the weird sexual comedy table.”
Upon reading the script for Fire Island, it was clear to Scully that “only a gay person could have written it” due to its exploration of certain issues that – in the words of Booster – “gay culture has lifted up as important” such as body image, wealth and race.
“We’ve gotten so accustomed to watching queer content and we’re aware that it’s queer content, but it feels so far away from us,” he opines. “Reading a script that felt so immediate to my life was like a surreal experience.”
Fire Island has also received praise for casting queer actors in queer roles, as well as for having a queer director in Ahn, which Scully says was essential to the film’s success.
“As we all went through the mental gauntlet of trying to bring the right amount of our queer baggage and our queer joy to camera, having [Ahn] there as a queer man, and Joel, Bowen and Andrew together all as queer men of colour, I think was invaluable,” he states.
“Here’s what I’ll say: it wasn’t like every single person on set was queer, right? But it was clear that there were a surprising amount of queer people, and everyone knew what the mission was.
“It did feel like everyone came on to the job because they recognised the importance of the story we were telling.”
Fire Island is also a “popular response” to the need to employ queer actors in queer roles, adds Scully, and boasting Ahn as the director meant he “knew the reality” and “endpoint” for the narrative because of his lived experiences.
“Between him directing it and Joel writing it, and then Joel and Bowen being the heart of the movie,” continues Scully, “it pushed it from just being a sweet, gay rom-com set on Fire Island to being something more.”
Fire Island also stars Conrad Ricamora, Margaret Cho, Zane Phillips, Torian Miller, Tomás Matos and Nick Adams.
You can read our full interview with James Scully and the cast of Fire Island via the GAY TIMES app, Apple News+, Readly, and Flipster.
The new issue of GAY TIMES also features interviews with Big Mouth’s resident lovebug Brandon Kyle Goodman, Hacks star Mark Indelicato and the cast of Prime Video’s The Wilds.
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