Lesbian Space Princess is one of the funniest animated comedies in recent years. The film follows the adventures of lesbian space princess Saira (Shabana Azeez) as she leaves the safety of her home of Clitopolis. She braves (more or less) the dangers of “normie space” to save her cool ex-girlfriend Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel) from the treacherous Straight White Maliens (Aunty Donna). I spoke with co-writer-directors Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Carghese about self-love, queer spaces and breaking into the mainstream. But first, a surprise!
I confess that I was helped with some of my questions by a very dear friend of mine who I think you both might know, Ellen Graham, an Adelaide-based performer and drag king.
Emma Hough Hobbs: Oh, Ellen! This is crazy. We were on some pretty rough early pieces. We’ve been through the trenches.
And Leela, I believe you used to, and I’ll use Ellen’s words, “do gay sh*t” at a now closed Adelaide queer bar called “My Lover Cindi”?
Leela Varghese: Yes! Gay musical comedy.
That venue offered something of a safe space to do weird things, but the movie imagines a literal lesbian safe space that nurtures Saira, but that she has to move out of to grow. Does that mirror queer safe spaces like “My Lover Cindi” as a place for artistic development that eventually one must move past?
Leela: Originally it was the idea of how you live in your safe bubble of being with your friends and the queer community…and it’s also exploring the fact that it’s okay if that’s not the perfect place for you either. I think at points I felt like I belonged in that world and at points I felt like I haven’t belonged in that world.
Emma: I feel like the safety bubble is maybe a little bit more like this other queer bar that we have in Adelaide called “Mary Poppins”, where it’s like not for everyone. “My Lover Cindy” was a more alternative and, actually, safer place for like “queerdos”. So yes to everything that Leila said, but I feel like if Clitopolis was more like “My Lover Cindy”, it might have been a better place for Saira. Does that make sense?
Leela: I don’t know. This is a weird answer.
Emma: Imperfect. I feel like the safety bubble is imperfect.
Leela: But in the safety bubble, there’s a lot more that people never got to see because of the low budget. There’s all different communities. I would hope that in the world we created in the safety bubble, there is in somewhat like a spot for everybody to somewhat belong somewhere. But I think it’s just like…
Emma: Breaking out of your safety bubble. The further away we get from different communities, the more dangerous the world becomes. And so I feel like it’s like a queer utopia inside the bubble, but the universe is more reflective of current society and how fractured it is.
Leela: Yeah. And I find it personally scary to go outside of that bubble in my own life. Sometimes it’s very confronting, but I feel like it’s a necessary, like you have to. We were hoping it was a good coming-of-age metaphor, like in a classic story when you grow up in a country town and you need to like go to the big city and find yourself.
And with the film doing so well, do you feel that you have now broken into “normie space” and how do you feel about having done so?
Leela: I mean, I don’t know if we feel like we’ve cracked into mainstream normie cinema space. Emma, what do you think?
Emma: We did win the animation award at Sitges, which out of all the festivals, if you know anything about film festivals, that’s the most normie bro film festival out there. It’s the only film festival where the line to the men’s toilets will be longer than the line to the women’s toilets and we won best animation there. So, I feel like that was a real win. I don’t know if we’ve cracked the mainstream though. You’re right.
Leela: The bar was low, we’re happy where we’re at it. It’s gone higher than we could have ever imagined. I think the movie’s done better than we could have ever hoped in terms of the connection with the audience and the connection with festivals. We don’t care about cracking the super mainstream anyway. You know, you’ve just gotta make something that you like.
With the continued lack of representation of queer characters, if it might be fraught to showcase what we might call a “loser queer” (Ellen’s words). How important was that representation to you?
Leela: Thank you for insulting us because I feel like she’s the personification of the two of us. But… No, I’m just joking! I think we were just being true to ourselves. I think that that’s the most important thing in queer art. I hope that lots of people get the chance to tell their own individual story and with Saira, I think it’s like that idea of the Hannah Gatsby quote, “where do all the quiet gays go?”
The big thing was women of colour too. We really wanted this to be led by actors who were people of colour. We wanted to put as much representation of Australian voices from different backgrounds that you typically don’t associate with Australian cinema. And so, there’s lots of layers to her character going on.
Emma: When it comes to judging real women and fictional women, there’s a high expectation for us to be exceptional. Why can’t we just be losers? Why can’t women just be mediocre? I always say we haven’t achieved true equality until a mediocre female film director can get a second film up. More mediocre female directors, please. I feel like a lot of people feel it’s refreshing because we’ve got so many loser male characters. Anyone seen an anime recently? They’re all losers. I mean, I love them. I love Evangelion. So, it was really just like writing a Shinji who’s like a brown girl.
Leela: I feel like there’s more judgment for women who cry. There was actually a note we got given at one point that was like, “she cries too much”. But then I showed the film to a friend and she was like “but I like that she cries so much because I cry, but also the cool thing about her character is that she cries, but she still keeps going”. I think we really wanted to show that it’s quite a common experience to be a woman navigating the world and be in control of your journey, yet you cry a lot along the way.
This is a very Aussie project with lots of new faces and exciting new voices, but also some beloved Australian comedy royalty involved. Did you consider global audiences as you made the film?
Emma: I don’t think that there was ever a conversation where we talked about not having majority of the cast be Australian. I think there are maybe a few conversations like “do we throw in one American there?” But I feel like Leela’s comedic voice is so broad and broadly appealing…you always say that you’ve got more of an American sense of humor. I feel like maybe the universal elements of humour in the film meant it wasn’t necessarily encumbered by it being Australian. And a lot of people I’ve read on Letterboxd are like “the Australian accents just make everything so much funnier”. I feel the same way about British comedy. I love how specifically British it is and I love the accents. It’s such a big part of it. So it’s not necessarily a super Australian voice in terms of comedy. I think it is more universal and more mainstream. But it’s not all the way there, we’re not trying to be American. We’re just being true to ourselves. And you know, gay. It’s gay humor as well. Does gay have a country? No.
Has a flag! (ed. this doesn’t get heard)
Leela: I think we were thinking globally. We are two Australian filmmakers very interested in connecting on a global market with Australian stories. Australian stories can sometimes feel limited to Australian audiences or a small reach of global audiences. I think that the most powerful pieces of art can connect with everyone, no matter where you’re from. Every project we’re continuing to develop, we hope will be something that can be appreciated in every single country in the world.
On your comedic sensibilities, you used these great songs to exposit on plot, the universe, and the characters’ mindsets. I was wondering if you could tell me a little about the writing and performance process.
Leela Varghese: I think I just had a mental breakdown one week and wrote them all. I was worried they wouldn’t get into the movie. Originally there weren’t songs, but we knew we were going to have songs. Then we decided that Willow’s character would sing and the idea is that the songs are the album about Saira, and it’s Willow’s album that they write. But it was really great, fun process. Our composer, Mike Darren, was also helping, he produced the songs. We did temp ones with my voice, and then Gemma Chua-Tran, the actor that plays Willow, came in and sung to the songs, and Michael also put all this magic on it along with Matthew Hadley. We got to produce these songs that originally started as just these chaotic little acoustic versions that I wrote in a week of panic.
Can you tell me about the animation and art style and how congruous that is with the spirit of the film?
Emma: I feel like a lot of the animation influences are thematic references as well. It’s really inspired by a lot of anime and a lot of rom-coms. It brings those two together. And so, Revolutionary Girl Utena is a big reference. Same with Adventure Time and Invader Zim. We were watching the Invader Zim movie on Netflix whilst writing the script and that really opened up a lot of possibilities for us. Cartoons function in this no man’s land where you can just do things because they’re stupid. Just the ability to think “you don’t need to take it so seriously” was huge for us. It was nice because I designed the characters and we did the storyboards together. It was just another way to have authority over the film as a whole. We had two animators on board who were two women and a lot of queer people in the team, and so we all felt authorship over this film because it’s such a small team.
Lesbian Space Princess shall be in UK and Irish Cinemas from the 19th June.