Kristen Stewart, star of Love Lies Bleeding, wasn’t too happy with 2020’s Happiest Season, which is widely deemed the first lesbian Christmas rom-com produced by an eminent Hollywood studio. With openly out Clea DuVall as its director and Stewart as a starring talent attached to it, the outing was deemed a benchmark in the history of mainstream queer Hollywood films.
Looking back on the film now, though, the Twilight star wasn’t pleased with the innumerable ‘notes’ she was given by studio executives, which frustrated her to no end. This inundation boiled down to her hair and get-up in the endeavor. She also empathized with DuVall, who had the patience to keep up with the top brass feedback.
The actress chalked it up to their attempt at sanitizing or, in her words, ‘shrouding’ elements to make its appeal broader and easy to digest. And while she’s not inherently opposed to such an approach, she did wonder how director Clea DuVall could power through it.
Kristen Stewart Found Studio Executives’ Notes ‘Annoying’ On Lesbian Rom-Com Happiest Season
Kristen Stewart‘s reflection on the Clea DuVall-helmed film came as she contrasted it with her experience on her recent lesbian crime-thriller, Love Lies Bleeding, which doesn’t turn to ‘shrouding’ its Sapphic characters and tending to them with a ‘hidden vegetables’ approach in a family-friendly setting.
While the actress understands where the latter sentiment comes from, she couldn’t help but feel exasperated at studio executives constantly bombarding her with notes about her in-movie style on Happiest Season (2020). Expressing her sentiments to Them magazine, the Charlie’s Angels alum said:
“The identity was beaten out of my goals there. I was getting so many studio executive notes about my hair and my clothes. I was like, ‘You did read the script. You did hire me. What are we doing here?’ It was f—king annoying.”
Iterating how her own impatience would’ve never allowed her to tolerate the constant studio interferences, Stewart couldn’t stop herself from appreciating DuVall:
“And it’s fine, because I guess there are ways that you need to shroud things for everyone to easily digest. And I’m down with that. And honestly, f—cking hats off to Clea [DuVall] because I don’t have the patience [to do] that.”
The focus on palatability in mainstream LGBTQ films that push for sanitized queer representation remains a widely-discussed phenomenon. To Stewart, her recent film Love Lies Bleeding, a co-production between A24 and Film4, offers respite from such a treatment of its characters. Of her latest outing, the star said, “It’s pretty f—king sick.”
Upon its release, Happiest Season (2020) was deemed a worthwhile flick among critics, whose reviews led to its 82% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes. And its backing from Sony’s Tri-Star Pictures during its infancy contributed further to its fanfare at the time.
Happiest Season (2020) Was ‘Personal’ To Director And Co-writer Clea DuVall
Actress and filmmaker Clea DuVall’s patience in allowing space for the studio executives’ notes for the holiday rom-com presumably stemmed from her personal association with the 2020 movie. On Variety‘s feature, the director and screenplay co-writer of the film, who is openly lesbian and grew up with a fondness for Christmas movies, was quoted saying the following:
“I had never seen a movie that really represented my experience. Any LGBTQ+ characters were—if they were there at all—side characters.”
And that’s how Happiest Season came to be. In a separate interview with Us Weekly, where screenplay co-writer and starring talent Mary Holland teased the prospects of a sequel to the movie, she mentioned the weight the holiday rom-com carried for DuVall:
“I mean, [the sequel is] in very early stages. The story of Happiest Season was an idea that Clea [DuVall] had for many years. And so it’s a personal story to her … I do really feel like this is Clea’s story, and I’m excited to see what happens.”
While the endeavor was delectably conventional, with all the Christmas movie tropes we’ve come to love over the decades, its take from a queer perspective (in association with DuVall’s own experiences) gives it an unquestionably personal touch. Whether or not a future installment continuing Abby and Harper’s story is realized remains to be seen.
Happiest Season (2020) is available for streaming on Hulu. Meanwhile, Kristen Stewart’s unabashedly gritty and gutsy Love Lies Bleeding (2024) was released theatrically in the U.S. on March 8, 2024, and is slated to hit the U.K. theatres on May 3, 2024.
