Love Lies Bleeding star Katy O'Brian says film is a "queer fantasy"
"Until that moment, I'd never gotten to play a queer character on screen."
There’s certainly been plenty of buzz surrounding Love Lies Bleeding – and ahead of its release in UK cinemas tomorrow (Friday 3rd May), star Katy O'Brian has teased that it is "a queer fantasy film".
A follow-up to Rose Glass's 2022 horror debut St Maud, the film is set in small-town New Mexico in 1989, and stars Kristen Stewart as a withdrawn gym manager whose life changes forever when bodybuilder Jackie, played by O'Brian, passes through town on the way to a competition.
Intoxicated by one another, their electric dynamic soon sets off a chain of increasingly disastrous events involving Lou’s criminal family (Ed Harris and Dave Franco).
Speaking about what drew her to the role, O'Brian exclusively told RadioTimes.com: "I mean, I saw an open casting, because they couldn’t find the person to play Jackie, and it was a queer bodybuilder from the Midwest - and that’s who I am.
"And then it was, you know, an A24 film and I love their movies, it was Rose Glass and I thought St Maud was excellent, and Kristen Stewart was the other lead and I was like, 'Yeah, this is a queer fantasy film.'"
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She continued: "And until that moment, I’d never gotten to play a queer character on screen, so I was like, 'Yeah, give me this.'
"And then, when I auditioned and got the call back and got the script, it wasn’t until then I knew everything that Jackie went through and it was, like, terrifying, but I just thought it was the most riveting script I’d ever read and I was obsessed.
"I knew that if I didn’t do it, I was going to be super sad."
Love Lies Bleeding premiered at Sundance Film Festival back in January and was met with rave reviews, with critics heaping praise on Stewart's and O’Brian's performances as the toxic and electric couple.
Speaking about casting the actors, Glass exclusively told RadioTimes.com: "It was easy to cast Lou - well, easy in the sense that, you know, Kristen was the person I’d sort of had in my head for the character from the beginning.
"She was the first person we sent the script to and she sort of said yes straight away, which was dreamy.
"But yeah, Jackie was really difficult to cast, and we spent ages looking and saw hundreds of people, basically, because we needed someone who really physically convinced as a bodybuilder."
She continued: "And it was getting really close to the wire. I think, in the end, we’d already cast all the other characters, and the shoot was just looming and we still hadn’t found Jackie.
"And then, fortunately, Katy O’Brian saw this tweet that our casting directors put out, and it kind of felt extraordinary that we hadn’t crossed paths with her before.
"And obviously she’s perfect for it because she’s an actor. A lot of people we were getting tapes from were none actors and sort of from the sporting world, but didn’t have acting experience, and it’s quite a big dramatic role.
"So she had a bit of everything we needed, and she’s not a bodybuilder now but she had competed in the past. And from the point that we cast her, we were shooting two weeks later."
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Love Lies Bleeding will arrive in UK cinemas on Friday 3rd May 2024.
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