Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal have undeniable chemistry in “All of Us Strangers,” according to writer-director Andrew Haigh.
The film, which follows a screenwriter (Scott) who falls for his mysterious neighbor (Mescal) and revisits his childhood in a surreal way, features “fearless” sex scenes, as Haigh told Vanity Fair.
“There was chemistry between the two of them literally the second I saw them together,” Haigh said of Mescal and Scott. “Both of them were pretty fearless. There was no sense of them being afraid of approaching those scenes. They knew how important they were.”
Haigh added that he approached love scenes differently than past films like “Weekend” for “All of Us Strangers,” saying, “I’ve been more objective in how I’ve shot sex scenes in the past. Here, I really wanted to feel the subjective nature of having sex and what it feels like — the nervousness and the excitement and the physical sensation of being touched by someone else, and what that does to you.”
Haigh previously directed the queer classic “Weekend” and dramas “45 Years” and “Lean on Pete,” plus BBC limited series “The North Water.” He also served as a directed and executive producer on HBO’s queer series “Looking.”
The director noted that casting Scott, who is gay, added a different element to the storyline, especially when it came to his character coming out to his dead parents, played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy.
“I’m not one of those people who thinks you have to cast a queer actor in a queer role, but for this role, I did want to because I was trying to unpick some nuances of a certain generation of gay people,” Haigh said. “I needed someone that could understand that and have those conversations with me. I didn’t want it to feel like I was trying to explain what it was like…I make no bones about the fact that this is a specific experience I’m telling, of a man in his late 40s who’s gay. I’m trying to tell something that I understand, that is my experience of the world, and that is authentic to me.”
“All of Us Strangers” is loosely based on the 1987 Japanese novel “Strangers” by Taichi Yamada. The Searchlight Pictures film will premiere at the 2023 New York Film Festival before being released in theaters December 22.
