All of Us Strangers Director on Why He Cast a Gay Lead Actor

All of Us Strangers is one of our most-hyped upcoming movies — and the cast is a big reason.

The new drama film, directed by gay director Andrew Haigh, tells the story of a gay man living in London who meets his mysterious neighbor and develops a relationship with him while at the same time meeting the ghosts of his dead parents at his childhood home.

After a screening of his film at the New York Film Festival, Haigh discussed why he wanted to cast a gay actor to lead the film.

Haigh said that he thought casting someone who could identify with the lead character Adam’s sexuality was “an important part of it.” He ended up casting out actor Andrew Scott.

“Andrew I’d liked for a long time, and I felt like this was kind of a perfect role for him,” Haigh said. “And I’m not one of those people that say you have to be queer to play queer roles, but it was important to me in this case. Because there’s so much nuance that I was trying to get to, I didn’t want to have an endless conversation with somebody who’s trying to understand it.”

Haigh, who is known for gay projects like Looking and Weekend, also wanted to make sure that the intimacy in the film was different from what he’s done before.

“We actually spoke a lot with the actors about how we wanted it to feel,” he said. “I wanted it to feel real and tender and delicate, and a bit sexy and a bit dirty sometimes — all of those things that sex is.”

“We had an intimacy coordinator which I never used before, which was its own thing,” he added. “But I’m all for them. I understand why they exist. I think they’re a great thing. It’s a slightly strange experience when there’s now four of you talking about the scenes when before it was just the three of you, but I completely understand why they exist.”

All of Us Strangers hits theaters in the US on December 22 and in the UK on January 26.