Elise Bauman on Being Queer and Competitive in New Canadian Sitcom “One More Time”
Before I fell in love with Elise Bauman the person, I fell in love with Elise Bauman the actor. Our mutual friend invited us both to participate in gay zoom reads of movie scripts at the start of the pandemic and, even then, her commitment to craft was obvious. And by craft, I mean to play a French maid in Clue she taped a printout of boobs to her shirt and to play Scott Caan’s character in Ocean’s 11 she made chest tufts out of her real hair.
Long story short, those live reads led to becoming Instagram mutuals which led to us now being three years into a relationship. But I’m not here today to talk about Elise Bauman, my girlfriend. I’m here to talk about Elise Bauman, the actor, because tonight on CBC the new sitcom One More Time premieres and she’s one of the leads.
Created by standup comedian DJ Demers, One More Time is about a used sporting goods store and the colorful cast of characters who work there. A workplace comedy with just a dash more hockey. Elise plays Jen Hauser, a gay Olympic javelin thrower who brings the same competitive spirit to her job that she does to her sport.
I’m so excited for Canadian audiences — and patient/crafty international audiences (*cough* stream free on CBC Gem with a VPN blocker *cough*) — to witness Elise’s talent as an actor, a comedian, and a jock. That’s called being a triple threat, baby.
In anticipation of the premiere tonight, I talked to Elise about why Jen Hauser was her dream role, how her own queerness has evolved while playing queer characters, and so much more.
Elise: It’s so nice to be here… on our living room sofa.
Drew: It’s a lot easier to coordinate an interview when you live with the talent.
Elise: (laughs) The talent? Oh boy.
Drew: That’s what they call you. In… the business.
Elise: That’s also what I make you call me.
Drew: The business?
Elise: (laughs) The talent.
Drew: (laughs) Oh yes.
Elise: On our shared calendar—
Drew: We did just start a shared calendar!
Elise: Yeah and guess what this interview didn’t make it onto? The shared calendar.
Drew: I’m barely adjusting to keeping my Autostraddle calendar up to date. I’ve never kept a calendar like that!
Elise: I can tell.
Drew: (laughs)
Elise: (laughs)
Drew: I’m going to actually interview you. Is that okay? Like I’m going to talk to you about the show.
Elise: And you’re objective because you don’t know me at all.
Drew: No, but this is actually in right now. Lots of celebrity interviews lately are like celebrities interviewing other celebrities or—
Elise: Are you calling yourself a celebrity?
Drew: (laughs) No. Or the chicken shop girl.
Elise: The chicken shop girl?
Drew: Yeah!
Elise: Oh right. Amelia Bedelia.
Drew: Amelia Dimoldenberg. I wish Amelia Bedelia had an interview show.
Anyways, film journalists getting to do interviews is kind of out right now which is a bummer, but now I’m a film journalist getting to do an interview because I’m dating you.
Elise: So it’s like nepotism.
Drew: Yeah exactly.
Elise: Now that that’s been established…
Drew: When you first got the audition for One More Time — I know this because I date you — you were like “this is the one.”
Elise: Yes.
Drew: What was it about the part that made you feel that way?
Elise: As you may have witnessed, this audition sent me on a slow descent into madness. Because I got the breakdown and it just ticked off so many boxes of things I’ve been wanting to do.
Drew: What were those boxes?
Elise: It’s been my big, big dream for a long time to play a queer character on a half hour sitcom. That’s been the goal. And then when you add in that the character was extremely competitive and driven and sporty and not femme. It was very exciting to me. So I said: I MUST HAVE THIS ONE.
Instead of having a nice, healthy relationship to the audition where you do it and then you let it go, I decided to obsess about it for twenty… four hours of the day… seven days a week… which is all of the hours in case you didn’t know.
Drew: And how long was it from when you first got the breakdown to when you got cast?
Elise: I got the breakdown beginning of March. Is that right?
Drew: It was March 1 because I flew into Toronto that day.
Elise: And then we started filming on July 4 and I was cast maybe a couple weeks before we started filming.
Drew: (laughs)
Elise: So it was a really long process and I was so patient throughout the whole thing. I definitely didn’t bring it up constantly and go I HAVE TO GET THIS NOW. And you probably loved every second of it.
Drew: I mean, one thing I did love was I got to see how—
Elise: (laughs) How insane I am?
Drew: Yeah but also how driven you are. We’re both ambitious, but I really respected the fact that you were… not without shame, but—
Elise: (laughs)
Drew: Like we went ax throwing for a friend’s birthday and you got a lot of bullseyes so you sent the casting director a video of you getting bullseyes because your character is a javelin thrower and we don’t have javelin birthday parties.
Elise: But you know what? We should.
Drew: I’m always like, if they want me they want me and if they don’t they don’t, which can be healthy in other ways, but I appreciated you being so direct about this thing you wanted.
Elise: I don’t think that type of approach works all the time. But I think my character is so obsessive and needs to be the best at everything. So I sort of decided to approach the casting process as the character might which I do think helped me because then they saw that within me.
Drew: And you also really weren’t crazy… to them.
Elise: (laughs)
Drew: (laughs) You did go above and beyond. But most of the anxiety was at home.
Elise: Yeah. I did know one of the readers for one of the callbacks and afterward she was like you seemed so cool and confident. And I was like I AM FREAKING OUT.
Drew: But you got the part!
Elise: It sure did work this time! It usually doesn’t!
Drew: It is really exciting to get to see you play a character like this. Obviously you’re not your character, but it’s fun to get to see you a play a character who’s funny and competitive and masc. It’s very you. I think you have a lot of range as an actor but it’s fun when you get to tap into something real.
Elise: It’s great to do something that is so specifically in my wheelhouse. It feels really liberating. But also I don’t think I would have been able to do this role a few years ago. I needed more time to settle into myself.
Drew: Also when you first auditioned we watched DJ’s standup and were like oh it’s really good! That’s nice!
Elise: (laughs) Thank God. A comedian creating a show can really go one of two ways. Luckily, DJ is incredibly kind and supportive and so funny.
That’s another reason I wanted the part so badly. The audition sides were making me laugh out loud.
Drew: So once you got cast, what was the shooting process like? What was the pace?
Elise: We shot July 4 to September 15. What’s the math on that?
Drew: I’ll do it.
Elise: Insert doing math here.
Drew: Like two and a half months.
Elise: And we shot 13 episodes. So it was a lot. And it’s all fast-paced, snappy dialogue and really high energy too. That’s something that was an adjustment. After years of the pandemic, I wasn’t used to being around that many people anymore. I’m a bit of an introvert so figuring out how to maintain my energy while using so much of my energy. Let’s just say I went to bed at eight o’clock most nights.
Drew: You were just filming days then?
Elise: We shot 11 hour days which is pretty unheard of.
Drew: Because usually people shoot 12 hour days.
Elise: Right and then overtime.
Drew: Right I’m just saying that for everyone reading.
Elise: For the plebeians reading this!
Drew: (laughs) Yeah.
Elise: But no exactly. We had really reasonable hours. I know it’s something the producers were passionate about.
Drew: I love that.
Elise: I also love it.
Drew: What was the most fun day on set?
Elise: I really liked the episode when—
Drew: This comes out the day of the premiere so no spoilers.
Elise: Oh!
Drew: You have to be vague.
Elise: Hmm. Do you remember my most fun day?
Drew: (laughs) I guess I’ll just interview myself!
Elise: (laughs) Oh oh there was a day where I actually got to throw — it wasn’t a javelin — but it was something I was throwing as if it was a javelin. And the stunt guy took me across the street to the park and was like let’s practice a few throws. Then I did it and it was perfect my first try. And he was like, well I feel confident in you. That was amazing.
Also a day when my character was working out with a medicine ball. The camera team was going to do a special shot so it looked like I threw the medicine ball and it landed perfectly on the shelf. And I was like pfft I bet I could do that for real and then the camera team was like I bet you can’t and then I did it every single shot.
Drew: So the best part of being an actor is throwing things well in front of men?
Elise: (laughs) Exactly.
Drew: Without spoiling season one, what is something you hope to see for Jen Hauser, your character, if One More Time runs for several seasons?
Elise: As I read more scripts and got to play opposite more characters, I discovered that underneath Jen’s confidence and bravado there’s a lot of insecurity. Part of what’s driving her to be so competitive is she had a parent who was really hard on her and it would be fun to get to meet that parent and explore that relationship. I want us to see more of what turned her into this driven monster and find the cracks in that.
Also there’s an episode where I get to flirt a little bit and one of my friends was cast and it was so fun. I’d love to see Jen flirt with a lot of ladies. And then maybe eventually there’s one person who she can’t seduce and that person—
Drew: That’s the couple all the fans will ship. A little slow burn.
Elise: Exactly.
Drew: Well, speaking of queerness, you’ve played a lot of queer characters throughout your career. And queer-coded characters.
Elise: (laughs)
Drew: What’s it been like growing up in your own queerness alongside portraying queerness on-screen?
Elise: One thing I’ll say is it’s a lot more fun playing queer characters when I’m more comfortable in my own queerness. (laughs) Early days it was a lot about discovery and that’s tumultuous and exciting. But there’s something more gratifying about getting to exist within the thing that’s found.
That’s part of why I felt so ready for this role and so excited for this role. I feel like I’ve gone through so much discovery about myself and now I get to live in it. Especially since — not to get gushy — but since being with you I feel like I’ve really deepened parts of myself. So getting to be on-screen and be seen on-screen when I feel more seen in my real life is exciting.
Drew: That’s really nice.
Elise: Ewww gross! Feelings! I take it back, I take it back.
Drew: (laughs)
Elise: (laughs)
Drew: What other kinds of projects do you want to work on? Obviously more seasons of this…
Elise: Well, having just semi-moved to New York with you — side note to the Canadian government that I’m still spending six plus months of the year in Canada… Ontario specifically — I want more financial security. And stability in general. One thing that was really nice about One More Time is this was the longest I’ve ever been on a shoot and I really loved the consistency of going to work and seeing the same people every day.
But right now I’m rewatching Suits. (laughs)
Drew: (laughs) Go on.
Elise: And there is something so appealing to me about being the funny guy at the office.
Drew: In like a legal drama?
Elise: Not necessarily a legal drama…
Drew: But like something more dramatic where you’re funny. You want to be the comedic relief in a drama.
Elise: Exactly.
Drew: Right now you’re comedy in comedy. Next you want to be comedy in drama.
Elise: Yes. I would love to be the goofy little guy who is like, “Oh no the briefs have been breached!”
Drew: What’s the actor’s name? The guy who was in the Hanukkah movie?
Elise: The guy who plays Louis Litt? Yeah I kind of want to be the Louis Litt of a non-cop procedural.
Drew: I was going to ask what other shows and movies you’re watching and loving right now but Suits clearly.
Elise: Okay I don’t want to be known as the person who’s watching Suits. That’s really embarrassing for me. What else have we been watching?
Drew: We’re finally watching Normal People.
Elise: Yeah that one is brutal. God I need those straight people to communicate better.
Drew: The Curse.
Elise: Also brutal. A different kind of brutal.
Drew: We’re watching Ingmar Bergman movies. Those are light.
Elise: (laughs) We have been watching Ingmar Bergman movies. What are you watching? Fanny and Alexander!
Drew: We also watched The Apartment.
Elise: Oh that was great.
Drew: When we first started dating, I showed you Clueless and you thought that was an old movie.
Elise: It is an old movie.
Drew: But the fact that I’ve gotten you to love a lot of older movies brings me a lot of joy.
Elise: And I show you gems like…
Drew: High School Musical was the first movie you showed me.
Elise: Yes, it was.
Drew: Okay but also Center Stage!
Elise: Oh yeah!
Drew: That’s a great movie.
Elise: One of those actors is in Suits.
Drew: (laughs)
Elise: But I really do love movies. That’s another dream of mine. So if anyone wants to make that happen.
Drew: Look I’m trying.
Elise: (laughs)
Drew: I’m also excited for you to direct more. I think you have such a good eye.
Elise: Thanks.
Drew: And that’s my best shot at acting in an indie film. (laughs)
Elise: (laughs) I’d cast you.
Drew: Thanks.
Elise: Nepotism strikes again!
One More Time premieres on CBC and CBC Gem tonight at 9 pm.
“Wait, Is This a Date?” Season Two FINALE: Long Distance Crushes with Elise Bauman
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called… a season finale! Yes, it’s true, today’s episode marks the end of the absolute blockbuster that was S2 of Wait, Is This A Date?
And to celebrate that ending, who better to come on and discuss the joys and successes of a long distance crush, than actor and queer person Elise Bauman? You might recognize Elise from Lifetime’s delightful queer Christmas rom-com that come out last year, Under The Christmas Tree, but around these parts, she has another title that is nearly as vaunted: Drew’s girlfriend! Yes, that’s right, this sparkling twosome was birthed from the great queer tradition: the long distance crush.
But what is it about the long distance crush that is so appealing to queers around the world? Is it the relative scarcity of like minded queers around you? Perhaps the ability to flirt long distance takes some of the pressure off? The three of us get into all of it, AND Drew and Elise share some possibly TOO cute details about their relationship!
And of course there is a game! This week, I make Drew play the game that simply took over Twitter and Tiktok for a few fleeting weeks: “They’re a 10 but…” It’s a good time, all around!
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SHOW NOTES
+ Follow Elise on Twitter and IG!
+ Read Drew’s interview with Jinx Monsoon!
+ Watch Bend it Like Beckham, it still rocks!
+ Johnny Sibilly’s thighs are… indeed quite compelling!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CfCuUHrPrwV/?hl=en
+ Will Shortz is in fact the name of the NYT Crossword Editor! *the more you know*
EPISODE
Elise: And then we got off the phone, and then we both hopped on the phone two seconds later we’re like, “So the border is closed, we are legally not allowed to actually go across the border.”
Christina: I mean, top among one of my favorite voice memos and or texts I got from Drew, I can’t remember which form it came in, it was like, “I made this plan and now the borders are closed.” Yeah.
Elise: Yeah, it was a real moment.
[theme song plays]
Drew: Hi, I’m Drew.
Christina: And I’m Christina.
Drew: And welcome to Wait, Is This A Date?
Christina: Wait, Is This A Date? is an Autostraddle podcast brought to you by me having the giggles, and the question that is on everybody’s lips, wait, was this a date?
Drew: We’re at the end of our second season, and I think we solved it, I think.
Christina: Yeah, I think I’m just bringing big finale energy, like when comedies used to be in front of a studio audience, and everybody would walk in and there was an hour of applause because it was like, it’s the last, that’s how I’m feeling. Though to be clear, no one has applauded me yet, hateful. Thank you, thank you. Now I feel loved and held. Drew, who are you?
Drew: Oh wow, forgot about that part.
Christina: Yeah, right?
Drew: Maybe season three I’ll get the intros. My name is Drew Gregory, I am a writer for Autostraddle, a filmmaker, a queer trans woman. You know what, I think if we do another season I want to have a fun one I throw in at the end.
Christina: Ooh, something spicy, you want to jazz it up?
Drew: Yeah, I don’t have anything today though.
Christina: Okay, leave them wanting more, I think that’s great.
Drew: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christina: I am Christina Tucker, I am also a writer at Autostraddle, and the internet at large. A podcaster, a gay Black woman, and someone who’s feeling pretty jazzy right here on this afternoon.
Drew: Great, I’m really glad that you’re jazzy and I’m spicy, or at least I’m planning for the possibility that someday I’ll be spicy.
Christina: Yes you’re like, I don’t know, the first half of the movie Dune, the spice will come. Cool reference, ladies, she’s single. Anyway, I do have a game for us to play on this hollowed day of our finale.
Drew: Incredible.
Christina: This is the classic, and by classic I mean a game that took over the internet and TikTok for a couple weeks, “They’re a 10, but…”
Drew: Ah, great.
Christina: Now Drew, I’m going to set out some ground rules for you, because I know you love a follow up question.
Drew: Great.
Christina: When I say they’re a 10, they’re a 10 to you in any way that matters to you, that could be physically, that could be emotionally, this is just a person you feel is a 10, okay?
Drew: Okay, okay, thank you.
Christina: I do not have any scenarios for what else you in this person have been doing in your dating life, you’re just going to have to go with your gut and decide.
Drew: Cool.
Christina: All right?
Drew: Yes.
Christina: We’re going to put where make that clear, here we go. They’re a 10, but they clap when the plane lands.
Drew: I always felt like people were too dramatic with this, where it’s like they’re a 10 and that thing makes them go to a two, come on.
Christina: Yes.
Drew: So I’m going to still give a pretty generous eight.
Christina: Yeah, I think that’s fair. I think eight is the correct amount of cringe removal for that little action. All right, this is a great start. Okay, they’re a nine but they never text you first.
Drew: And I can’t ask follow up questions?
Christina: No, no, no.
Drew: So I can’t ask, well do they text me back when I text? I would say a five.
Christina: Yeah, not texting first ever, that’s rough.
Drew: Ever is weird.
Christina: That’s rough stuff. All right, they are a five but they drive you to every errand that you’ve ever had to run.
Drew: That’s really nice, but I could always… If there were five, I’ll give him a six.
Christina: Sure, sure. But I know you love a solo jaunt anyway, you love an errand run.
Drew:I mean today my girlfriend Elise did drive me to an errand, and I was very grateful, but if that was the only thing she did we wouldn’t be in a relationship, that was just an added little nice bonus.
Christina: I think that’s fair.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: All right, they are a seven but they only pretend to read your work.
Drew: See the aspect of that that bothers me is the pretend.
Christina: Pretending, I knew it would be.
Drew: It’s not the not reading it. If they didn’t read my work it’s like, I’m not that, I’d be a little, it’s like never? But it’s fine, I could get over it. But they lie to me about that is what’s weird to me, so that’s going to go down to a three.
Christina: Yeah, correct, correct. They are a three but they have access to the criterion closet.
Drew: And do I get you to go?
Christina: And you get access, you benefit from that access, yes.
Drew: I could have a solid fling with that six.
Christina: I think you could. It was a three, but yeah, you’re knocking it up to a six.
Drew: No, no, no, that’s what I’m saying, I’m knocking it up to a six.
Christina: Gotcha, gotcha. I love that. They’re an eight but all of their friends are straight.
Drew: Okay, there was some discourse about this, because I think there was a you need help. I think I maybe was on the opposite side of most of the Autostraddle team who said that it is fine to only have straight friends. I would like to say that it is fine, it’s just not the life I lead. All straight friends, that’s going to go to a two.
Christina: Yeah, I’m going to have to agree with you on that one, I would just find it a little troubling, confusing.
Drew: All straight friends?
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: If they’re new to queerness and are wanting to meet more queer people, that’s different than if they’re an established season queer who’s like, you know what? I like being the one lesbian in my friend group of straight people.
Christina: Yeah, I would feel the same way if it was a Black person who was like, “I don’t have any Black friends,” I would be like, “What’s going on there?” Internally.
Drew: We’re not in a network sitcom, we can’t have a token person.
Christina: You don’t need to be the token, you don’t need to do that to yourself. All right, we have three more. They are a seven but they spend all their free time in the gym, constantly lifting weights up and down. I don’t know what people do in the gym.
Drew: All of their free time. I guess it depends on what counts as free time. I’ll say a five.
Christina: Yeah.
Drew: I’ll bump them down two.
Christina: Bump them down.
Drew: But that’s fine. I guess it depends largely for me, which I’m not asking a follow question, I’m sticking with five, but it depends to me what counts as free time.
Christina: Sure.
Drew: Can we watch movies together, or go out to eat, is that free time? Is not work time free time, or is it just like when we don’t have other activities?
Christina: I hear you, I hear you.
Drew: But I’ll stick with five.
Christina: All right. They’re six, but their mom is hotter than they are.
Drew: Oh, I don’t know to go up or down.
Christina: I know, right?
Drew: I don’t think I could ever date someone for their… It’s like if I’m not attracted to someone in the first place, I’m probably not going to be dating them.
Christina: Right.
Drew: I’m not going to be like, well, they could turn into their hot mom. I think I’d say that they’re still a six, I’m just going to not call them and I’m going to call their mom.
Christina: Yeah, I feel like it’s like you stay the same, but maybe I hang out with you a little longer than I would in order-
Drew: That’s a good point.
Christina: To get some mom time. I don’t think you change.
Drew: I did something really bad that I still feel badly about, which is that someone asked me out, and this was when I was in college, and I was not interested, and so I was clear about that, I was clear I wasn’t interested. But then she wanted to be friends, and I could tell that she said she wanted to be friends but it was coming from place-
Christina: She was hoping.
Drew: Yeah. But the thing is that all of her friends were really hot and cool, and so I did continued to be her friend in order to hang out with her friends. I didn’t lie about my intentions generally, but it still wasn’t the nicest thing I did as a 20 year old.
Christina: I mean unfortunately it just reminds me of that episode of Sex and the City where Carrie’s dating, I believe it’s Justin Theroux, and he sucks, but his family rocks, and she’s like, I can do this for a bit. I’m like, yeah, absolutely, who couldn’t.
Drew: Carrie wasn’t trying to hook up with his family, which is the difference, but you know what? It’s fine, we’re all good.
Christina: A hookup can look like anything, I’m always saying that.
Drew: That’s a really great point.
Christina: Your final one, is a three but has a beach house.
Drew: I’m about to say an annoying sentence, but I went to NYU.
Christina: Horrible to say.
Drew: Something that sucks about me, which this is going to sound like a humble brag, because it’s actually probably a good character trait, but it sucks as a person going through the world. I went to a school that’s filled with rich people who have all sorts of awesome beach houses, and all these other things, and I only became friends with people who were there on scholarships. Not only, but primarily, I definitely, I didn’t make friends with people who had beach houses.
Christina: You didn’t utilize.
Drew: Yeah, and so I think if they’re a three but they have a beach house, they’re probably a two. The fact… I don’t know.
Christina: Yeah, you just can’t make that leap to utilize the sick beach house moment.
Drew: No, it sucks. But what I’m really hoping is that my friends who are fairly down to earth, good people, more and more of them are just going to continue to get that new money and then get beach houses, and then I’ll be able to hang out with my great friends and be at a beach house. That’s the dream where I could get the beach house.
Christina: That’s the dream at the end of the day, it’s new money and a beach house, that’s all we’re looking for. You heard it here first folks.
Drew: I love new money.
Christina: Love new money.
Drew: Love new money. Yeah, that was a delight. I’d actually, I’d really been wanting to play that game since it was a thing on TikTok, so thank you for making my dreams come true.
Christina: I thought it would be a fun one to do, and it was very fun to come up with them.
Drew: Well, should we move on to our main segment of the week, which is falling for people who live in other cities. Which is different than long distance relationships, because long distance relationships can start well into a relationship, they can continue on into a relationship, this is the desire that queer people have to look at their place that they live and go, no, I’m not going to flirt with these people, I’m going to go on instagram.com and find someone who lives very far away. And we have a, I know we always say a very special guest, but for me this is a very special guest. Do you want to introduce yourself?
Elise: I would love to introduce myself. Am I the special guest?
Drew: You are, yes.
Christina: Baby, of course.
Elise: Great, wow, amazing. My name is Elise Bauman, I’m an actor, I’m a queer person, and I’m here today because I’m sleeping with one of the hosts.
Christina: Guess which one?
Elise: Yeah, the rest of the podcast is just the audience trying decipher which host I’m sleeping with. I like that, it’s like a murder mystery but-
Christina: There’s no way to know.
Elise: There’s no way to know. Yeah, does this make me a nepotism baby? Is that how the industry works.
Christina: Yes, that’s how the industry works, babe.
Elise: Nice, nice.
Christina: This is it.
Elise: Wow, maybe I could get a career out of this.
Christina: Fingers crossed for you.
Elise: Nepo baby to career, wow, fantastic. I’ve always wanted to be a nepo baby.
Christina: I’m so glad.
Drew: Yeah, I was just going to say that for people who don’t know, well now I’m ruining the murder mystery of it all, but Elise and I are in a relationship, and did start dating during the pandemic, and Elise lives in Toronto, and I live in Los Angeles, which are in fact different cities, and are in fact in different countries.
Elise: They are indeed, they are indeed.
Christina: And Drew, not to say that you went against your own gut, but I do feel as though you are usually a person who says, why bother with a long distance moment? There are people right here I can date, why do this to yourself? You know it’s going to be hard, you know it’s going to be a challenge, why do this? And yet here you are.
Drew: See, that’s interesting, because I feel like I always liked to have a little of both, I just think I didn’t take the long distance ones maybe as seriously.
Christina: Maybe that’s it, yeah.
Drew: But I always enjoyed a long distance flirt.
Christina: True.
Drew: And so I think this just kept going. When we started-
Elise: So the answer, Drew, wasn’t that I was just irresistible and it was personal to me, and that it was very specific to me that I was just amazingly irresistible so you just broke all your rules and you said, “I have to have that one.”
Drew: I mean it is sort of the answer in a longer sense. In the sense that it just kept happening. And then our good friends of the pod, Mal Blum and Gab Dunn, who I used to live with, as some of you may know, I would always be like, I’d be trying to date people during the pandemic in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas of Los Angeles. And then they’d make fun of me because I would sometimes just be like, “I mean, I could just try to date Elise Bauman.” I was always, “I mean, this person lives in Toronto, so no we’re just going to continue flirting.” But then at a certain point I’d made a lot of mistakes. Some of which have been documented on this here podcast during the pandemic and my dating. And then I was like, “Well, I keep being drawn to this person. And yes, the distance is tricky, but maybe we should do a little FaceTime.”
Elise: Which was a year into us flirting via the internet.
Christina: I am very aware of the Drew side of this burgeoning relationship. But Elise, I’d love to get your takes. Are you a long distance dater? Are you one of the queers that is constantly, “If I was in Ireland, me and this person would be together.” Because was this a new experience for you?
Elise: No, I mean, truthfully, I hadn’t really been in many long term relationships.
Christina: Brag.
Elise: Until recently. No, it was. I think the reason for me that it all worked out so well is that I had so many walls up. And so, being able to take it slow with zero pressure. We met over this Zoom live read at the beginning of the pandemic and added each other on Twitter, started liking each other’s tweets. Then I think it went into a Twitter DM, very romantic. And then we just started talking and then we just talked on the internet for a really long time. And it was like, this really slow, organic, nice way of doing things. Because I think because you lived in a different country, it meant that the pressure was none. I was like, “Wow, if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. I’ve never even seen her face to face still. What’s the worst that could happen?” Because of that, I don’t know, it just, it gave it a nice rumination period. I like to say that if my last relationship was 30 seconds in the microwave, this was a slow braised lamb stew. Or something.
Christina: Okay. It’s giving barefoot Contessa.
Elise: You know what I mean?
Christina: We’re going direct from the Hamptons. We love that. We love that. I mean, I do think that part, I have never done an actual relationship, surprising no one, via a long distance. But the long distance flirt that is very fun to me. But it’s always, as it always is, making it something more than just a long distance flirt or spicy replies to Instagram stories. I’m always like, “Ooh. And that’s where I get lost.” Or I forget, or don’t have the attention span. I wonder if that’s part of the problem for me. It’s tough to say.
Elise: It was funny because when Drew eventually, a year into us every couple weeks having long flirts on Instagram, was like, “Would you like to FaceTime sometime?” And my first reaction was like, “No, you’ve ruined it. You’ve taken…” I was like, “No, we got to either be in a relationship or the flirtation ends. There’s stakes. Now, it actually goes somewhere now.” And I was like, some of the walls started coming back up. And then we FaceTimed. And our first FaceTime, true to queer history, was about seven hours long. And then we just kept on FaceTiming for… Well, it was originally not going to be as long, but then we had this big, long talk one time. We were like, okay, we talked about everything. We talked about how we like to share space about what it would be like to meet for the first time we literally talked about everything. And we got off the phone and we were like, “Okay, we’re feeling good about this. We’re going to do it. We’re going to, Drew’s going to come here or I’m going to go there. It’s going to be great.” And then we…
Drew: No, we picked a date. I was going to book a flight.
Elise: Oh, we picked it. Right, right, right. And then we got off the phone and then we both hopped on the phone two seconds later. We’re like, “The border is closed. We are legally not allowed to actually go across the border because of that.”
Christina: I mean, top among my favorite voice memos and/or texts I got from Drew, I can’t remember which form it came in. It was like, “I made this plan and now the borders are closed.”
Elise: Yeah. It was a real moment.
Drew: And initially we were FaceTiming once a week. We kept that as a boundary of sorts, where we… It was really just once a week. They were six or seven hours long, but it was once a week. And then, once we reached that point where we were going to meet and then the existence of borders got in the way, then it became a lot more like we were just in a relationship. Where we didn’t talk about it that way, but where we just would FaceTime each other randomly when we were going about our days or whatever.
Elise: It was less of a once a week date night thing.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: It was like, we’re going to meet in person at some time. Let’s remove some of these boundaries around our communication style.
Drew: I mean when I asked you to FaceTime, I genuinely didn’t know if we’d been flirting. Is this a date?
Elise: That’s so funny.
Drew: But stretched out over a year where… And it’s because people all have different flirting styles and we weren’t like-
Elise: You literally sent me poems that you wrote in Paris when you were a teenager.
Drew: Right. See to me that’s flirting. But to a lot of people that is the sort of friendship. Not…
Christina: Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Drew: We weren’t doing anything sexual. It wasn’t like so-
Christina: Could have been the start of a podcast. Did you think about it?
Drew: Exactly. I also had multiple experiences over the years where I had been like, “Oh, this is flirting.” And sometimes, we responded to each other’s stories with… I think once I responded to a thirst trap you posted with swoon and things like that. There was definitely some acknowledgement of attraction. But also again, people who are becoming friends sometimes are also like, “Oh my God, hottie.” It’s confusing. And then, I said, “Would you like to FaceTime sometime?” And you said, “I usually wait until I’m at a year into an Instagram flirtation before I do a FaceTimes, but I could break the rules by a couple weeks,” is exactly what you said. Then I was, I remember…
Elise: Wow, that was good.
Drew: Yeah.
Elise: I’m like, “Yeah, cool. Great.”
Drew: I was in the main house with my friends and was like, “Yes.” I was like, “Yes, this is flirting. It was flirting. We were flirting.” And they were making fun of me because I had been so, “I shouldn’t have sent that. I shouldn’t have sent that. I shouldn’t have sent that. I’m going to ruin.”
Christina: You got the touchdown, babe.
Drew: Now, when LA people break my heart, I’m not even going to be able to have this hot Canadian to think about. Oh God, what did I do? What did I do? And then you said that. And I was like, “Yes. Yes.”
Elise: Oh. And the rest is history.
Christina: And the rest is a gorgeous history. And then, Drew got to not only meet me in person for the first time, but then drive right on up to Toronto to see you.
Drew: I know.
Elise: No, that’s true. Yeah.
Christina: I do feel like I’m hugely a part of your story, to be clear.
Elise: Massively a part of it. Huge, huge, huge.
Christina: In many ways, it’s like who is in a relationship here? It’s who know? It’s like, it’s all married together.
Drew: I mean season one, we would always ask our guests if this was a date. This is a little bit of a thruple date I think.
Christina: This is absolutely.
Drew: Right now. Yeah.
Christina: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Elise: Because you couldn’t fly for some reason. And so, you drove to Christina’s and then drove across the border.
Drew: Because I was in Cincinnati with doing that job. I flew to New York. Was in New York for a bit, took the train to see Christina. Then went from there back to New York. And then I drove because I didn’t have a passport because of a combination of pandemic and Trump and trans.
Christina: The big three.
Drew: Yeah, but I had a New York state driver’s license that was an enhanced ID. I couldn’t fly to Canada, but I could drive across the border. I drove nine hours to meet you for the first time.
Elise: Wow.
Drew: And when I got to your place, you were working, you were on set. And so, I…
Elise: Right, right. You were in my bedroom before. Oh right. Yeah, I did this cute thing. Tell them the cute thing that I did.
Drew: You left me a bunch of little notes on the stairs leading up to your room. And then there was a little note on the bed and it was really, really cute.
Christina: That is so cute, I want to throw up a little bit, man. I feel a little queasy actually thinking about how cute that is.
Drew: It was really, it was real good.
Elise: Yeah. You sent me a video from my bedroom being, “Just waiting here to meet you in person.” Wild. What a time.
Drew: Were you nervous?
Elise: Was I nervous? Yeah. But I think that we had… This is also the thing about long distance or falling for people in other cities, as this podcast title is called, is that, I mean, not that you couldn’t do this in person, but you just get to communicate about everything before it happens. And so, we talked about our nerves. We talked about, we were both, “What if we don’t the way that we smell?” Weird things like that, just all of your weird neurosis or all of your weird insecurities, we just talked through every possible thing. And then it worked out pretty well I’d say.
Drew: I mean, I feel like it was drastically different than a scenario where let’s say we were flirting for a bit, a shorter period of time. Either we never FaceTimed or maybe we just FaceTimed a couple times. Because of the border being closed, by the time we met, I guess I had been more nervous about not being able to cross the border. I was so nervous the night before I drove. And that I’d get to the border and they’d be like, “Yes, Americans are allowed in now, but not the trans ones,” or just something. Or I had just done the paperwork wrong or just some border patrol person having an issue with me. And so, that’s what I was nervous about. But once I made it in, I was so relieved. Or getting COVID right beforehand. There was all, that was where so many of the nerves were. Once I was in your room. Also, you had just done this very cute thing that reminded me why I had driven nine hours and why I was excited to meet you. I wasn’t, I think…
Elise: All it takes is a couple Post-it notes, ladies.
Drew: I guess I just didn’t think the nerves that might exist otherwise if our first kiss wasn’t great. If the first time we had sex wasn’t great.
Elise: Sure.
Drew: If it was awkward for the first couple days, I wasn’t worried that any…
Elise: But it was awkward.
Drew: It was. Whoa.
Elise: For the first maybe two hours.
Drew: Sure.
Elise: And then we both acknowledged that the next day. Or we even acknowledged it in the moment. We were like, “This is weird.”
Drew: I think we acknowledged it in the moment.
Elise: We were like, “This is weird. You’re a person in front of me. You’ve lived in my phone for the last five months.”
Drew: But I had a lot of confidence that if any of those things, that it wouldn’t be a deal breaker. If the whole 10 days I was there had passed and we weren’t connecting, then it would be like, “Hmm, should we try that again? What was happening there?” But I don’t know. And that also, I think took away some of the nerves and allowed the weirdness to only last a couple hours instead. By the next day, we were so… I don’t know. It really felt kind of magical.
Elise: It was, yeah. We literally went away for the weekend, the following morning while…
Drew: Yeah.
Elise: Yeah. It’s funny. Because I’ve been on a lot of first dates, but not a lot of second dates. And I think there is something of, I don’t know, I always could find a reason to not see someone again, just based out of fear or whatever. Probably a lot of it was just like, I think you can tell, for me personally, within the first 20 minutes of meeting someone, if that person is going to be someone that you get along with or not. But there is something about, I don’t know, just more slowly getting to know someone that just shuts down that fear mechanism a little bit. For me, for me.
Christina: Yeah. I think that totally makes sense.
Elise: I mean speaking more broadly because we’re not the first queer women to do this.
Christina: No.
Elise: It is a stereotype.
Drew: As much as I love just talking about us, speaking more broadly, is it as simple as queer people historically have been in places or even Queer people, historically, have been in places, or even still—Generally, there will be more straight people in your city than queer people. So there are less options. Is that where it’s coming from, or is there something else going on that is causing this to be a stereotype?
Christina: I don’t know. I mean I do think of it as scarcity seems dramatic. But I do think it does come from partly because of that. If you are in a community that you don’t know a ton of queer people or you’re just like, “I feel a little bit unmoored here. I’m just going to reach out to queer people writ large. Who cares where they are?” I do think that’s part of it. I don’t know. I feel like straight people are just like, oh, how did we decide to get married? He was right there, and that’s it.
Drew: That’s true.
Christina: It is so much for me a thing of like, oh, maybe we are just a little bit more interested in taking that time and taking that long, slow build and knowing that, no, this isn’t impossible even if we’re X miles apart. We can still make this happen. I don’t know. Maybe straight people are just allergic to working hard for their relationship sometimes.
Elise: But I also think that more straight people started doing the long distance or the meeting people in other cities during the pandemic. I have maybe a couple straight friends, my token straight friends, and-
Drew: Brave.
Christina: Brave.
Elise: … one of them was basically doing the exact same thing. I was like it is interesting that during the pandemic, I don’t know, I was like, wow, what a beautiful way to be an ally to the queer community, is you guys are doing long distance now, too. But I don’t know if there’s a correlation there somehow, but I do think it’s interesting that more straight people did turn to broadening their dating geography over the pandemic.
Drew: Good for them.
Elise: Good for them. Do you think there’s something to that, though? Do you think that that’s … Or maybe I just know one straight person who did this?
Drew: No, no, no, no, no. No, I think that’s completely accurate. I’m just thinking about it.
Christina: No, I absolutely agree. I think there was like, certainly in the beginning of 2021, absolutely a genre of TikTok that was going to meet X person for the first time and it was always stitched with lesbians who are like, “Baby welcome to the community. This is what we do. This is how we ball.”
Elise: Maybe people just aren’t as attached to remaining in the same city anymore, like rules just went out the wayside and they’re like, “Okay, I don’t need to find someone who … ” I don’t know.
Drew: I mean I definitely, even more than before, was flirt, it didn’t make a difference. If I wasn’t going to meet anyone in person, like at least-
Christina: If I’m not leaving my house
Drew:.. especially in the early, early months, it truly doesn’t matter. It is interesting because I do think for the two of us, it was … Like there are queer people in LA and people in Toronto, and we could have pandemic dated them. I do think for the two of us, it was more about our emotional walls that we had up. I often joked before … I don’t know, before the pandemic, that a lot of the dating … Or even during the pandemic, a lot of the dating I was doing, I was pursuing people who were unavailable. That was a way of having walls up, of being like, okay, this person is probably not someone who will date me. It maybe was a distance, but it was something else. I don’t know. Maybe their entire personality and brand is that they don’t date. So to then be like, oh, that’s who I’m going to try to date is that’s not a great move. I do feel like the distance allowed, in our relationship … Like that was the thing, and that’s something that can be overcome by travel. I mean especially in 2019, some of the people I was trying to date, it just was so messy and it was because the people who were messy and the people who weren’t kind and weren’t giving me much, there was no stakes the same way that maybe during the pandemic initially flirting with someone in Toronto felt like there were no stakes. Then we were gradually able to work towards a place where there actually were stakes. I could get over some of my commitment issues that were spurred on from my previous relationships. So I do think that it makes sense that scarcity is a factor for queer people. I also think that, yeah, sure, it can be that it’s a nice way to ease in. Look, a lot of people, though, especially … I mean we talk about this all the time, especially on the lesbian side of things, people can be really timid and really scared to make moves and whatever. I think probably the lowering of the stakes of someone being far away does help with that stuff, too. So I think that also is maybe a factor for a lot of people.
Christina: That was my gut reaction too, is that if you feel like those stakes are not as high, then it necessarily makes you feel like, oh, then my walls don’t have to be as high in correlation to that because what am I really risking here, having a light flirtation every couple of weeks or every couple of days, until you suddenly realize, wow, we’ve been doing this for a year. Maybe we should hop on a quick call.
Elise: Wow. Have you ever fallen for someone in a different city, Christina?
Christina: No. I’ve entertained crushes in different cities, but I’ve done a proper falling for. I …
Elise: I …
Christina: … couldn’t say.
Elise: Couldn’t be me.
Drew: I do feel like the times where you’ve been like, “I have a crush on someone,” they’ve usually been in another city.
Christina: Yeah, that is usually …
Elise: Interesting.
Christina: Again, it is those similar walls and it is similarly, well, at the end of the day, I’ll be over here and they’ll be somewhere else. That makes me feel a little less stressed. But, yeah, could I successfully move that to the gorgeous, beautiful thing that you two have built together?
Elise: God …
Drew: I think it could.
Christina: Maybe. Maybe.
Drew: The other thing is that sometimes the connection, there are similar situations not virtually. I know that when I travel … Like my best one night stands have been when I was traveling. It was because it truly was I felt a similar sort of the stakes are low. It doesn’t go well, I’m like, “Well, I’ve got to get back to LA,” or wherever I was living. There is something about even that where you don’t have-
Elise: You’re never going to run into this person at a Walgreen’s.
Drew: Yeah, you don’t have the build-up time that we’re talking about when you fall for someone in another city virtually, but you do have a similar lowering of the stakes where it’s like this isn’t real, I’m on vacation, or even if you’re on a work trip, like I’m just in another place and it feels … When I think of the nightstands I had in the same city as me, it’s not so much. But when I think about the one nightstands I had while traveling, those are such good memories and I’m just like, “What great people. Am I going to see them again? Probably not. Do I want to?”
Elise: What great people.
Christina: What great people.
Drew: I really have very fond feelings about a handful of people who I had that experience with.
Christina: I mean I think part of that is just being … When you’re on vacation brain, you’re just like, “Who am I?” I can be a different person because I’m on vacation or I’m not where I actually live. What are the repercussions to my actions?” and just vibe.
Elise: Do you think too that there’s something about dating within your own city, you feel as though you’re attached to older versions of yourself in that city, too? If you’re looking outside of your current geographical location, there’s something a little more freeing about, I don’t know, not being attached to the past or not being attached to past versions of yourself.
Christina: I definitely think that would be part of it. I’ve never really thought about it in that way, though. That is interesting. But it makes a gut emotional sense, like I left her behind, old Christina. I don’t know her anymore.
Elise: Old Christina.
Christina: Who is she?
Drew: I also … In talking about this and thinking about our relationship, distance …
Elise: Makes the heart grow fonder. Is that where you’re going to say?
Drew: Well, no, there are opportunities for romance that … I mean, look, we’re raised on romantic movies, romantic books, whatever, that need conflict. So part of romance as a genre, generally, is conflict. And so, the conflict can be, “Oh, this person’s married. Oh, this person is a nightmare to me,” and those aren’t necessarily as fun as … I mean they can be fun in their own ways, but they’re not as capital R romantic as, oh, this person lives far away.
Elise: Justin Trudeau closed the border.
Christina: It’s the longing.
Drew: Yeah, or it’s the, oh, we only have one night before I have to get back on the plane. Those are both such great experiences of romance. If we had been dating early months, yeah, I could have gotten you a surprise gift or something, but that wouldn’t be as fun as sending you a book that I really loved with a little note in it.
Elise: That is true.
Drew: When you sent me … Elise makes these incredible collage cards. When you sent me the first one that you sent me, it was like … I feel like that … Recently we had some friends ask, “When did you know that you were in love?” and I didn’t really have a good answer. Now that I think about it, yes, we had to meet first before … Love is so many different things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Elise: Sure, sure, sure.
Drew: But, yeah, I do think that when that happened, I had always been such romantic and I’d always been a romantic towards the people I was with. I was always doing gestures and I always got so much joy from that. But I don’t think I ever really was with someone else who was romantic in that way. There are lots of ways to be romantic, and it’s fine, whatever, but I was like, oh, it feels really good to have this returned. It feels really good to get a surprise card that’s beautiful and personal and …
Elise: It’s like a little snail mail.
Drew: Yeah. It’s like that shit is … I don’t know, I’m not proud of it, but sometimes you just want to be in a story that theoretically would end with one of us dying from tuberculosis. Those aren’t healthy tendencies necessarily, but a little bit just … I feel like mail is a great, safe, non-death-related thing that I could take from that genre.
Christina: If you can’t have consumption, you can have snail mail.
Drew: Exactly, exactly.
Christina: That’s a gorgeous way of thinking about it, I think, absolutely.
Elise: Oh, man. That first one that I sent you two, I think I had to resend it because the original, we thought, got lost, because it had been a month or two, because this was during the time when everything was slow down-
Christina: Post was slow.
Elise: Yeah, post was slow. But that was what it was like back in the old days, waiting for a letter. I don’t know. There’s something interesting, though, about the transition then between that and real life.
Drew: For sure.
Elise: Not to say that the other thing is not real life, but it reminds me of … I had this friend back in the day who was a singer on cruise ships, and she met her boyfriend there. They had this cruise ship relationship where they were both working. They both had all of their meals supplied for them. They both were traveling the world and off sailing the seas together and never really in one place for too long. They would always be in the honeymoon phase on the ship.Then as soon as they would dock and go back to their apartments, the relationship would always fall apart. They did this multiple times. I think there is something to be said of needing to also ground the long-distance posts or cross-country flirtation in a bit of reality too, so that it can grow into something and shift and change and evolve.
Drew: I think it really helped that our first in-person meeting, you were working a lot of that week. So I think we did go away and we did have a couple nights that were honestly pretty magical in nature and beautiful and just, “This is really good.” But then most of the rest of that trip, you were busy and there was a little bit of real life thrown in. I don’t think that was a bad thing. I think that was good for us after this long drawn out.
Christina: Well, I also think, as you guys mentioned before, talking about how are we going to share space together, doing logistics conversations like that before actually meeting in person was probably super helpful, because I think it is well, and good, and lovely, and romantic to just trust that our connection will get us through this. But if you are a person who does not want to be spoken to in the morning, you got to kind of holler at someone, and be like, just to be clear, I don’t want you to have to feel that you are driving me insane by doing this thing that I hate.
Elise: Especially when you have as many neuroses as me.
Christina: Yeah. I mean, I just love two logic brain girlies getting together and saying like, well, let’s sit down and talk through these logistics. Let’s be serious here.
Elise: When do you eat breakfast in the morning?
Drew: Oh, Elise has a Virgo rising.
Christina: Oh, yeah. That’s good stuff.
Elise: She’s a real present Virgo. Let’s just say that.
Christina: It’s a present sign. If it’s in there, it really pulls its weight I said. Do we have any other thoughts on long distance relationships, or not even relationships, the beginning falling for someone?
Elise: Falling for people in different cities.
Christina: Yes.
Drew: So catchy. I don’t know. I mean, I definitely recommend it.
Christina: Yeah. This is a very pro visiting episode for our listeners, I would say.
Elise: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christina: Hey, could be you. You guys could be a nepotism baby on another podcast somehow.
Elise: Wow. Fantastic.
Christina: That’s the dream.
Elise: I love being a nepotism baby.
Drew: I will say that something I’m also grateful for is, I don’t know if you know this, but at some point Elise and I are going to be very rich and famous both of us.
Christina: I’m counting on you guys for a beach house. Let’s be clear.
Drew: There you go. I do think that long distance in general, but long distance in the beginning also is very much determined by money because of being able to travel to each other and sending gifts and things like that. I do think that I’m glad we were at where we were at, where neither of us were so broke that we could never see each other. Going back to the reality thing, Elise has a roommate, who is honestly just the loveliest person and she’s great. There would be a different conversation if, oh, instead of going away to nature for two days at a small little cabin on whatever on the lake. Instead, it was like, oh, we’re going to go on this trip together and it’s going to be this thing. There could be a sort of unreality that I think would be harder to get over. Whereas there are more logistics when you have financial boundaries. And so I do think that I’m grateful for that and I do think it can be hard, and it was something I thought about. There definitely were times where I was flirting with people in the past before the pandemic where they lived far away.I mean, it’s one thing to rent a car and drive nine hours and take on that expense. You can’t rent a car in New York and then drop it off in Toronto. So I had to rent a car for a week. It was a financial investment.
Christina: It was.
Drew: I only was able to do that because we had been flirting on Instagram and Twitter for a year and then FaceTiming for an additional nine months or something, six months, nine months.
Elise: Five, five.
Drew: Five months? Okay, whatever.
Elise: Even five months seems wild.
Drew: Five months was so long. It felt like six years. So I was confident enough, whereas there had been people who I had had little flirtations with in the past where if I was rich, I would’ve taken a trip based on only the potential for vibes or whatever.
Christina: Potential for good vibes.
Drew: So that is something to say. Some people have less money than me and some people have more money than me, and that probably does impact how feasible some of this is.
Christina: Absolutely.
Drew: But if it takes you two years, you know can save some money to rent that car.
Christina: There you go. You got keep it. Got to keep it that whole time. Yeah. I think that’s a good final note to always consider, the Benjamins baby. Speaking of Benjamins, does anybody have a crush? What?
Drew: First I was just going to say, but now that we’re in a real relationship, now we can get rid, if the world wants to make us rich and famous.
Elise: Yeah, that would be great. That would be great. It would be great. If anyone else would like to make us nepotism babies.
Christina: I’m banking on YouTube, for real.
Elise: You’re invited to the beach house anytime, Christina.
Christina: Thank you.
Drew: We can do crushes. We could talk about some crushes.
Christina: Let’s talk about our little crushes. Drew, who’s your crush of the week?
Drew: My crush of the week is Jinkx Monsoon.
Christina: Smart.
Drew: I was lucky enough to interview Jinkx. That interview came out two days ago and it was one of those kind of dream interviews. It was really lovely. Jinkx is an incredible drag queen as she was just named Queen of All Queens by RuPaul’s Drag Race Allstars All Winners, but she also was the first drag performer I ever really saw. I definitely took some time in the piece to gush about Jinkx as a talented drag queen.
Drew: I didn’t do a lot of thirsting, one might say, because I try to be, what I’m looking for, professional when I’m in an interview.
Christina: Oh, heard of it.
Drew: But now I’ll also throw that in where I’m also have a huge crush on her and it was lovely to chat with her. Yeah. She’s just one of those queer figures in my life that’s just special, and I’m glad that I got to meet her over Zoom and I think we’re best friends now. I think that’s how an interview works.
Christina: Absolutely.
Drew: I think next time I’m in Portland or whatever, we’ll just hang out.
Christina: Give her a ring-a-ling.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Elise, go.
Elise: Me. Okay.
Christina: Yeah. Tell us your crush.
Elise: Well, we’ve been watching Queer As Folk, the reboot recently and I must say Johnny Sibilly. I think most of my crushes for most of my life have less been like this person has a crush and more like, I would like to be this person.
Drew: Gay classic.
Elise: Vintage, a gay classic.
Christina: Vintage.
Elise: Specifically his thighs. Am I allowed to say that?
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Thighs are great.
Elise: So that’s where I’m at and thank you for letting me share.
Drew: You want his thighs is what you’re saying.
Elise: Yes, yes. On me, but as me. As me, not on top. As my body, but as him.
Christina: Right. Scaled appropriately.
Elise: Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. That would be great. Yeah. Yeah. His style, all the earrings, everything just impeccable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christina: Yeah. My crush of the week, I had the thrill, the pleasure of introducing my dear roommate and friend Chrissy to the film Bend It Like Beckham for the first time. She’d never bent.
Elise: Wow.
Christina: Like Beckham or anyone really.
Elise: Wow.
Christina: I mean, obviously a classic, a movie I love. I hadn’t seen it in a while and I forgot just how delightful it was. Not only for the obvious gay energy, betwixt Parminder and Keira Knightley, but the family stuff is so beautifully realized and it is just a delightful time to watch a bunch of hotties play soccer and love their family and try to have it all. Honestly, the early aughts filming of it all, there is a CGI Photoshop experience in the beginning that looks so bad. It’s one of my favorite thing that’s ever been committed to film, and it’s just a delightful, charming film and I was really glad to revisit it and really glad to watch someone just cry anew over the love of family and friendship.
Elise: Beautiful.
Drew: When you said this, I didn’t know that your crush was going to be the movie as a whole.
Christina: The movie as a whole.
Drew: I was trying to remember what mom is in that you would be crush. It’s definitely not either of the two girls.
Christina: Parminder, I have had a love for. I mean, she was also on ER, long standing love of my life. The television show ER, I do think she’s very beautiful and her hair looks incredible, but yeah, just like the film writ large is a banger, and if you can introduce it to somebody who’s never seen it, do so. It’s a damn delight.
Elise: I saw the musical Bend It Like Beckham once upon a time.
Christina: Wow.
Drew: There was a musical?
Elise: There sure was. Yeah.
Drew: Wow.
Elise: Was it good? Not particularly, but it’s definitely something to experience full body.
Christina: I bet. I bet.
Drew: Wow. Well Elise, thank you for being here with us.
Elise: Thank you for letting me sleep my way to the top. This has been an honor and a privilege.
Drew: Do you want to tell people where they can find you?
Elise: They can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Bauman, Elise. B-A-U-M-A-N, E-L-I-S-E. That was my last name immediately followed by my first name.
Christina: Keeping them on their toes.
Drew: Your first name was in the New York Times crossword today, which I now do every day because it’s the thing that started happening. And I was like, oh my God, it’s my girlfriend.
Elise: Hey.
Christina: Wow.
Elise: Love to be a clue. Not me specifically.
Drew: It was the name Elise.
Elise: We haven’t made it there yet. I’m not a nepotism baby to that level yet.
Christina: In my mind, it was about you.
Elise: Thank you.
Christina: Can’t tell that for me.
Drew: You should sleep with the guy who edits the crosswords.
Elise: That’s really how you make it.
Drew: Yeah.
Elise: Great.
Drew: Short. Something like that?
Christina: Will something with an S that is Short or Shorts.
Drew: Yeah.
Christina: Cool knowledge we have here.
Drew: I’m really ending the season with a bang.
Christina: Crosswords out.
Drew: This is the end of the season, but we will still be doing some fun mailbag episodes. So send in your questions if you’re an A plus member and we will release those randomly because it’s fun to do.
Christina: It’s fun to keep you on your toes. Don’t forget about us.
Drew: And you can also comment and tell us what guests you might want to see in future seasons because that could be a fun thing.
Christina: Who do you want to hear from and about what?
Drew: We’d love to hear from you. Yeah. Yeah. Great, solid, end of season. Very confident end of a season.
Christina: Drop the mic.
Drew: Thank you so much for listening to Wait, Is This A Date? You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Wait Is This A Date, and you can email us at WaitIsThisADate@gmail.com.
Christina: Our theme was written by Lauren Klein. Our logo is by Manya Dar and this podcast was produced, edited, and mixed by Lauren Klein.
Drew: You can find me on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok at Draw_Gregory.
Christina: You can find me on Twitter at C_GraceT and on Instagram at Christina_GraceT, and you can find Autostraddle of course at Autostraddle.
Drew: And you can find Autostraddle at autostraddle.com. The reason we’re all here today. Thank you so much and see you next week. Christina, what is the difference between a date and a podcast?
Christina: Oh, actually, that’s really interesting that you asked that because scientists are at this very moment hurriedly trying to figure this out. We have some of our best scholars on the case here. We don’t have an answer, but I think every day we journey closer to understanding.
Drew:I wish them and us the greatest luck.
Drew (Voice Memo): Being in love is so embarrassing. There’s like no way to talk about it, that isn’t like… [sighs] I guess there are worse things to be than embarrassing.
Lifetime’s “Under the Christmas Tree” Is the Holigay Rom-Com You’ve Been Waiting For
I can’t stop talking about how shocked I am that there are so many gay Christmas movies now — and while I’ve been absolutely delighted with nearly every holigay thing on offer, something’s been missing. So many films! So many! But none of them just… hit the spot. There’s been supporting gays in Christmas movies with decent budgets, leading gays in Christmas movies made on a dime, there’s been Christmas movies that promised rom-com tropes but made y’all want to run over Mackenzie Davis with your own reindeers, and, of course, there’s Carol. But what about a very sweet, very low stakes romantic comedy that takes place in a town that might as well be the North Pole, where both main characters are queer women who have chemistry with each other, and every scene is just saturated with CHRISTMAS. Trees and lights and stockings and jingle-jingle-jingle bells and wreaths and caroling and every single movement punctuated by basically the Nutcracker score?
Well, I am very pleased to tell you Lifetime’s Under the Christmas Tree is exactly that movie, the one we’ve been waiting for.
Best of all, the leading actresses are Elise Bauman, who you’ve been knowing and loving for about a thousand years, since she first appeared on Carmilla; and Tattiawna Jones, who has been in at least five shows you watch, including The Handmaid’s Tale, The 100, The Bold Type, Lost Girl, and Rookie Blue.
The story goes like this: Alma (Bauman) lives and breathes Christmas, in large part because her family owns an old school Christmas business where they still hand-wrap gifts and send out paper catalogues. Charlie (Jones) is from the governor’s office and she wants one of the giant firs from Alma’s family’s property for the big state tree lighting. Alma’s parents think it would be a cool thing to do; the state will plant a thousand trees to replace it. Alma, however, has had just about enough changes in her life and doesn’t think parting with her beloved fir — the one her great-grandparents planted with their very own hands, the one that shades her chicken coop! — is a good way to celebrate this festive season. It’s more complicated than that, though, because from the second Alma and Charlie meet, they cannot stop making cartoon heart eyes at each other. Sometimes in the middle of the street, sometimes in the snow, sometimes in the dark, sometimes at the French patisserie owned by Ricki Lake.
“Do you think she’s gay,” Alma’s dad (who is also Veronica Mars’ dad) asks after meeting Charlie. “DAD!” Alma says, “Of course she’s gay.” (I laughed.)
Alma and Charlie both love Christmas, they both love their families, they even have a shockingly candid chat about their queer identities, just clip-clipping away at wrapping paper and tying bows. They are both so charming. If you loved Laura Hollis, you’re gonna love Alma too. There’s no surprises here, no twists and turns, it’s exactly the kind of formula we’ve all come to crave from our Christmas movies, the kind your mom could wake up to after dozing off on the couch, and just keep watching when she wakes up ’cause it’s adorable. This movie is freaking adorable! And that simple adorableness is actually what makes it subversive. This is the network that gave us The Truth About Jane, you know? Christmas tropes have now been officially queered. We’ve come a long way.
You can watch Under the Christmas Tree on Lifetime or stream it from Lifetime dot com.
Pop Culture Fix: Carmilla’s Elise Bauman Makes the Yuletide Gay in Hallmark’s First Lesbian Christmas Movie
This morning I woke up to find I’d written “hippo” on my to do list last night. If anyone has any idea what I meant by that, please let me know. In the meantime, here’s your mid-week Pop Culture Fix, the TOP of my Wednesday to do’s!
+ Carmilla‘s Elise Bauman will finally be making Hallmark’s yuletide gay, alongside Tattiawna Jones! They’re starring in Hallmark’s first lesbian Christmas movie! It goes like:
Marketing whiz Alma Beltran (Elise Bauman) and Christmas tree whisperer Charlie Freemont (Tattiawna Jones) cross paths when Charlie finds the perfect tree for the Maine Governor’s Holiday Celebration – right in Alma’s back yard. While they initially spar, romantic sparks soon begin to fly between the two women as the enchanting tree and some Christmas fairy dust from the town’s pâtissière extraordinaire (Ricki Lake) bring out the best in them and spark each other to take leaps of faith and fight for love and Christmas magic.
+ Grimes says she’s gonna make a lesbian space commune now that she’s broken up with Elon Musk. NO THANKS!
+ The L Word: Generation Q’s Rosanny Zayas chatted with Black Girl Nerds about the best part of playing Sophie, Afro-Latina representation, and that time in season one when Tina said she didn’t want to have a Black baby.
+ Amazon’s The Boys, which had a surprising bisexual woman supe in season one, is spinning off with the original showrunners.
+ Here’s the official trailer for The Girl in the Woods.
+ The tricky trans politics of FX’s Y: The Last Man.
+ JoJo Siwa transforms into bona fide gay icon with epic Lady Gaga routine on Dancing With the Stars.
+ Parade interviewed The Circle’s gay fave Sophia Layne (spoilers for the season three finale, be warned!).
+ Last night, Courtney Vandersloot became only the second WNBA player in history — after Sheryl Swoopes — to pull off a triple double in a playoff game. During her post-game interview, her wife Allie Quigley stood by and waited, proudly and patiently, to remind her to say happy birthday to her mom on camera. 😂
+ Life Is Strange: True Colors blends a playable indie movie with a stunning treatise on empathy.
“The Carmilla Movie” Is Everything We Wanted it to Be (and So Much More)
Late on October 25, fans of the webseries Carmilla were sent a link to stream the Carmilla Movie. I stayed up past my bedtime to watch it, and I am so glad I did. The hype among fans was very high. Even though I had seen roughly thirty screencaptures of the film from the various cast and crew, and had seen some details for the plot, I was very hazy about how this humble webseries was going to be adapted for film. All I knew was that I was excited for multiple cameras, close-ups, and my favorite characters to be back on my screen.
The anchor point of the movie is the relationship between Laura and Carmilla, who have been living blissfully for the last five years, even as Laura is having a millennial career crisis. Carmilla is enjoying living as a human for the first time in centuries, eating pastries and sunbathing in her free-time which is always. Meanwhile Laura is having little success as a journalist and is being plagued with nightmares about being terrorized by Carmilla when Carm was the kind of monster Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker warned us about. But Laura realizes that she’s actually reliving the memories of Carmilla’s first love and victim, Elle. Simultaneously, Carmilla starts turning back into a vampire, so something is definitely up. So they and their friends Perry, LaFontaine, Mel, and Kirsch try to figure it out and save Carmilla.
I want to say immediately that I loved the Carmilla Movie so much. It was exactly what I wanted to see in a film adaptation of a vlog-style webseries, if there is ever another example of that. The production succeeds where the webseries sometimes fell short. It had swelling background music in the suspenseful parts, action took place on screen when it had to take place off-camera in the webseries, and the camera could close in on subtle emotional moments, where the actors almost had to be theatrical in the original. Finally, the film successfully managed the line between making a show adaptation for old fans and new converts.
It was probably very difficult for the filmmakers to balance old fans and the crowd of people who have never watched the series. Laura spends just a few minutes in the beginning explaining what the first three seasons were about, and some time in the first third of the movie, a character says “We do have a lot of backstory.” But this movie is clearly for the fans of the webseries.
Natasha Negovanlis and Elise Bauman are excellent as always. Their characters’ relationship, while in a fantastical environment, has relatable conflict that avoids all kinds of queer relationship tropes. Also, Dominique Provost-Chalkley (Wynonna Earp) shines as Elle. I don’t want to give too much away about her character, but I do want to point out that all of the villains in the Carmilla franchise steal all the scenes they’re in. She was engaging to watch even across from my favorites, Carmilla and Laura. The Scooby Gang of LaFontaine, Perry, Kirsch and Mel are really good comic relief to contrast the suspenseful scenes and I enjoyed the return of some other favorites that I don’t want to spoil.
I think it’s everything I’ve ever wished for a movie adaptation of a beloved series (waiting on you, X-Files). I’m jealous of the Creampuffs who were able to watch it in theaters up in Canada, but watching Carmilla in bed with my laptop felt like home and I missed it terribly. If you didn’t pre-order it through VHX, it is available for purchase at FullScreen.com. I definitely recommend watching the series first before the movie. You can watch the series for free on KindaTV’s YouTube channel.
10 Things We Know About the Carmilla Movie, Straight from Natasha Negovanlis and Elise Bauman at NYCC
Last week I gave you some tips about how to queer your con, and I did my best to heed my own advice this past weekend at NYCC. I went with a band of queers and went to panels of shows featuring queer characters (or actresses who have played queer in the past) and panels about being queer and yet… very few panels talked about LGBTQ+ representation, even on the Shannara Chronicles panel, during which we saw a clip of Eretria and her new girlfriend being a cute couple. Too many of them didn’t even let their female stars talk very much at all! (Major exceptions being the Queer Pop Culture panel featuring Heather Hogan and the Badass Women of Sci-Fi panel.)
Maybe I was spoiled; Thursday was the first day of con, and the only things I did that day were interview Elise Bauman and Natasha Negovanlis and then go to the Carmilla panel. I was talking to queer people about queer characters and listening to queer creators talking about queer representation. This little webseries that could was planted in fandom and has grown and blossomed into a feature-length film that’s not about Being Gay or Coming Out or really anything we’ve seen before. It’s about two women who love each other working together with their found family, trying to figure out what goes bump in the night. (Also, one of those things that goes bump in the night is shaped like Dominique Provost-Chalkley.) There’s no love triangle, there are more queer women of color, everyone in the cast is either a woman or non-binary except for one Token Man (silly, simple Kirsch.)
Instead of just presenting you my interview with one of the girls and then my interview with the other, I broke it up by theme. Because even though they weren’t at the same table, Elise and Natasha were usually on the same page. So keeping that in mind, and in no particular order, here are 10 things we learned about the Carmilla movie from the ladies who star in it.
1. How it begins
Natasha Negovanlis: When the film begins, Laura is having some strange dreams and she’s a little confused and doesn’t really know what they’re about. But they’re just living their happy little lives. Everything is pretty good, there’s no suspicion of anything dark or weird going on toward the beginning of the film. It’s nice to really see Laura and Carmilla in a more domestic setting and exploring their relationship. Then Carmilla starts to show signs of maybe re-vamping and she’s confused because she starts to have blood cravings again, and that’s something that she really doesn’t want. Natasha the actor was excited about playing someone with bloodlust; it was interesting to explore that. I sort of had to approach Carm as if she was a recovering addict. The way that the script was written — without giving away too much — is that she’s a little bit lost and doesn’t really know what to do with her human life. And I found that really interesting, and the way I had to kind of play it and interpret it is she was used to one thing, she was a blood addict, she was used to one style of living for so long and did a lot of terrible things in her past, like some addicts do, and she’s just adjusting to life where she doesn’t want to go back to blood but now she doesn’t know how to be in the world.
Elise Bauman: I was very happy to move them forward into a more mature life setting. Not to say early-to mid-20s is also not a time of growth and re-looking at yourself and what your life is! But to have Laura and Carmilla deal with more adult issues in a more mature way is a really important part of it, because as interesting as the angsty college-aged drama Laura went though in the series was, it was so good to see her trying to start a professional career and trying to decide what she wants to representing the world — how she wants to do that and what she’s willing to sacrifice and what she’s not.
2. The movie was shot in 14 days
Natasha: [The movie is] incredible. It surpassed all of our wildest dreams. When we were here at NYCC last year we shared a teaser trailer that was really just a concept video for the film; it hadn’t even been written yet. So the fact that we, a year later, are now putting out a film is amazing! It’s just incredible how quickly the writers and producers moved and made this thing that i think is quite good. I think when people watch it they won’t know that it was made in 14 days. We shot it in 14 days.
3. There are pros and cons to picking up a series again after a clean ending
Elise: We were all so excited about being able to revisit these characters and revisit the world again. I think Season 3 had such a wonderful final element feeling to it, and when we shot it we didn’t know if we were going to be filming anything else, so there was such a sense of a community finishing a marathon. We were all at the end of it celebrating, and it was so emotional and a wonderful experience. And I think that the only thing that ever crossed my mind is that I hope that we kept the original charm of the webseries, which was that it was a homegrown project, one that was told out of love for telling stories first. We didn’t have a massive budget, we didn’t have a lot of the things that go into normal development, and what we created was so authentic because of that. I wanted to really keep a hold of that while we expanded it into something new and brought in new elements as well. And I think we really did.
Natasha: I was worried about how to approach Carmilla as a human for sure. I got so comfortable playing a vampire and I really loved playing a vampire, but I had to acknowledge that even though she’s a human she’s still been around for centuries. So that’s always an interesting challenge to remember that, to remember that she’s had centuries of life experience. But I wasn’t too worried, I was just excited. Excited to explore these characters in a more three-dimensional way and to have more time to play with my costars, because we all just love working together so much that we were just like, “Alright let’s do this.”
4. The movie will deal with more than just vamps, but also relatable themes
Elise: I think the movie deals with a lot of themes of looking back at your history and taking responsibility for your actions and learning to grow from them, and how that shapes your future as well. So, a lot of the characters are dealing with pasts, and holding on their pasts, and bad things may have happened to them — how do you deal with that? You can choose to retaliate, to hold onto anger, to try to seek revenge and to shape your future into what you think you deserve it to be because you’ve had this bad thing happen. Or you can choose to forgive, and you can choose to move on, and you can choose to lead a beautiful life despite what may have happened to you in your past. That’s really the biggest thing that I took away from the film, and I think it’s so relevant to a lot of things that are happening right now as well. But then of course it’s still campy and fun, we have Kirsch, we have Mel, we have a lot of the old characters back and, you know, it’s the Scoob gang on an adventure and a mystery together again. And Carmilla starts to show signs of re-vamping and these characters go on a quest to get her life back.
I’ve learned a lot from Laura over the years. I’ve connected with her; our lives have mirrored each other in a lot of ways. A big thing Laura is learning in this film deals with your life not being where you thought it was and how maybe this concrete plan that you had for yourself and this vision you had for yourself… there’s wiggle room. And that there’s opportunities to grow in place that you might not have looked before, and learning to accept yourself for flaws, and once you take a look at that, then you can decide what you want to change, but you really have to be aware of all of that first. Laura has gone through a lot of self-realization throughout the season and continues into this film too, so I’m happy to lend a voice to that and also learn from that personally.
5. There some major perks of breaking free of the vlog format
Elise: I was very happy to get out of the vlog stuff, that was my least favorite part of filming. But it’s true, people do have a different—I have a very different way of presenting when a camera is on me. And to be able to see Laura behind the scenes a little bit—we introduce the vlog style back, but we get to see her a little more grungy with coffee, how she really is before she puts on the camera. And when you see that shift you also get to see the vulnerability and how self-conscious she is and how much she’s covering up. I don’t think she’s as bright-eyed and bushy tailed as she puts on, I think there’s a lot of deep fear and a lot of worry and she’s covering that up, so you get to see the flip side of that because of that contrast.
Natasha: I think that some of [Carmilla’s] walls have definitely come down a little bit. She’s been with Laura for so long now, you do get to see a lighter side to her, a side that’s a little more vulnerable and also she’s just so thrilled to be able to have a normal human life with Laura. So I think there’s a little bit of darkness that has been lifted off of her. But I’d say that she’s pretty much the same old Carm. she really gives no… poops. She doesn’t care what people think of her. I mean, I hope if I lived to be 345, or however old she is now, I wouldn’t care what people think about me. Same old Carm but a little happier… until she starts to show signs of re-vamping. Which she’s not thrilled about.
6. Breaking free of the single frame format meant new types of scenes
Elise: It was such a gift to be able to expand the world so much. We really were limited to a single frame for almost the entire three seasons, except for maybe the last four episodes of the third season. So, being able to put the characters IN the situations first-hand rather than talk about it after the fact — a lot of the webseries was Laura talking to her blog audience about what happened in the past, but it really does give the characters time to process things and come up with a narrative for it, and then you can control the narrative and how you come across. In this we get to see Laura behind the scenes a little bit, we get to see these characters dealing with things in the moment, which is always messy and not together and so that was such a wonderful thing. Also, I had way less monologues to camera which was my favorite thing. To have more time to play with my costars, it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. I think it gives the story what it deserves.
Natasha: I really enjoyed all of the action that you’ll see and all of the action sequences. In the series it’s a lot of just Laura retelling action that happened off-camera. It was really fun to just see these characters do stuff! And the other characters have some really really fun things to do, like LaFerry’s hilarious — they’re basically ghostbusting. Mel is such a badass with her crossbow. And Kirsch is just the lovable puppy everybody loves. But they all have fun little things to do. I’m excited for everyone to see everyone else’s work. I’m more excited for people to see everybody else’s work than my own!
Elise: We do see fangs in the movie, and that’s something I don’t think we ever saw in the webseries. We did get to play dress-up a little more for sure, and a lot of it — as you can see from the teaser trailer — happens in an older time period and there’s a lot of flashbacks, so we really got to dig into the vampire world a little bit more. And sort of the original gothic feel of it as well, which was fantastic.
7. Period clothes aren’t as fun as they look
Elise: Luckily I didn’t have to wear a corset while I was wearing my ball gown. I did have to wear one in a different scene and I don’t know how people breathed during that time! I think it’s such a representation of the confines that we still put women in and I very much enjoy being able to breathe. It was fun to play dress-up for sure, but I definitely prefer my modern yoga pants.
Natasha: There are some flashback type things… I can’t really speak to that too much. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was nice to see Carmilla — it’s not the start of Carmilla’s life, she was born in the 1600s—this is Victorian Era. So also remember she’s still quite ancient in these flashbacks. But I have a background in opera and musical theatre so I’m not stranger to period clothes. But thankfully we did not have to wear period undergarments, because those are not fun.
8. Dominique Provost-Chalkley is as delightful as you thought she was
Elise: Dominique was such an absolute pleasure to work with. She came in as such a pro on her first day. I think the first thing we did with her was a bit of fight choreography — that was the first time that I met her and I’m such a person who loves to just buckle down and get to it and get to the work and she’s very much in the same vein. And she does play a bit of the anti-hero in the film and getting to see her go to that side was such an awesome thing, because I would say a lot of people draw a lot of similarities to Laura and Waverly and seeing her in this new light and slip into that so seamlessly… that’s a role that I would love to play. It was incredible to work with her and I think Wynonna Earp fans are going to be in for a treat to see a different side of Dominique.
Natasha: It’s no surprise now that she plays Ell, Carmilla’s ex-girlfriend, and working with her was such a joy. I think I got to work with her the most, we had the most scenes together, and she was just such a giving actress. We play really well together; I think we have a lot of the same ideas about acting and so we clicked really, really well. I was admittedly a little nervous to work with her at first! Wynonna is so huge and she’s used to working on bigger sets and with bigger actors, so I was like, “Oh my gosh she’s going to think our show is so silly!” But she was just like part of the family as soon as she arrived and yeah we became very close friends. We had such a blast.
We were sad we didn’t have more to do together. One of my favorite things about her character as well is that there’s no angst involved. It’s not a love triangle. So she does create some drama for our character, but I really love that it’s still Laura and Carm together. But of course there are… I don’t think Carm is still in love with Ell, but Ell destroyed her heart. So I think she cracks open this vulnerability and this baggage that Carm’s been holding around for centuries that she was just shoving down and finally has to confront. Because she manifested. Literally.
9. Ell isn’t the only new face we’ll see
Natasha: Everyone was so lovely. It’s like we had known them forever, which is really lucky because sometimes you meet people and not everyone gets along with all of their colleagues. So I think Carmilla is very unique in the sense that all of the actors genuinely love and support each other. I definitely am very gracious for that. I’d been a big fan of Cara Gee’s work for a long time. I worked on the same project as her before but we didn’t have any scenes together, so it was nice to finally get to play with her and watch her work because i’m a huge fan of her. And her character in Carmilla is so different than other characters that she plays that I was very cool to see her put a different spin on the character.
Elise: The three new cast members were such phenomenal women and such a phenomenal presence to have come into the set with us.
10. It’s about representation, but not just for our sake
Elise: Dom and I talked a lot about the social responsibility of the shows that we’re in and how I still… my world is so positive and full of representation and full of love and I still hear about laws being passed that make homosexuality illegal and people committing acts of violence and hatred and I have to remind myself that that’s still a reality. And I hope I’m contributing in a positive way to at least give a voice to people and to give a platform to people and a viewpoint to people that says this is normal, this is nothing to feel separate from the rest of the world.
We’re looking to expand our audience; we have such a wonderful, dedicated, loyal fanbase that has shaped the series and really helped it grow. And I’m really hoping that the next level for that is not only did we provide queer representation to a young queer audience, but I hope that we’re able to bring it forward to the rest of the world and just have it be a love story and a mystery story instead of it being labeled as something “other” and something separate. I hope that people from all walks of life can see this film and relate to it for so many different reasons because there’s so many universal themes in this film, and I hope that people who might not necessarily have seen a queer relationship represented on screen before might go see this film and go, “Hey that was a great, fun love story/sci-fi/mystery/rom com. And just have it be accepted as the norm.
I think there’s always been this argument that “it won’t make as much money” and I think we’re starting to blow that lie out of the water; a lot of stories are successful that had previously been said couldn’t be told. And I think it’s so important to keep on telling these stories of diversity in all aspects. Not just queer representation, but cultural representation. And I think we’re starting to move forward in that direction and I think studios and producers are starting to understand that, that you can’t just represent one single type of person in the media, because that’s not the world we live in. We live in a diverse world, and we live in a world where everyone is connected despite that diversity, and why don’t we show that on screen?
Bonus: Elise would be thrilled if this wasn’t the end of the Carmilla universe
Elise: I would be so happy to play Laura again and work with everyone again! It’s such a wonderful community and family of people and it’s’ such a rare gift to be able to revisit a character. It’s not something an actor gets to do all the time and so from a purely selfish standpoint, it would be wonderful.
Aren’t they delightful? It was so nice to talk about a movie with queer characters and queer creators and actors and not have the whole conversation have to be about queerness. To have plenty to talk about re: this rich world and these complex characters beyond their relationship with each other was like a breath of fresh air. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, and let’s be honest, when it does, it’s usually coming from Canada.
On a final note, I’m not usually one to do those Hollywood-style interviews where I describe what the interviewees were wearing, but both girls looked fantastic and Natasha was rocking a silver jacket that I was obsessed with. Anyway, I hope you are as excited for this movie as I am; it comes out on October 26th, just a few weeks away!
Here’s the full trailer, in case you missed it:
The Carmilla Movie Trailer Is Here to Break Your Brain and Set Your Heart on Fire
If, on Saturday, you heard what you thought was the sound of a thousand queer humans shouting and then crashing to the floor as they fainted away like a bunch of goats, you were correct. That’s exactly what you heard. The noise came from Canada, where Toronto FanExpo was in full swing, and the source of the ecstasy and agony was the release of teaser for The Carmilla Movie, which stars your queer favorites, Elise Bauman and Natasha Negovanlis.
It is … surprising! All in good ways! For starters, it’s bizarre and delightful to see a camera moving around these characters instead of sitting stationary like the webcam format of the web series. The production values are much higher than I expected. Dominique Provost-Chalkley (Waverly Earp!) is everywhere. And lord, the nostalgia. The series hasn’t been gone long enough for the movie trailer to set my heart on fire like this, but here we are! Also, apparently, TIME TRAVEL. It’s sexy and weird and sexy and pretty and sexy and sexy.
The Carmilla Movie lands on October 26, just in time for Halloween!
Carmilla’s Natasha Negovanlis And Elise Bauman Are Making The Queer Art They Want To See In The World: The Autostraddle Interview
On March 3-5, thousands of queer women and allies traveled to Las Vegas for ClexaCon. There were ship reunions, workshops, and constructive panels on how to make minority representation in media better. One of the most exciting events for me was the Hollstein Reunion with out actresses Natasha Negovanlis and Elise Bauman, the stars of Carmilla, a vlog-style adaptation of the lesbian vampire novella of the same name. The series premiered in 2014 and quickly became a viral hit and has gained mainstream recognition, most recently at the Canadian Screen Awards where Natasha won the Fan Choice Award.
After three regular seasons and one prequel season, Carmilla is prepping for a feature film, which will be filmed this year. In the series, Natasha plays the titular brooding lesbian vampire, and she hosts the YouTube channel KindaTV, on which the series is broadcast. Recently, Natasha announced her own series that she wrote and produced with Carmilla co-star Annie Briggs; it’s called Clairevoyant and centers on two best friends who become psychics to pay the rent. On Carmilla, Elise Bauman plays Laura Hollis, a Veronica-Mars-meets-Buffy-type journalism student. Since Carmilla, Elise has released her own music, appeared on the queer film Below Her Mouth, and, with Natasha, starred in the feature film Almost Adults.
At the Hollstein reunion at ClexaCon, Natasha and Elise answered fan questions and even live-read famous gay scenes, like the infamous glove lunch scene from Carol and a swoony Clarke and Lexa scene from The 100. I was able to sit down with Natasha and Elise and talk about Carmilla, representation, working on films, and Natasha’s queer character on Clairevoyant.
Karly: First, how has your perception of queer or minority representation in the media changed since Carmilla?
Elise Bauman: I really get to firsthand experience and feel how important it is to the people watching content. It’s so easy to be in your little actor bubble, like all my friends are actors… it’s pretty easy to experience it from the creative side. On the other side of it, there are the people who are craving that content and that’s something that I’ve really felt the last couple years and how important it is to people, and how necessary it is to give to representation to all different sorts of people.
Natasha Negovanlis: I think just listening to people’s experiences has made me so much more aware. I mean, it was always something that was important to me, but I don’t think I was as educated or knowledgeable on just how important it is until I really took the time to listen to our viewers. So that’s been really special.
Karly: I want to talk about the Carmilla movie, which is going to be filmed this year. I know you can’t really spoil it but I wanted to talk to you about the format, what are you looking forward to having a feature length film?
EB: I’m so looking forward to shooting and taking something that’s already been established and bringing it to another level. I think this is an experience that neither of us probably will ever have again. Oftentimes you jump into a feature film not knowing the other actors, not having had almost three years with the story and the characters already. So it’s like we’ve nurtured this thing for almost three years and now we get to do it in a new light. I’m really excited.
NN: Yeah because we shoot the show so quickly. I feel like it’s taken three years to really get to know my character. Because so often you have a lot more time to prepare. But for us we have to make decisions about our characters pretty much on the spot. Or within like a week, really, because we get the script and then we shoot a week later so we’re definitely really excited to have more time to really explore characters, but to also explore who they have become, because obviously, it’s no spoiler that it is set five years in the future from the time that the series ended. So it’ll be really neat to revisit the characters and their mannerisms and whatnot, just like discover ways to play older versions of them. Also, Carmilla is not a vampire. That’ll be really bizarre because she’s not a vampire anymore… but she still is, in the sense that she’s ancient. So what does that look like? That’s such a gift as an actor playing an ancient mortal being
Karly: KindaTV has been around for a while, and Natasha, you’ve been the face of it for a year. KindaTV does a ton of stuff so I was just wondering if you could briefly describe what is a typical day there, if there is one.
NN: There truly is no typical day on KindaTV. And it’s been a really interesting job because I have to work with the team, and there is sort of this larger web involved that you normally don’t have in the YouTube world. Normally it’s one person and the camera and you’re the creator. So it’s been really cool to learn how to work with the team and to learn how to compromise and create together versus having control over everything. I can have a very controlling personality, so it’s been a good learning lesson for me to just learn how to let go and to do things that are very much outside of my comfort zone.
It’s been a really great experience because it’s made me a lot more comfortable in my own skin in the sense that it gives me a chance to be a little more candid and a little less polished and a little more silly. My mom watches all of the episodes and it’s nice to hear her say this is the Natasha that I know, because I was always a very studious, serious kid and actor. But at home I would come downstairs in a silly costume, in the privacy of my own home with my parents. So I think it’s neat for them to see the Natasha they know shared with the world.
Karly: Clairevoyant was just announced as your new project. Would you get to make the decisions and have that control?
NN: For Clairevoyant I certainly have a lot more control because I am a co-producer on it. Again I’m learning that it takes a village to produce a show. So yes there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen but it is really neat to be able to like oversee things and work with Annie who I trust so much. And she’s been such a wonderful creative partner. And also Dillon Taylor, our co-producer as well. So Dillon Taylor was the editor for Carmilla and this is his first kind of introduction into the world of producing, as well as for me. We’re all learning together, but have a really solid team of older mentors at the company who are able to sort of guide us, to help us. Sometimes they’ll see things and we’re just like, “Damn it, we don’t want to do that!” but in the end they were right.
Also my character on Clairevoyant is queer and it was really important for me to write what I think is a realistic queer character. And also to write a queer female relationship that doesn’t have angst in it. I mean, life isn’t perfect so there will certainly be conflicts and whatnot, but I want to just show a relationship that also functions, and I wanted to explore the idea that, you know, you can get the girl in the end. So it’s really more about the relationship between Claire and Ruby.
They’re platonic soul mates and it’s about them fighting evil… it’s very much an absurdist comedy. I will say it’s really bizarre. I can say that if we get funded, because again it’s not a sure thing that we’re going to be making this, but if we are able to make it past the independent production fund applications we do have a really cool team of directors and another writer that I’m going to bring on, who works on some big Canadian TV, and we’re very excited.
Karly: The trailer was hilarious.
NN: Thank you so much. It’s interesting, I was saying to Elise it’s funny how things don’t always turn out the way you expect them to. But then it’s nice to be watching it like ‘it’s not what I expected’ but I’m glad that it’s making people laugh. I love the idea that I get to do a lot of dramatic work, but I think, especially in this political climate, it’s important to make people laugh, and I think that Clairevoyant is very much going to be an escape. It’s definitely like a goofy comedy. It’s not super serious.
EB: I love a goofy comedy.
NN: It’s pretty silly but I think that’s important too, laughter is the best medicine.
Karly: And then you guys are here to also talk about Almost Adults. On Autostraddle’s review we got some comments like ‘well I’ve never seen Carmilla but I’m excited to see this movie.’
NN: Oh interesting.
Karly: So how does it feel, that this would be people’s introduction to your work?
NN: That makes me a little bit nervous. I’m not going to lie but I’m learning to…to not judge myself so harshly. It was my first feature film and leading role in a feature film, and the character is very different from me and a character that I probably normally wouldn’t be friends with in real life. So it was really cool to explore a character or a person that is different from me, to learn how to breathe life into her and find empathy for her as well. But I think so often as an actor my fear is that like sometimes people will confuse characters with actors. She’s just the character.
EB: It’s really funny to hear people often come up to me and tell me how much they don’t like something my character has done and they’re almost like looking for an explanation and the reason as to why, like “Why did you do that!”
NN: It’s weird as an actor, because we’re just vessels for someone else’s story.
EB: But it’s funny, I said to someone the other day, because they were really upset that Mackenzie had done this thing in the movie, like “I don’t think Cassie should have had to apologize to you!” And I was saying that I think it’s not the job of a film to depict life in this perfect way where everyone has everything figured out and they have no moral flaws and they don’t have to go through any big learning experiences. But if my actual life were to be a film I think people would be very upset at my character of myself because I am a human who has done many flawed things in my life. And I think that’s the responsibility of a film is to show the things that we need to work on and not the things that we’ve already accomplished.
Fans can keep up with Elise and Natasha on Twitter and preorder the Carmilla movie here.
“Almost Adults” Is a Cute Lesbian Movie to Add to the Very Short List of Actually Good Lesbian Movies
Warning! This review contains minor spoilers for the movie Almost Adults!
Almost Adults is a new film by Sara Rotella and Adrianna DiLonardo, the ladies behind the Gay Women Channel on YouTube. It stars Natasha Negovanlis and Elise Bauman, two women you know best as Carmilla and Laura from your favorite queer vampire webseries.
Almost Adults tells the story of two young 20-something best friends rocketing toward the end of their senior year of college. They’re right in that time-to-start-figuring-out-who-I-am space, with Mackenzie (Bauman) starting to come out to her friends and family as a lesbian, and Cassie (Negovanlis) trying to figure out a career path while reeling from recently breaking up with her boyfriend. Over the course of the movie, we watch these two girls start to grow into the adults they’ll be someday (Get it? They’re … almost adults?), and try to figure out if growing up means growing apart. It’s like Life Partners Jr: The Younger Years.
Almost Adults isn’t perfect. Like most queer movies and TV shows not created by Shonda Rhimes, the cast is overwhelmingly white. And there are some tasteless jokes sprinkled in among the hilarious ones. For example, two jabs at learning disabilities using completely outdated and sometimes offensive language that were truly unnecessary (including an egregious use of the r-word).
The movie leaned into some stereotypes — the sassy gay best friend, how lesbians dress and what they like — which is always a fine line between making queer women cringe and making queer women feel like they’re in on the joke. It helps that I knew queer people were involved in making it, so I knew they were coming from a tongue-and-cheek place not a “I don’t understand how gay people work I’ll just go with these few stereotypes”.
Plus, some things were just funny and I don’t even care if straight people don’t get the jokes, like a lot of the retrospective “why we should have known Mackenzie was gay” conversations were not unlike actual conversations I’ve had with my friends, right down to being the only girl who didn’t want to be the Pink Power Ranger. (I wanted to be the Green Power Ranger because he got to kiss the Pink Power Ranger but little Valerie thought it was just because it seemed really important to the other girls to be the Pink and Yellow Power Rangers so I’ll just be the Green one it’s fine nothing to see here).
Even though the internet would have us believe otherwise, you can love and criticize something at the same time, and there’s a lot to love about Almost Adults. I’ll start with the most random one: The film incorporated technology (specifically texting) in a way that didn’t feel like it was written by time travelers who’ve never seen an iPhone. So many movies and TV shows try and it’s awkward and terrible but this movie nailed it.
My favorite subplot was Mack’s parents being uber-supportive and it frustrating the ever-living heck out of Mack because she was expecting a dramatic blow-out like pretty much every other coming out story portrayed by movies. It was a nice twist, and made for some great comedic moments.
Overall, Almost Adults is really fun to watch. And it flips the script on a lot of classic lesbian movie tropes. The story is about two young women: one gay, one straight. But the major problem in the story isn’t about Mack coming out and Cassie not accepting her, nor is it about Mack harboring feelings for Cassie. It’s about them both being young and selfish and trying to figure out who they were and how they fit into each other’s’ lives. A lot of their problems are very specifically 22-year-old problems, but there are also a lot of universal problems, like the fear of the friendships you love most changing when you come out and having a best friend you love like a sibling just in general. The emotional conflict all felt very real.
And I’ve saved the best thing about this movie for last: Elise and Natasha. I was a little nervous going in: What if I hate it? What if it ruins Carmilla for me forever? (I don’t know, I never claimed to be a rational person.) And it’s clear from the very first scene that Mack and Cassie are nothing like Laura and Carmilla. But in this movie, Elise and Natasha are delightful. They play off each other with an ease that makes you instantly comfortable, and their facial expressions/physical comedy/line delivery had me giggling at every turn. They were awkward in the right places, sweet at the right moments, and the emotional crux of the movie was really well done. (They’re even cute in the Blooper Reel.)
I’d give this movie 7/10 rainbow emojis, a specific scale for LGBTQ+ movies I just made up and is totally arbitrary. At least three of those rainbows are because no queer women died in this one, and one full rainbow for the inclusion of a classic queer movie staple: A Feelings Bench.
I am very qualified to make this rating scale. I spent my summers home from college in the very small, rather dusty, Gay & Lesbian section of my local Blockbuster (RIP) watching just about any movie featuring two women in love or lust I could get my hands on. We all did that in our own ways, I suppose. We’re all experts at the small canon of lesbian cinema. That’s why it’s so nice to have a mostly feel-good film to add to the mix.
Almost Adults is available online now, so grab your best friend and your favorite snack and check out AlmostAdultsMovie.com to get watching.