Hulu added its newest original film, LGBT+ teen romcom “Crush” to its roster. The film focuses on queer women, spotlighting both sapphic characters and WLW relationships. It also features a queer cast, starring former Disney star and the queer feminist activist Rowan Blanchard and the voice of Moana Auli’i Cravalho, who identifies as bisexual.
Unlike most coming-of-age queer movies, Crush does away with the typical “coming out” storyline. It follows Paige (Rowan Blanchard), an out lesbian high school artist with a long-time crush on lesbian popular girl Gabriella (Isabella Ferreira), and a goal to get into her dream college. When Paige is forced into her school’s track team, she decides to use it to get closer to her crush and strengthen her college application, but she finds herself getting closer to Gabriella’s overlooked twin sister, bisexual loner AJ (Auli’i Cravalho).
Crush written by queer women for queer women
The film also features an all-female LGBT+ creative team, directed by Sammi Cohen, who previously worked as a director on CollegeHumor Originals, and written by Kirsten King and Casey Rackham, who are both making their screenwriting debuts.
Cohen expressed to Pride.com her hopes that the film normalizes the queer exprerience.
“Growing up, LGBTQ+ representation in films like ‘Tomboy,’ ‘Pariah,’ and ‘But I’m a Cheerleader’ changed how I felt about myself. They made the invisible kid inside me feel seen, accepted, and empowered,” Cohen said. “That’s what I hope this movie does for audiences today. With the discrimination and active legislation taking place right now, it feels more important than ever to tell queer stories and to continue normalizing the queer experience as a human experience.”
Crush star talks of the importance of LGBT+ representation
Both Rowan Blanchard and Auli’i Cravalho have been vocal about being queer. At the movie’s release, Cravalho expressed her desire for more queer representation both on and off-screen, with queer characters written and played by actual queer people.
In regards to Crush’s queer creative team, Cravalho said, “Suddenly it made sense like, ‘Oh, this is why the script is written so vibrantly.’ It’s because we’re represented behind the camera as well as in front of it, and I felt that when reading the script,” she said. “It makes or breaks the movie because … we’re putting on screen an experience that can’t be fudged. That’s why it’s also important to have actors who are queer because if it were our first time kissing girls on screen, it probably wouldn’t have worked out. It would’ve been a completely different film if one of us wasn’t queer, and hadn’t had the experience of kissing another girl before.”
Blanchard also expressed her hope that the film would not be labeled as “only for queer people” and would help non-queer people break the barrier and relate to queer experiences.