Trans icon Alexandra Billings is set to star in and executive produce the queer and Arab-led trans dramedy Queen Tut, as Deadline reported on Tuesday.
Directed by Egyptian-Canadian filmmaker Reem Morsi with a script by Bryan Mark, Kaveh Mohebbi, and Abdul Malik, Queen Tut follows an Egyptian teenager, Nabil, who moves to Toronto to live with his estranged architect father following his mother’s death, according to the film’s website.
In Canada, Nabil befriends a drag queen, Malibu (played by Billings) who’s fighting to save the same drag nightclub that Nabil’s father is fighting to destroy. Along the way, Nabil comes to understand his own queer identity and, with the encouragement of a new drag family, becomes the titular Queen Tut.
The film is set to begin production in Toronto in August with Fae Pictures, which also recently released the trans documentary Framing Agnes.
In a statement to Deadline, the Transparent actress described the film as being “about chosen family and birthed family and the historic value of queer revolution.”
“Generational dialogue is a spiritual experience and every character resonates with a profound sense of beauty, power and hope,” Billings told the entertainment publication. “This is the Trans experience; Handed down from one human to the next. And whether that family is blood or whether that family is a divine intervention, when we are all part of the telling of each other’s experience, humanity blossoms. I am deeply honored to be a part of this.”
The feelings on the crew’s end were mutual, per a statement from producer Shant Joshi, who shared that he was “so excited” to be working with “someone who has tirelessly blazed a path for queer and trans lives and is constantly delivering words of kindness, love, and wisdom to humans all over the world through her advocacy and her work on the page, on the stage, and on the screen.”
“I feel so privileged to have the opportunity to work with her in telling this story about a young queer brown boy finding himself in Toronto’s drag underworld,” Joshi added.
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