In yet another win for queer representation, Tegan and Sara Quin’s bestselling memoir High School will reportedly be adapted as a comedy series for Amazon’s IMDb TV. According to the entertainment news site Deadline, fellow lesbian icon Clea DuVall wrote the show and will direct the pilot.
High School, the duo’s first book, was initially published last September in hardcover. It was accompanied by the release of their latest record, Hey, I’m Just Like You, which consisted of re-recordings of unreleased demos that Tegan and Sara initially wrote as teenagers. According to the book’s description, High School chronicles the Quins’ coming of age “at the height of grunge and rave culture in the 90s” in Calgary, Alberta, with alternating chapters told from the perspective of each twin. It deals with their much publicized struggles with identity and sexuality, but also touches on “academic meltdown, their parents’ divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school.”
It wasn’t long after high school, though, that Tegan and Sara’s rise to LGBTQ+ legend status began. The pop duo signed to PolyGram Records in 1998 when they were 18 and toured with Neil Young two years later.
But while the trails they blazed in the music industry proved hugely influential for countless young queer girls, they faced plenty of hardship coming to terms with their sexualities as children. In an interview with NPR, Sara said she started questioning her identity and sexuality in elementary school, and started secretly having sexual and romantic relationships with girls in high school.
“Tegan scared me, because I knew she understood what was probably happening with me,” Sara said. “And I was afraid because I think I knew that that was going to happen to her too, that she was going to be gay. And I remember feeling a sort of resentment and fear about the fact that there was two gay people to protect, not just one.”
Contemporarily, the twins have made it their mission to protect LGBTQ+ women and girls with the Tegan and Sara Foundation, in addition to consistently putting out queer bangers. Their foundation has provided community grants to grassroots organizations like The Okra Project and the LGBTQ+ Freedom Fund, while also working to improve queer health access and fund LGBTQ+ summer camps.
DuVall, an out lesbian, is perhaps best known to the queer community as Natasha Lyonne’s dreamboat love interest in the “dyke camp” cult classic But I’m a Cheerleader. She’s also appeared in a number of other films and television shows, including The Handmaid’s Tale, American Horror Story: Asylum, and Girl, Interrupted. More recently, she’s taken a few turns behind the camera, directing The Intervention and Happiest Season, the forthcoming gay holiday romcom which stars Kristen Stewart as a queer woman whose plans to propose are thwarted when she finds out her girlfriend (Mackenzie Davis) isn’t out to her parents. The film also features Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Dan Levy, and DuVall herself.
While there’s no word yet on when High School will be available for streaming, the paperback edition of the memoir will be available on Nov. 17. Happiest Season will be available for streaming on Hulu the following week, on Nov. 25.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here.
