The challenge was that I have never acted in a feature before. I’ve done short films, but it’s such a different animal, and this script and Vuk meant so much to me. It was really scary facing every insecurity I had every day to show up and be like, “I’m gonna do this and everybody’s watching and I might be failing and if I fail, the whole movie fails.” It was a real reckoning with my internal critic, which I think trans people, perhaps more than their cis counterparts are constantly self-editing, like, “How am I appearing in this space right now? How are they perceiving me?” That sort of self-awareness and self-critique on overdrive is something that has allowed our community to survive and to effectively move through spaces. But as an artist, and as an actor in particular, you kind of have to let that go.
With Cole [Doman] playing John and MiMi [Ryder] playing Zoe and Alejandro playing Pablo — all of them, as cis people, but also just as more experienced actors than me, they were being present and going for it. It was really inspiring, and also a little triggering. And I had also literally just started T, so I was kind of chaotically hormonal, like a teenager. You know when you first start T, and it’s like you kind of lose the tools that you have as an adult for a moment, and you’re like, “Everybody’s out to get me and I’m out here all by myself on an island like, ‘Fuck everybody.’”
So it was really was a chaotic vibe, but I think all of that contributed to Feña’s vulnerability at the end of the day, because I think all of those things I was feeling Feña feels, so in a way it was a kind of cosmic coincidence that I could be there so closely with Feña’s experience.
Did you know that Mutt was going to be hailed as one of the buzziest queer films at Sundance?
No, definitely not. I mean, I read the script. And honestly, this is a crazy thing to say, but I think the script is Oscar-worthy. Like I’m not even kidding. The film itself — we shot in September, he had to make a rough cut in two weeks to submit it to Sundance and then finish the film in a month and a half. The film itself is so stunning and so raw and vulnerable and true, because it was all of us running on intuition, because we had no time to do anything else. In some ways, it is imperfect, even though it is deeply beautiful. The fact that we were able to create a film in such a short time period with so few resources compared to the other films that were at Sundance and still make something that had such an impact? I’m like, “What could [Vuk] do with money and time?”
And the fact that it’s been so well received — honestly, I’m so happy because that just means that hopefully more people will see it. Had I seen this movie literally five years ago when I was making “Disforia,” or 10 years ago, when I was acting like I wasn’t even queer, but I definitely was queer. And then 15 years ago when I was secretly in love with my best friend, but had no idea what was going on. At all those points in my life, had I seen a movie like this, my life path would have shifted for the better. So the fact that we’re getting these amazing headlines hopefully just means more eyeballs on the film and hopefully more lives saved from feeling like “Oh wow, I’m not alone. And I do deserve to exist. Look at this person.”
People love Feña, even though Feña thinks nobody loves him. It’s like, “Yeah, dude, everybody loves you. You’re just being really defensive right now.”
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.
