'It's important to tell queer stories and make people to feel like they're worthy'
Harry Trevaldwyn speaks with Yahoo's Queer Voices about his debut novel The Romantic Tragedies of a Drama King, representation and more.
He is an author and actor known for The Acolyte and My Lady Jane, and he will soon star in the How to Train Your Dragon live-action remake.
The Romantic Tragedies of a Drama King is out now in bookstores.
When I was younger I didn't have that many of queer TV shows to turn to. I think what's so exciting about the TV, films and books now is that it feels so much more right on the top of culture. And that's maybe because that's what I'm looking for, but when I was growing up I didn't really have those things. I had love stories and I had stories that I'd love and be very invested in, but I would very much be a surveyor of those love stories so I would kind of be watching from the sidelines.
And that's what I think is so exciting about representation in general, is that you have lots of different love stories in the spotlight. I think it allows people to feel like they are worthy of those big plotlines in their own life.
That's what I try to do in my new book The Romantic Tragedies of a Drama King, it is a story about a boy, Patch, who decides this is the year he's going to get a boyfriend but he doesn't care who it is. It's a story about the trials and tribulations, and the sort of disastrous situations that he puts himself through in the pursuit of love.
Watch the full Queer Voices interview with Harry Trevaldwyn below
To have my first book published is really a dream come true. It was something that I wanted to do but I didn't know what the story was gonna be, I didn't know who the characters would be, and then slowly they came together. I think I'm such a big fan of romance and of comedy, and the books that I read when I was growing up — YA books — meant so much to me and made me a reader. So I think that was always what I wanted to do, to maybe introduce someone new to the world of reading, or if they're already a big reader introduce them into a wonderful world anyway.
My experience of being an author has felt honestly entirely chic, I've loved it so much. I should call myself an author more, but it still feels very pretentious to but I will start doing it, I promise.
But it's been lovely, it's a tricky thing, I think, when you've spent so long on a story and in a world and then you do have to release of 'oh it's it's actually out of my hands, literally, and it's in other people's hands' and that's scarier. Because you really care about the characters and you feel quite protective of them, but it's been a really lovely experience for people finding Patch and finding Jean, and finding this world and being so positive about it — it has been has been very special.
I've received some really wonderful messages on Instagram and also I've done a few in-person events now, and I think speaking to young people has been a very special part of releasing the book. Obviously it's crossover, so it's for YA readers but also it kind of spans quite a big age range, because I wrote what I would find funny and so it's really interesting the different things that different age groups have kind of picked out from it, and discussing all those different areas has been very rewarding.
There's always room to improve, of course. I think I was nervous when I was writing the book, it really was a very special thing. When I wrote the book I was writing what I like finding and what I wanted to write thinking that there maybe wouldn't be a big response from the publishing industry, but I hoped that it'd find a home somewhere.
I was kind of doing it, not really with that in mind, and thinking like 'oh, if it finds a home — great', but then when we sent out the book the response was really so overwhelmingly positive it made me so much more excited about the publishing world and where they're going to go with it. It's a silly gay comedy love story, and they were so excited about it. And I think anyone that treats silliness seriously, that's a very good thing in my mind.
I also work as an actor, and to be part of the acting world as well as the writing world is really lovely, and I love being able to do both. That's always what I've dreamed to do, is to do acting and writing together, and I do think they inform each other quite a lot. It's been it's been a very lovely balance so far, which we'll see how it goes.
In terms of shows I wish I had growing up, my gosh there are so many. Heartstopper comes to mind as a show that I wish I'd had. It's a Sin too, it was obviously talking about a very serious thing but there was also so much joy and so much community. I think Big Boys, which has just come out. There's so many beautiful, funny, joyful stories out there and that's been such a gift. I think that I wish I had all of that when I was growing up, it would have made me feel a lot braver.
I think in terms of writing is Russell T Davies is such a great role model, he's done so much and really made it. He turns these crazy stories into a cultural phenomenon, and I think that's amazing and it's really paved the way for other other stories to be told.
But there are so many people, I think anytime I go to a pride march or trans pride march, or any of these marches, you hear people talk so passionately about their experiences. We're so lucky that there are so many around.
Dylan Mulvaney is also one, I've just received her new book Paper Doll and I'm very excited about that. I think she's doing so many things, I think the fact that people get her as a role model is so exciting because she's the funniest woman in the world.
I definitely think queer creatives are given more room to share their stories, the breadth of those stories has massively expanded as well. And I think there's so much nuances to it to where it can be very funny or they can be problematic characters, and hopefully that's a trajectory that keeps on growing and keeps on expanding.
That's something I explore in my book, I hope that people see Patch as someone who has such infectious confidence in who he is and he's not great a lot of the time, but he wears it well. And I hope that is something that people take away, that you can be entirely yourself, however loud, however flamboyant that is and still be worthy of love. Both those things can exist, you don't have to change yourself in order for it to fit.
I've always been a rom-com person, I think that the romance of it is so important because I think so many people live without it, or lived in fear of it, or lived with shame of it, so I think comedy is such a release of shame, and to tell a story and make it funny can feel so liberating.
So I think the more comedies there are, I think, the better. I say that and I'm also putting myself out there for casting for comedies, thanks so much.
When it comes to trolls or those spouting bigotry, honestly ignore them. You're always gonna get people that don't like change and I think whenever I hear about those voices it honestly just fuels me to do more.
And I think there was something really interesting said, I can't remember the exact phrasing of it, but someone said to be woke — which I think has somehow become this insult — means to care, as in it means that you care about things, what a brilliant thing to be! Honestly, I think, the more the better. It's protecting people that need protecting, why wouldn't you do that?
My advice to young queer people in these trying times would be to find your people and hold onto them. I think it can feel really, really lonely sometimes and that's why I think it's important to have more things there are out there to show that you're not alone and there is so much community out there waiting for you. You just need to find it.
The Romantic Tragedies of a Drama King is out now.
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"And it's very helpful in an environment where you're getting a lot of no's, to have a partner who's literally like, 'Oh, it's just no for now. Great, let's move on. Let's find somebody who's going to say yes, maybe we'll come back to that no later.' I'm the pessimist who's sitting in the corner going, 'Somebody just rejected me, I don't know what to do.' ... It just makes you move, and that's that's very helpful for me."
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As Craig and Crano identified, the first portion of the movie, up until the couple gets stuck going to the restaurant, is quite close to the real adoption experience the filmmakers had. "We were adopting a child. We had been through an adoption scam, which was heartbreaking, and then had a completely different experience when we matched with the birth mother of our son," Crano told Yahoo. "But we found out that we were going to have him literally like two days before we were going on our 10th anniversary trip." "And we were like, 'Shit, should we not go?' But we decided to do it, and you're so emotionally opened up and vulnerable in that moment that it felt like a very similar experience to being in a horror movie, even though it's a joyful kind of situation." A key element of I Don't Understand You is that feeling of shock once the story turns from a romance-comedy to something much bloodier. It feels abrupt, but it's that jolt of the contrast that also makes that moment feel particularly impactful to watch. "Our sense of filmmaker is so much based on surprise, Craig said. "As a cinephile, my main decade to go to are outlandish '90s movies, because they just take you to a different space, and as long as you have a reality to the characters that are already at hand, you can kind of take them wherever." "Personally, the situation of adoption was a constant jolt [from] one emotion to another that we felt like that was the right way to tell a story like this, which was literally, fall in love with a couple and then send them into a complete nightmare. And I think you can only get that way if you do it abruptly, and kind of manically." While Rannells and Kroll have that funny and sweet chemistry the story needs, these were roles that weren't written for them. 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"And it's very helpful in an environment where you're getting a lot of no's, to have a partner who's literally like, 'Oh, it's just no for now. Great, let's move on. Let's find somebody who's going to say yes, maybe we'll come back to that no later.' I'm the pessimist who's sitting in the corner going, 'Somebody just rejected me, I don't know what to do.' ... It just makes you move, and that's that's very helpful for me."
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