The first thing you might notice about Luca Guadagnino’s new HBO series, “We Are Who We Are,” is the way it frames its heroes as outsiders in the context of structured, long-standing conformity. After all, there isn’t a teenager in the world who hasn’t felt misplaced or outcast at some point during their coming-of-age. But it’s especially easy to see how those feelings would be exacerbated in the show’s setting—an American military base in Italy.
“When you do something that strives for universality, it’s always better to find the universal within the specific instead of trying to make something generic,” the Oscar-nominated “Call Me by Your Name” filmmaker explains via Zoom. “I was interested in the mini-world as a template for what is at large: our sense of self, our idea of a social bond. It textualized the world of the military base; it’s so wonderful and filled with possibilities.”
How the ‘Call Me by Your Name’ Stars Found Their Chemistry He admits that the microcosm of the military base and the families within it were the main draw for him to make his showrunning debut. It’s a feat that included directing all eight episodes, but he says it wasn’t all that different from his film work. (“I was resolute to be able to speak a language that could be cinematic, even if this is for TV.”) Focusing on just the teens would have been “almost like a genre in itself that I was not interested in,” but the opportunity to rewind his lens from Timothée Chalamet’s 17-year-old protagonist of “Call Me by Your Name” to Jack Dylan Grazer’s 14-year-old of “We Are Who We Are” was enticing enough to make him bite.
“[I] find the age of 14 as a real fruitful moment in the life of these characters,” he says. “They’re just starting to mourn the death of [them]selves as kids, as infants. I think that is a very, very powerful and deeply resonant moment in life for all of us.”
By that same token, it was important to Guadagnino and casting director Carmen Cuba to find actors who were representative of that transition. Grazer, best known for the “It” horror film franchise and DC Comics’ “Shazam!” adaptation, is a 17-year-old with natural talent beyond his years. But he is still, for all intents and purposes, a child, and he plays central character Fraser Wilson with heart-on-his-sleeve sincerity. The same can be said of his co-lead, first-time actor Jordan Kristine Seamón, who stars as Caitlin Poythress, a seemingly confident teen who, at the series’ opening, is navigating the nuances of her gender identity.
‘Stranger Things’ CD Carmen Cuba Shares Her Audition Process Guadagnino believes that it’s always best for his actors’ ages to match those of their respective characters. “But at the same time,” he clarifies, “it’s also important to find the right person to play the role. In this case, we married almost perfectly the ages and the roles.”
As far as what he looks for in his actors (“We Are Who We Are” also features Chloë Sevigny, Kid Cudi, and Alice Braga), he advises that they stop thinking so much.
“Forget about acting, and completely forget the idea of tropes,” he says. “It should almost be like showing me non-acting. Try to dig down into [your] knowledge of life more than anything else.”
He caps our interview with his most important big-picture acting advice: “It’s a very delicate position, [that] of the actor. And I think that’s why I have the greatest respect for an actor, because you are frail in front of the camera, but you are even more frail in front of the one who chooses you,” he says. “For me, I tell actors who ask for advice: Make sure that you do not allow anybody to be disrespectful to you.”
This story originally appeared in the Sept. 10 issue of Backstage Magazine. Subscribe here.
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