‘They/Them’ Star Theo Germaine Talks The Past, Present, and Future of Queer Horror
John Logan’s new horror film They/Them boasts an incredibly queer cast of young people forced to attend a conversion camp for various traumatic reasons. The camp, run by Kevin Bacon, at first appears surprisingly laidback for what it represents. But as the days pass, the counselors get more sinister and someone starts picking off campers and counselors alike.
In honor of the film’s release, Dread Central spoke with They/Them star Theo Germaine about queer horror, The Birds, self-care on set, and more.
Dread Central: What excited you about this role in They/Them?
Theo Germaine: I’ve wanted to do horror since I was little. I was the weirdo who was watching Donnie Darko on repeat in the seventh grade and reading Fangoria magazines and going through all my Goosebumps books and drawing creepy shit. I was studying German expressionism when I was in high school. Like I was a huge, huge, huge fucking nerd. And I was like, I’m gonna be on the cover of Fangoria one day. It’s gonna happen. I also really liked John [Logan’s] work,a lot. So I was really, really, really excited about all of that. And then I also was really intimidated because this is a challenging subject to try to deal with.
But there were a lot of really great people involved and I decided that I was really up for the challenge. I was really excited to just do an experiment essentially. And I’m really proud of what everybody did. You know, I’m really proud of everybody’s performances. I’m really grateful for John who directed and wrote They/Them. He also was very collaborative and he’s worked with a lot of theater actors and I started off in theater. So I believe he really knows how to talk to people about how to get into the moment. And he really, really cares about getting the right shot and getting the the right feel and letting people take their time.
DC: What was that like working with this subject matter? It is very intense.
TG: Oh I mean it was triggering at times honestly.
You know, my background was not all sunshine and rainbows. So there’s a lot of stuff that came up when I was working on They/Them about my past and experiences that I had had. I was reconciling things that I had experienced when I was growing up that were really, really homophobic and transphobic.
When you really get into it, you gotta have good boundaries. Your wires will get crossed sometimes I think, especially about this. It’s not like conversion therapy is totally illegally yet, even though I wish it were. So we’re actually dealing with a subject matter while there are people that exist in the world that are actively living it. So yeah, They/Them was a challenge at times. But we had pretty good support on set. There were people that I could talk to if I wasn’t really doing well. I’m also in therapy, so that’s great.
DC: Therapy, it’s great.
TG: Therapy is so great. Oh my gosh. It’s hard, but it’s really great. So They/Them was challenging. I got triggered at times. There was one day that I was super overwhelmed and Scott Turner Schofield, one of the executive producers who also was the vibe checker on set, a really amazing trans person, brought me down to the lake one day. He was like, ‘let’s just like do a grounding exercise so we can return to ourselves’. It was really cool. Where the lake is, it was justsitting out on this really beautiful dock and enjoying being in nature. I honestly think that that’s something that really helped was just filming in nature. That really helped balance it out.
I also have a lot of positive memories of summer camp when I was younger. I did get to go to a really cool summer camp. There was a dinky little summer camp in my town that I got to go to as a kid for a few years. And then I worked there one year. So getting to film at a real summer camp was also helped balance it out. But there were definitely ups and downs over the filming process [for They/Them].
DC: You are a non-binary final character and that’s incredible. What does that feel like for you as a horror fan?
TG: This is only at the beginning for me. That’s how it feels honestly. I really wanna keep working in the genre. This felt like such a big learning experience about how horror is filmed and how to accurately portray what the stakes are with your face when you’re on camera. So I felt like I learned a lot about acting. Kevin [Bacon] loves horror because he’s like ‘mistakes [in genre films] are life or death usually’.
I also have used this experience specifically for writing. They/Them also really got working on this movie really also got my wheels turning. I’ve been working on a lot of stuff during and since. I really want to keep acting in, you know, bigger and better things, but also I wanna produce. And I wanna write, maybe direct as well. So we’ll see how that actually goes because saying it is one thing and actually doing it is another thing. I just hope that this turns into a lot more of opportunities for me.
DC: So what was the first horror movie that you ever saw? Do you remember?
TG: I think it was either The Birds or it was the original Night Of The Living Dead.
I think I saw these two, right around the same time for some reason. I remember being with my grandparents being maybe like four or five and getting really scared by the coming to get you Barbara part of the movie. And my grandma would scare me and chase me around the house and quote that line. I would get really scared, but also it was fun because being chased is fun. So that [film] had a really big impact on me, I think very much because it was the zombies, they didn’t run, they walked. And so there was that sense of anticipation. And I think that seeing these people hanging out in a graveyard, I think I really imprinted on that for some reason.
Then seeing The Birds when I was really little, was also really scary, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was really, really, really entertained by it. And I think that was also the first body horror scene that I had ever seen. Those two films very specifically, really had an impact on me. But there are others, too. I remember watching The Mask as a little kid over and over again. There was something that was really scary about the first time that he transforms.
DC: It’s body horror!
TG: It is, yeah. It’s kind of scary and it’s chaotic. I could keep naming different sorts of things, but those are a few things that I think impacted me as a little kid.
DC: Do you still get scared after watching so many horror movies?
TG: It does not happen very often. That is one of the reasons why I like watching them so much because I’m always like, ‘yeah, try to scare me.’ One of the last horror movies that actually gave me nightmares was The Ritual.
I watched this movie, then fell asleep and had a series of nightmares that were just like the movie. And I literally woke up screaming. Then I was crawling through the house, looking through my partner, looking for my partner and was really disoriented. I didn’t know if I was awake or asleep. I had a bunch of scary dreams after I saw The Ritual.
DC: Best and worst feeling at the same time.
TG: I was really scared. And then when it was done, I was like, ‘David, you motherfucker, you got me so good.’ For a while, I couldn’t actually watch horror movies because I have a history of sleep paralysis. It really messed me up. I also sometimes have issues with insomnia. So there are periods of time in which I have to be really careful about what I’m watching because otherwise, it’ll just fuck me up. Another movie that scared me so much that I had a nightmare was His House. It’s brilliant, it’s so good, it’s beautiful.
I could keep talking about every single movie that scared the shit outta me. Every once in a while I get really, really scared.
DC: Well, hopefully, you’ll make a movie that does that to somebody someday. too.
TG: Yo, that’s what I want. I’ve been working on something this morning. I wanna scare the shit out of people. I’m very excited.
Categorized:Interviews News
