Mary & George: A very gay chat with Julianne Moore and Oliver Hermanus
From her love of gay bars to her rainbow-hued filmography, including her new historical psychodrama Mary & George, Julianne Moore is embracing her status as a “mother”.
WORDS BY SAM DAMSHENAS HEADER BY YOSEF PHELAN “I mean, is it the queerest thing I’ve done?” Julianne Moore says of Mary & George (it is, by the way) after we highlight the rainbow tint of her filmography, from the Academy Award-winning The Hours and trailblazing The Kids Are All Right to cult favourites such as Far From Heaven and Freeheld.
As a result, Moore is one of a privileged few (thousand) who have been inducted into the Queer Hall of Fame as a “mother!”. “It’s about female power, right?” she says of the term of endearment. “I’ll take it!” Directed by Oliver Hermanus, Mary & George stars Moore as Mary Villiers, a “fierce and ambitious” widow who recruits her “teenage naif” son George (Nicholas Galitzine) to seduce King James VI of Scotland and I of England (Tony Curran) to become his right-hand lover and rise up the social and political ranks.
The real-life story of a scheming mother who uses her son’s aesthetically pleasing features to boink the king and conquer the Court of England is married with pitch-black humour (the hanging scene, for one) and a plethora of ferocious sex scenes (name any). “I’ve never had to choreograph as many sex scenes in my career!” laughs Hermanus.
