Culture

Luca Guadagnino making HBO show about queer teen and lesbian mum

Feb 27 2019
Written by Josh Jackman

Luca Guadagnino visits Build at Build Studio on October 19, 2018 in New York City.

Luca Guadagnino will direct the first two episodes of the new show, as well as the season finale. (Theo Wargo/Getty)

Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino is working on a new HBO show about a queer teen character who lives on an Italian military base with his lesbian mum and her wife.

Guadagnino is reportedly directing the first two episodes of the show, as well as the first season’s finale, US news site Observer reported on Tuesday (February 26).

The series is known for now as We Are Who We Are and will be made up of eight episodes, each an hour long, focusing on the 14-year-old American main character, Fraser Wilson, and his friend Caitlin Harper, who is also 14.

Timothee Chalamet, Italian director Luca Guadagnino and Armie Hammer attend 'Chiamami Col Tuo Nome (Call Me By Your Name)' at De Russie Hotel on January 24, 2018 in Rome, Italy.

Luca Guadagnino is reportedly working on an HBO show about another American teenager in Italy (Contigo/Getty)

According to the Observer, the story will open with Wilson arriving from New York City to the military base with his step-mum and mum, who has just been made a colonel.

He will start becoming friends with other kids on the base like Caitlin, and some of the local Italian teens, while coming to terms with his identity, his feelings for his close friend Mark who he still in New York, and his “innocent romantic connection”—as the Observer described it—with an older soldier on the base called Jason.

The show also promises to tackle gender stereotypes through Caitlin’s character, who spends time hunting with her father, knows how to use a semiautomatic rifle and how to kickbox.

The show will reportedly start filming in late May, and is expected to wrap up in October.

Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino has talked about the sequel

As well as the HBO show, Guadagnino is also developing a sequel to the Oscar-nominated Call Me by Your Name, which starred Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer as lovers.

The director revealed last year that he was working with writer André Aciman on the much-anticipated film.

“It’s gonna happen five or six years afterwards. It’s gonna be a new movie, a different tone.”

— Luca Guadagnino about the Call Me by Your Name sequel

He said: “I’m already conceiving the story with André Aciman, and it’s gonna happen five or six years afterwards.

“It’s gonna be a new movie, a different tone.”

Guadagnino went on to say that he would have to finalise the script before it was known when and where filming would begin.

He has also said that the sequel would tackle the AIDS crisis, telling The Hollywood Reporter that it was “going to be a very relevant part of the story.