From Newsgroup: alt.fan.starwars

DisneyAs new oStar Warso showrunner Leslye Headland has been raising eyebrows with her latest comments about her upcoming female-centric, Sith-focused series.

So, we took a deep dive into her past projects and the comments sheAs made over the years to get an idea about the woman described as the oQueen of Raunch Comedy.o

Harvey Weinstein And The Seven Deadly Sins
Early in her career, Headland worked under disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein as his assistant for one year during her time at Miramax.

In 2012, Headland said that Weinstein influenced her oraunchy female comedyo oBachelorette,o which was first a play and later her debut film, The
Hollywood Reporter reported. It was part of her Seven Deadly Sins play
series, this one dealing with gluttony.

Next, she developed another part of her sins play series called oAssistance,o this one dealing with greed, THR noted. Later, she did oCult of Love,o Stage Scene LA reported, where she takes aim at the sin of pride, oparticularly
that of self-proclaimed aChristiansA who would counsel praying away the gay, blame a coupleAs miscarriage on their godlessness, and refuse antidepressants the better to keep on hearing voices straight from the Big Guy himself,o the outlet noted.

IMDB. Leslye Headland in Sleeping with Other People (2015).
In 2018, Headland talked to the American Theater about her series and the seven deadly sins. oI think theyAre just normal,o Headland said. oTheyAre
what comes along with the baggage of being alive and sentient.o

She also told the Theater in 2018 that she was oshockedo Weinstein was taken down and oso emboldened by the chorus of voices that brought him down.o

oWhen someone is screaming at you, and a whole bunch of grown men are in the same room and donAt do anything, that tells you something right away about what kind of danger you may or may not be in,o Headland said. oYouAre like, aOh, no one is going to stop this person. The only person that is going to make sure I donAt come to harm is me.'o

From Plays To Movies
Rolling Stone magazine took their interview with Headland to a whole new level, naming her oNew Queen of Raunch Comedyo in 2015 following the release of her raunchcom oSleeping With Other People.o

The film deals with one of HeadlandAs favorite themes, osex addiction,o TV Overmind noted. In one scene, actor Jason Sudeikis demonstrated sex acts in explicit detail.

Headland told Rolling Stone that men oa have no idea whatAs going down there. Just, zero clue. I have a chart of the vagina in my house, and when a male friend saw it, he said, aWowathis just looks like something IAm going to fail at!A I donAt get the mystery. ItAs not a boogeyman.o


In 2015, Paste interviewed Headland about the movie and going from plays to the big screen.

oI meant to make these very important pieces of work, and then everyone was just losing their mind laughing about the whole b***-j** monologue or the bottle scene,o the new oStar Warso creator said. oI guess thereAs just something important behind making people laugh about the things that are really, truly painful.o

She also admitted sheAs always been a provocateur since she was young and is still today with her plays, films, and series.

oI am that provocateur that I was when I was a little kid a IAm much more interested in aWhat am I not allowed to say? What is the thing that we arenAt talking about in a mainstream space?'o Headland said. oAnd why not?o

LGBTQ Infused
In 2021, Headland talked with AV Club about LGBTQ representation in films.
She said, oas somebody that is a lesbian, every time I see gay or queer representation in the media, I scream with happiness. There is just nothing like seeing that out in the world.o

oTo have the power, when youAre creating media, to just put in certain types of people that maybe arenAt necessarily in normal mainstream content or media is justao she added. oI know that for people who donAt identify that way, it doesnAt seem that important, but to us, itAs huge.o

Basically, if Headland is involved in a project, whether it be on stage, the small or the big screen, it will include LGBTQ references.

Representation In New oStar Wars: The Acolyteo
In 2021, Headland spoke to the Advocate about having representation on oThe Acolyte,o series on screen and behind the scenes.

oYou can expect some sort of expression of my own artistic dream and just my voice and what it looks like in that universe, for sure,o the SW creator
said, oBut I also think that representation both on screen and behind the screen, itAs just so important.o

She said with her new series she fully ointends to allow her own personal experiences as a queer woman shine through in the finished product.o

oIn the same way that the original aStar WarsA film, aA New Hope,A is about a young man living in Modesto, California, who doesnAt want to take over his dadAs hardware store,o Headland said. oThereAs just no way that me being a queer woman is not going to be reflected in my work. I could try not to do
it, but why would I? It just feels like a natural extension of what I do.o

She also talked about the characters in her stories and made it clear they will all be queer, in some way.

oI think that because storytelling, at its core, is always going to come down to either the personal or emotional through-line to your characters, your identity is important,o Headland said. oAnd like I said, mine is just going
to be in my work, whether IAm explicitly dealing with it or not, itAs always going to be there.o

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly she also promised that oStar Warso fans will osee more morally ambiguous characters than youAve seen in other Star Wars content.o

LGBTQ representation also includes who sheAs hired to work on the new series, PinkNews reported.

Transgender actor Abigail Thorn, a biological male who identifies as a woman, was hired for the role of Ensign Eurus and Jen Richards is one of the
writers.

Not to mention Headland, a lesbian, is helming the series with wife Rebecca Henderson starring in it as a oJedi knight prodigy,o Pink News noted.

Gay, non-binary star, Amandla Stenberg, stars in the show, as does Charlie Barnett, an outspoken gay star, the outlet noted.

Disney has faced a backlash at the box office following its push of LGBTQ representation.

Disney Pixar studio, oElemental,o included a onon-binaryo character and the movie had one of the worst openings in the studioAs history, earning $29.5 million at the domestic box office. oStrange Worldo involved a same-sex teen romance and was a box office flop for the company.

https://youtu.be/BtytYWhg2mc

According to Disney+ oThe Acolyteo is rated TV-14. Bounding into Comics reported in March 2023, that Headland brought in an intimacy coordinator for part of the showAs production. The outlet reported that the coordinator was used for 8 episodes of the first season.

An intimacy coordinator ois an advocate, a liaison between actors and production, and a movement coach and/or choreographer in regards to nudity
and simulated sex and other intimate and hyper-exposed scenes,o according to SAG-AFTRA.

Earlier this month, a video from the 2023 Star Wars Celebration resurfaced in which Headland said the new series will be like the childrenAs movie oFrozeno which she labeled ocoded queer.o

Headland talked about watching oFrozeno as an adult and was captivated by
othe concept of true love being between two sisters and not a heterosexual relationship. She said it oinspiredo her to create a similar story that her parents would have allowed her to watch when she was a younger oqueero
person, as previously reported.

In 2020, Headland spoke to Entertainment Weekly about improving LGBTQ representation in films and promised that oStar Warso fans will osee more morally ambiguous characters than youAve seen in other Star Wars content.o

oRussian Dollo And oDying For Sexo
Headland co-produced a short in 2021 called oPink and Blue,o about oa Trans couple of color raising their child in a binary world.o She also directed NetflixAs oRussian Doll,o which is filled with references of drugs, sex, and numerous LGBTQ references, Vulture noted. SheAs currently directing the FX series called oDying for Sexo about a woman diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, who abandons her husband of 15 years to explore her sexuality,o Deadline reported.

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Let's go Brandon!

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