Aged 14, Amrou Al-Kadhi made their big-screen debut playing the son of an Arab terrorist in Steven Spielberg’s Munich. A decade later, writing in their regular column for The Independent newspaper, Al-Kadhi noted they had subsequently turned down dozens of similarly stereotyped roles.
Happily, the occasional actor, who has appeared in Venom: Let There Be Carnage and American Horror Stories, doesn’t need Hollywood. At 34, Amrou Al-Kadhi is a multi-hyphenate proposition: a twin, an alumnus of Eton (they attended on a two-year scholarship) and Cambridge, a drag performer, an award-winning author, a writer for Hollyoaks, and the debutant film-maker behind Layla, a buoyant new drama concerning a British-Palestinian drag queen.
[ When drag queens were first mentioned in The Irish TimesOpens in new window ]
“In a lot of queer films or stories, the conflict is external,” says Al-Kadhi. “Rejection from family or violence. Especially in films made by straight people. They are coming-out narratives or rejection narratives. And I just wanted all the conflict in Layla to be completely internal. It’s all about the microdynamics between people. There can still be conflict, but it doesn’t have to be external in the same way. I think it’s important to enjoy the nuance of queer life, rather than the sort of tropes that we usually see.”
Layla stars the extraordinary British-Palestinian actor newcomer Bilal Hasna as the conflicted character of the title. A non-binary drag performer, Layla shines at the centre of a found family and an alternative London LGBTQ scene. Among their conservative Muslim Palestinian family, Layla reverts to Latif, a drably dressed and dutiful son. A further complication arrives with Max (Louis Greatorex), a conventional gay executive who falls for Layla. Or possibly Latif. They are, they say, “always in the in-between”.
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“I suppose that is one of the big questions of the film,” says the writer-director. “Will the real Layla please stand up? The fact that they are code-switching all the time is part of their survival strategy and trauma strategy because of what’s happening with their family. Layla is a chameleon and that’s maybe why the relationship is hard. It’s difficult for Max to get to know Layla because Layla is changing all the time.”
Following the film’s premiere at Sundance this year, many critics expressed appreciation for the film’s steamier sequences. As Max and Layla’s relationship heats up, their enthusiastic sex swerves into kink. Those scenes required close collaboration between the director, the actors and intimacy co-ordinator Eden Barrell-Kane.
“This is the first time I’ve worked with an intimacy co-ordinator,” Al-Kadhi says. “I was lucky in that Bilal and Louis wanted to make sure the sex was as authentic as possible. The intimate scenes are just like dialogue scenes. There is an emotional story being told. A lot of the time we are watching shifts in power, and fetish. I had conversations with my actors and my intimacy co-ordinator about each character’s objective. What is influencing these scenes and what’s the emotional story? We treated them as bits of storytelling. I think they’re my favourite scenes in the film.”
Early in the film, Layla performs at a corporate diversity gig for a ready-made meal company called Fork Me. They are understandably outraged when they are paid in coupons for that product, rather than money. They respond by going off-script while working Udon noodles into their act. It’s a scene that touches on the gentrification and corporatisation of drag and imagines a queenly fightback.
“We poke fun at that, but I think the film is a meditation on drag more generally,” says Al-Kadhi. “In a lot of popular culture, drag is: ‘I can be me’ and ‘I can be myself’. I think what you see in Layla is that drag is also a bit of a lie. For Layla, it’s obviously an important aspect of themselves. But they seem far more confident and aware of who they are, as a drag queen, than when they are in their own life. Everyone in the film is participating in a kind of drag. Even for our production designer, Soraya Gillani, all the sets are a meditation on drag. Because every set in the film is a sort of drag queen’s interpretation of what a person would live in. I wanted to show how drag is about fiction in many ways.”
One of the great pleasures of Layla is the elegant balance that Al-Kadhi maintains between the film’s fictions and reality. Layla’s London verges on the fantastic with its fabulous drag moms and sisters, underground LGBTQ spaces, and rooftop sleepovers. Conversely, there are such real-world markers as Grindr, douching and lots of fake nails. One could never guess that this textured world was created on a microbudget and shot in 27 days.
There needs to be way more Arab creators and Muslim critics who have the opportunity to share their stories. I don’t like being one of a few
“I told my heads of department not to be scared by the budget; make something incredible,” recalls the director. “I hope I’m not being arrogant, but I think that the film looks far beyond the money we had. One of the things I love about the films of Pedro Almodóvar is that queerness is everywhere. I wanted to make the universe of Layla like that. It’s not explained – whether it’s the douche, all the drag queens getting dressed on a bus, or them going to a restaurant in full drag with no one being bothered. A friend of mine said that heteronormal activity is like this distant spectre in this film. It’s queer and no one questions it.”
Layla has been in development since 2017 when the British Film Institute Flare initiative paired Al-Kadhi with mentor, Russell T Davies. The former showrunner of Doctor Who and creator of Queer as Folk and It’s a Sin is both a friend and trusted adviser, says the director.
“I still work with Russell all the time. He’s read everything that I’ve written and he’s given me lots of advice, including with this film. He’s a master. He’s tough with me and my scripts. What Russell does incredibly well – and it took me a while to get there – is to think about the audience. Whatever your political aims in the work, no matter what you are desperate to say, it has to be entertaining. And I hope, first and foremost, that Layla is a really fun watch.”
It’s impossible not to see something of Layla’s protagonist in Al-Kadhi. Both are British with Arab heritage – Al-Kadhi having Iraqi roots and Layla of Palestinian origin. They each identify as non-binary and are involved in drag performance. As with Layla, the director has drawn upon their lived experiences as a queer Arab in Britain to shape their drag alter ego, Glamrou. That journey was chronicled in Al-Kadhi’s Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen.
[ I was 16, the first time I crept into a drag club and found my tribeOpens in new window ]
“I’d say everything I do is emotionally very autobiographical,” they say. “I’ve written a book which is a lot more specific to my experience. And it’s a bit more harrowing than Layla. Maybe one day I’ll put that on screen. But this film was a playground to explore this feeling of code-switching that I’ve experienced. And several aspects of yourself that are kept apart. That feeling is very autobiographical. But I wanted to create a world around that that I never got to have. When growing up in my 20s, I didn’t have a friendship group like Layla. I didn’t have a very understanding family member. That’s a fairy tale. The film is the real experience of coming from a conservative background – but with wish fulfilment.”
Al-Kadhi’s experiences as Glamrou, the “too gay for Iraq, too Iraq for gay” star of former drag supergroup Denim, were another source of inspiration.
“I’ve often shocked myself with what I’m able to say and do in drag,” says Al-Kadhi. “I have a lot of anxiety and I can be quite shy. I’m very nervous when it comes to dating. In Layla, when you meet them at the beginning, I think you assume: this person takes no prisoners. And you then realise just how compromised they are. Drag gives you a licence to sort of scare yourself and other people. But how do you bring that into your daily life?”
Having contended for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, the pioneering drag act is now a pioneering film-maker. They rather generously hope they won’t be at the vanguard for too long.
“There needs to be way more Arab creators and Muslim critics who have the opportunity to share their stories. I don’t like being one of a few. I wrote an episode of Little America for Apple. I remember some people saying: that wasn’t my experience growing up queer and Arab. And I thought well, of course, there are millions of experiences.”
Layla opens on November 22nd
