Highschool, a coming-of-age television drama series based on Tegan and Sara Quin’s memoir of the same name, is coming to Amazon Freevee on October 14 and its first trailer has just dropped!
“High School is a story about finding your own identity—a journey made even more complicated when you have a twin whose own struggle and self-discovery so closely mimic your own,” according to press materials. “Told through a backdrop of ’90s grunge and rave culture, the series weaves between parallel and discordant memories of twin sisters growing up down the hall from one another.”
The first thing in the trailer that stands out, for us, is how different the vibe of Highschool is to the sapphic teenage media trending right now. It’s real, authentic, nuanced, and deep, and it has lesbians who are explicitly lesbian! There will be no gay-baiting in this house!
Perhaps Highschool’s lack of cringe is because But I’m a Cheerleader’s Clea DuVall is the executive producer, co-writer, director and co-showrunner. Tegan and Sara are also executive producers for the series, uniting with Clea for an iconic lesbian trio.
Like the Quins, DuVall, who came out as a lesbian in 2016 (I swore she was out earlier than that!), was a teenager in the ‘90s. The trailer reveals this shared experience between the three lesbians, providing a nostalgic, genuine depiction of the decade’s grungy teen girls.
It’s hard to imagine how the actor who played gender non-conforming love interest and lesbian, Graham, in But I’m a Cheerleader could have stayed in the closet for another 16 years. So maybe Highschool is an avenue for DuVall to depict the teenage years she would have preferred.
Before the trailer was released, I wondered which actors could portray Tegan and Sara. Being identical twins, the series would have to employ another set of twins (preferably identical) to suspend our disbelief.
After watching the trailer, I think Railey and Seazynn Gilliland are a good duo. Yeah, the long hair tripped me up a bit at first – but this is Tegan and Sara in high school, it’s not supposed to represent exactly who they are, or what they look like, today.
The most important thing is that the Gilliland twins express a sense of the Quin twins, a feeling of the Quin twins, which they do. We can’t wait to watch the series!
