After fighting to enter her film director era, Hayley Kiyoko isn’t done calling the shots

There are passion projects, and then there’s Hayley Kiyoko‘s feature directorial debut, Girls Like Girls. “It’s basically been an eleven-year journey of hardship to convince the world that our stories matter,” says the musician-turned-director, whose fans have long called her ‘Lesbian Jesus‘.

Kiyoko’s sweetly nostalgic, sun-dappled coming-of-age drama tracks the burgeoning romance between grieving teenager Coley (Maya da Costa) and sexually conflicted Sonya (Myra Molloy). Coley’s mother has recently passed away, so she’s had to move to Oregon to live with her estranged father (Scrubs icon Zach Braff). In a new and somewhat sleepy rural town, friendly and confident Sonya is a welcome solace.

Girls Like Girls, which opened in UK cinemas last week (October 2), is especially notable for its authentic and nuanced queer representation. While Coley isn’t fazed by her feelings, Sonya seems frightened by her evolving sexuality and is stuck in a toxic situationship with cocky Trenton (Levon Hawke). If the story feels warm and well rounded – it’s set in 2006, so there’s lots of flirty banter on AIM Messenger – that’s because it’s had time to bake. Girls Like Girls is – deep breath – a feature film based on a novel based on the music video for Kiyoko’s beloved electropop single ‘Girls Like Girls’, which features the casually empowering hook: “Girls like girls, like boys do, nothing new.” 

“The inception of ‘oh my gosh, this could be a feature film’ was actually the fans,” Kiyoko says today. We’re sitting in a meeting room at a trendy London hotel, where the 35-year-old multi-hyphenate looks cool and camera-ready in an oversize jacket. She speaks with the calm, articulate conviction of someone who’s used to doing interviews – Kiyoko released her debut EP ‘A Belle To Remember’ in 2013, and was in a girlband called The Stunners before that. But at this point, having spent 11 years trying to get Girls Like Girls made, she’s also used to delivering a sales pitch. “When we released the music video in 2015, I kept seeing screenshots on Tumblr of people being like, ‘What is this film?'” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Well, obviously it’s not a film, but I’ve never seen a movie like this before.’ And that kind of planted a seed – like, I love directing, but how does one become a director?'”

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Back in 2015, Kiyoko co-directed the ‘Girls Like Girls’ video with cinematographer Austin S. Winchell. Since then, she’s directed or co-directed another 12 of her music videos, including 2020’s ‘For The Girls’, a playful queer parody of dating show The Bachelorette. But when it proved incredibly difficult to get her film greenlit, she turned the story into a young adult novel – also called Girls Like Girls, and published in 2023 – to grease the wheels. Kiyoko rightly gleaned that the book’s popularity would demonstrate an appetite for a romantic movie involving not just two young women, but two young women of colour.

Kiyoko first cast da Costa, a Canadian actress with Portuguese and Vietnamese heritage, then paired her with Molloy, who is Thai-American. “To know that I was able to cast someone like Maya, who truly checked all the boxes in [terms of] representation for Coley, it felt kind of healing for myself,” says Kiyoko, who grew up in Los Angeles and has Japanese heritage on her mother’s side. “It also felt amazing to give Maya this opportunity at the start of her career,” Kiyoko adds. The up-and-coming actress, who gives a beautifully tender and naturalistic performance as Coley, has recently joined the next Paranormal Activity movie.

Back in 2022, when an initial deal to fund the film had fallen through, and Kiyoko was shopping for another, she said on TikTok: “It’s been a dream of mine to make [this story] into a movie but it is so hard to get a movie made. It’s so challenging, especially when the movie is about queer love that ends in hope.” Does she think the film’s optimistic (though not sugarcoated) tone made it a harder sell? “I weirdly think so,” Kiyoko replies, “only because there was one time I did a pitch and someone was like, ‘Why would Coley’s father be accepting? Why would we show that the father is accepting [of his daughter’s sexuality] when not everyone’s experience is like that?'” Kiyoko’s response was admirably matter-of-fact:  “Don’t divorced people watch films about people who are happily married? The whole point of cinema is escapism and feeling comfort.'”

This was hardly the only cloth-eared or reductive note that Kiyoko received during her many, many pitch meetings. “It was very much like, ‘Why would we need a film like this? We’re already over it. Like, everyone’s gay [now],'” she says with a sigh. At times, Kiyoko must have felt like she was banging her head against a brick wall, but today, she sounds nonplussed rather than frustrated. “For sapphic people specifically, our representation is quite a lot smaller,” she says. “I can’t think of 10 films off the top of my head where I was able to buy a ticket and see myself reflected [on screen], especially [as a] POC woman,” she says. “I don’t know why it was so hard for people to grasp that. It feels like a very basic concept to me.”

Kiyoko’s persistence finally paid off in 2024 when indie production company Focus Features (Obsession, Hamnet) came on board to make and distribute her film at what she calls “the highest level”. She’s immensely proud that Girls Like Girls is now playing in UK cinemas before arriving on a streaming platform. “I hope this film reminds people that there’s a space for them, and that it’s possible not to feel alone and isolated in your experience,” Kiyoko says. “I also hope it shows people that big dreams are possible. We have to work really hard to make them happen, but it is possible to have that authentic [queer] representation.”

Directing her first feature film was a transformational experience for Kiyoko, who famously rebranded 2018 as “#20GAYTEEN” when her growing profile coincided with the rise of other openly queer musicians like Troye Sivan and Kehlani. Her second and most recent studio album, ‘Panorama’, came out in 2022, but she hasn’t left music behind. Alongside Girls Like Girls, she has released a companion album featuring collaborations with fellow LGBTQ+ artists including Tegan and Sara, Gigi Perez and Young Miko.

But, at this point, she has no doubts whatsoever about her creative focus. “I want to dedicate my life to storytelling and being a filmmaker,” she says. “My energy is like: ‘How do we fix this huge gap in representation for sapphic women? How do I fill that void?’ And that’s pretty much what I’m fixated on going forward.”