How LGBTQ stories got real in 2024

From Queer to Baby Reindeer and Will & Harper, LGBTQ representation took a step forward as film and TV showed more varied and authentic characters than ever before.

Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, Queer, takes us to the dream-like streets of 1950s Mexico City, where we meet Lee (Daniel Craig) – a US expat who spends most of his time downing tequila shots, smoking, and (mostly unsuccessfully) pursuing young men. As Lee self-medicates with alcohol and opiates, he becomes infatuated with Allerton (Drew Starkey), a handsome former US navy serviceman who he meets by chance. The pair soon start a relationship where, for the first time, Lee experiences sex that feels reciprocal, with emotional strings attached. But Allerton soon becomes distant. As a confused Lee feels his young lover pulling away, he begins to ask: “Is Allerton even queer?”

On the face of things, Queer couldn’t be more different from sexy tennis drama Challengers – Guadagnino’s previous film, starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor, which became a hit in April 2024. But there are similarities in how both films explore forbidden lust, the space between identity and desire. Screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who wrote both films, tells the BBC that he sees them as “sister” projects. “As I was writing Queer, I didn’t realise that it was an echo of Challengers,” he says. “But now, I see that very clearly – they’re both movies that culminate in a conversation that is happening beyond language.”

Aside from their constant simmering sexual tension, another thing that both films have in common is the audience never quite knowing who to root for. This is typical of a year where LGBTQ+ characters in films and TV shows have been seen in a wider variety of different scenarios, roles, and circumstances than ever before, from wholesome romances and coming out journeys, to queer murderers, and characters who put themselves in perplexing (and maddening) situations. In 2024, culture has shown us that LGBTQ+ people and relationships can be messy and complicated, with characters who are chaotic and flawed.

Some might question the interpretation of Challengers as queer art. Aside from its gay director, the film is ostensibly about a heterosexual love triangle between tennis coach Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) and tennis pros Art Donaldson (Faist) and Patrick Sweig (O’Connor). Still, culture writer Zing Tsjeng thinks the queer fandom of the film, which was inescapable online for months surrounding the film’s release, speaks for itself: “Even if there isn’t an explicit queer context, Guadagnino seems to have crafted the film with a deliberately queer sensibility.” Tsjeng thinks the casting of Zendaya as an impeccably dressed alpha female tennis coach is not only destined to spark “a million lesbian awakenings” (especially given the sport’s history of pioneering lesbians, such as Billie Jean King) but her character has the makings of an icon for gay men, too. “From the first moment we meet her, Tashi is bending these men to her will,” she says. “It’s quite similar to the heroines of mid-20th Century cinema, who gay men have been obsessed with for decades.”

The bond between Art and Patrick is the most intriguing (and erotic) in the film. Officially, the two of them are best friends-turned-enemies, but their relationship still radiates sweaty, playful, competitive sexual tension. Kuritzkes sees Patrick and Art as both “brothers” and “orphans,” who were effectively shunted off by their well-to-do parents to be raised at a tennis academy. Near the start of the film, the three leads drink cans of beer in a cheap hotel room, and Patrick shares the oddly touching story of how he instructed Art on how to masturbate when they were teenagers sharing a dorm room. “They’ve gone through everything together, and they’ve shared a lot of the intimacy that you share with somebody who you grew up with,” Kuritzkes says. “And whether we acknowledge it or not, in every friendship, and especially in every male friendship between two guys who have literally grown up together since puberty, there’s an unspoken hum of eroticism and repression.”

In the early stages of the film, there is a scene where Art and Patrick end up sharing an impromptu kiss when Tashi excuses herself from what started out as a three-way smooch. But soon that is eclipsed by an unexpectedly homoerotic scene, where the pair playfully eat a stick of churros together. The moment went viral on social media, and was described as the film’s “best sex scene,” with some fans even recreating the moment for Halloween. “Art and Patrick’s relationship was always very pronounced to me. In every draft of the script from the very first one, there was this theme of them both eating stuff that was shaped like a churro, whether it was hot dogs or smoking cigarettes or whatever,” Kuritzkes says. “Then when we got on set, Mike and Josh developed a deeper relationship and it turned into the iconic thing that it’s become.”

Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, written by and starring Richard Gadd, was one of the year’s most talked-about TV shows. It followed Donny (Gadd), an aspiring comedian who is targeted by a stalker, Martha (Jessica Gunning), who becomes an overwhelming (and terrifying) presence in his life. As Donny navigates their complicated relationship, he questions his own sexuality. We learn about his encounters with Darrien, a male TV executive (Tom Goodman-Hill) who plied him with drugs and sexually assaulted him. He also begins a relationship with Teri (Nava Mau), a trans woman he met on a trans dating app.

One of the most interesting parts of Baby Reindeer is how it challenges our ideas of how victims are expected to behave. There are many points where Donny appears to encourage Martha’s behaviour, or willingly returns to Darrien even though he knows he is abusing him. Jeffrey Ingold, who worked as an LGBTQ+ consultant on the Netflix show, tells the BBC that this represents a “move towards more authentic, interesting and ultimately more real portrayals of queer characters on screen”.

As a therapist with a successful career and her own apartment, Teri is a refreshing break from trans characters who are often portrayed as living precariously. (2020 Netflix documentary Disclosure unpacks numerous trans screen tropes, such as the long history of trans characters being portrayed as murder victims in hospital and crime dramas). “One of the conversations we had was about making sure that Teri’s character development wasn’t entirely relational to Donny,” Ingold says. “We wanted to build in moments that showed Teri existing as her own person, so she wasn’t just an object of his desire.”

Part of Ingold’s role as a consultant is helping shows to steer clear of harmful queer stereotypes without “creating the most politically correct characters”. Ultimately, Donny ends up treating Teri – the person who seems to care about him the most – badly throughout their relationship, in part because he’s ashamed of her and himself. “Queer people are not all good. They’re not all bad. There are layers within us as there are with any people,” Ingold says. “Representation isn’t just about which identities you see on screen, but the spectrum of humanity.”

This is on full display in Will & Harper – the Netflix docu-film starring Will Ferrell and his collaborator, Saturday Night Live comedy writer Harper Steele. After Steele came out as trans at the age of 61, the pair embark on a 17-day road trip across the US, to learn more about each other in this new phase of their decades-long friendship. As they travel from New York to California, they discuss what it means to be a trans person – and a friend of a trans person – in the US today, when the community is facing increased legal restrictions.

The film refutes the idea that trans people are some kind of 21st-Century phenomenon. Steele gets very candid about her mental health struggles from a very young age, but also her insecurities about how she looks today, and her relationship with femininity. She tells the BBC that seeing stories like this will be central to humanising trans people in the years ahead. “Representation is extremely important,” she says. “Every marginalised community needs both – representation in culture, but also political organising for legislative battles.”

Will & Harper is as much about loving a trans person as it is about being trans. Ferrell says the film is one of the proudest moments of his career: “To lend whatever currency I have to a project like this is the most satisfying thing.” Still, it is by no means a “how-to” guide. There are times where he well-meaningly gets things wrong, like when they go to a steakhouse in Texas and all-eyes are suddenly on Steele. Ferrell chooses to create a spectacle – by eating a steak in the middle of the restaurant, dressed in a Sherlock Holmes costume – which exposes her to confused staring and, when the footage makes it to social media, transphobic abuse. Ferrell now says he is so happy that those moments were left in, because they help the film to “cut through in a way that is really impactful, and lead to meaningful conversations”. And Steele thinks the few uncomfortable parts represent an important lesson when supporting someone who is coming out: “It’s OK to be messy.”

Speaking of mess, Layla – a British film released in November, which follows the story of a non-binary drag performer (Bilal Hasna) as they embark on a romance with a well-to-do city boy, Max (Louis Greatorex) – has plenty of it. The film is a wholesome, sexy story about two queer people from different backgrounds who each have their own baggage. It is most notable in its distinct lack of familial rejection or violence, which can tend to occur frequently in LGTBQ+ romance stories. Instead, the stakes are refreshingly low. “I wanted the characters to be frustrating, messy, complicated, and make decisions that annoy the audience,” says writer and director Amrou Al-Kadhi. “Layla, the queer Arab protagonist, is not a victim as most audiences would expect. They lie a lot, they don’t communicate, they cut people off, they people-please – they are very much the agent of their own chaos.”

Thematically, Layla is the opposite of a movie like All of Us Strangers – Andrew Haigh’s critically acclaimed romantic fantasy film, which explores grief, gay shame and loneliness. Both films coexisting in 2024 (All of Us Strangers came out in January in the UK), might be a sign that, as Ingold puts it, culture is “moving past the time of audiences simply needing to see queer people,” towards a norm where “we want to see queer people in a range of different roles.”

Looking back at the last 12 months, it certainly feels that way: there have been villains, like queer-coded killer Andrew Scott in Ripley, Netflix’s neo-noir TV adaptation of the 1955 Patricia Highsmith novel. In Netflix’s Christmas thriller, Black Doves, viewers may have found themselves rooting for Sam Young (Ben Whishaw), a strangely endearing gay assassin. And on the theme of variety, the streamer also offered up the uber-wholesome teen romance Heartstopper and The Boyfriend, Japan’s first ever gay dating show.

In Queer, the characters take us to so many different places, from the streets of 1950s Mexico to the South American jungle, and somewhere between dreams and fantasy. Ultimately, it’s a story about something timeless: two people who aren’t a match, no matter how much one or both of them might want to be. “Luca [Guadagnino] has said that the movie is not a story of unrequited love, but of unsynchronised love,” says Kuritzkes. “That’s really beautiful, because when I think about these two characters, Lee and Allerton, they are constantly trying to get in sync. For a moment it works and it’s beautiful. But then there is a horror that sets in and it all becomes too intense, so they recoil.”

As a protagonist, Lee is a sympathetic figure, but he could never be classed as a “role model”. This feels like a sign that, with LGBTQ+ representation becoming more normalised in mainstream culture, queer characters are able to occupy a much more challenging space – somewhere between hero and villain, with both redeeming qualities and flaws. Perhaps this is a step towards an era of more honest, complex representation. “We want characters that are as cruel and kind and honest and duplicitous and sympathetic and unsympathetic and ego-driven and selfless as the people we meet in real life,” Kuritzkes says. “Those contradictions are what makes somebody feel real.”