Auli’i Cravalho and Isabella Ferreira Talk New Hulu Film Crush and Normalizing Queer Love Stories
Hulu’s new film Crush finds an aspiring artist (Rowan Blanchard) being forced to join her high school track team. She uses the opportunity to pursue her long-time crush Gabby (Isabella Ferreira), but instead finds herself falling for a different teammate — Gabby’s twin sister AJ (Auli’i Cravalho). I spoke with Auli’i Cravalho and Isabella Ferreira about the queer rom-com, including what drew them to the film and fun on-set moments.
Cravalho gushed about the hilarious, stacked cast of Crush, including Blanchard, Ferreira, Tyler Alvarez, Teala Dunn, Rico Paris, Addie Weyrich, Aasif Mandvi, Michelle Buteau, and Megan Mullally. “It was so fun working with them. They are all so funny and then there's also the heart of what we've truly created, which is a rom-com that is coming-of-age and queer and loving,” she told me. “I'm really proud of what we created.”
“Everybody was fantastic, so I feel like it's really easy to make a film when everybody's just as good as they are,” echoed Ferreira. “I love watching and observing people and seeing their tactics and how they work around things. I think everybody's characters just fit them perfectly.”
What initially drew Cravalho to the script was how funny it was, but also how it was a film centered around the LGBTQ+ experience that wasn’t a coming out story. “I like to know what happens the day after you come out or the day after that because the lives of queer people are so full and vibrant, outside of sexuality. People are gay. Gen-Z are out and they are proud and they are funny,” she said, also highlighting the queer people working on-screen and behind-the-scenes to bring the film to life. “A lot of of what we're seeing in Crush is, of course, thanks to our writers Casey Rackham and Kirsten King, who are queer themselves, as well as our director Sammi Cohen, who's also queer. So to have these wonderful actors in front of the camera, but also the representation and the support behind the camera, we just get this film that is filled to the brim with Gen-Z humor and dental dams. It's just hilarious.”
“My favorite thing about Crush is that it focuses on LGBTQ characters, but it doesn't focus on the narrative of their coming out story,” agreed Ferreira. “It's just normalizing who they are.”
The twins sisters Gabby and AJ that Ferreira and Cravalho play are also on the track team. “I really loved the track scenes more than I thought that I would. I am not a runner, we'll start there, but I actually found it pretty freeing. I had done some running to prep myself — hated that — and I realized that this was where AJ was most comfortable. It’s the physical strength that I think AJ took a lot of pride in,” shared Cravalho about her character. “I'm running, my boobs are going up and down while I'm running, I'm like, ‘Oh my god.’ Like my inner Auli’i critic is screaming, but at the same time it's about speed, so I remember pushing myself. At the end, my calves were so sore, but I was so satisfied with myself that I was like, ‘Ah, this might be similar to what a runner's high is.’”
“Syracuse had a lot of bees at the time that we were filming. I'm sure there's so many bloopers of us just running — me and Teala Dunn who plays Stacy in the film — literally just running away from these bees,” Ferreira laughed. “When we had to run during those scenes, that was actual running. We were running for our lives.”
Crush is currently streaming on Hulu.
