This oral history of Adam (2019) was originally published in December 2024. It’s being republished now that the film and several other Wolfe Video releases are streaming on Hulu as part of their 2025 Pride package.

Rhys Ernst’s short film She Gone Rogue forever changed my expectations for trans film. With allusions to Maya Deren and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and the inclusion of trans icons Flawless Sabrina, Holly Woodlawn, and Vaginal Davis, Rhys’ collaboration with then-partner Zackary Drucker was one of the first works of trans art I saw that really felt like ART — not representation. By the time I sat down to watch Rhys’ feature debut Adam in 2019, I’d seen all of his shorts. To the film world, he was just starting out, but to me he was already a great.

As some of you may know, my reverence for Rhys and his work was not shared by the culture at large that summer. Based on its premise or out-of-context excerpts from the novel by Ariel Schrag, trans people across the internet called for a boycott of Adam. The vast majority of those calling for the boycott hadn’t seen the film, but they deemed “a teen cis boy pretending to be a trans guy in 2006 queer Bushwick” an irredeemable story no matter how it was done. The movie was labeled harmful, offensive, and transphobic. Adam was the only major narrative feature from a trans director released in 2019 and it was buried by our community before most people had the chance to see it for themselves.

It’s been more than five years and a lot has changed in trans culture. Rhys hasn’t made another feature, but a lot of other trans people have. This year alone saw narrative features from Jane Schoenbrun, Sydney Freeland, Theda Hammel, D.W. Waterson, Vera Drew, Noah Schamus, and Alice Maio Mackay. This still-not-enough explosion of trans filmmaking has happened as trans people become a greater target for political scapegoating and legislative persecution. All of this has changed how we talk about our art.

Half a decade later, I think it’s time for us to give Adam a second look — or, for those who boycotted, a first. My relationship to discourse and how I engage with trans art shifted after this film’s release, but I believe Adam is even more interesting as a work of art than a work of controversy. Within its challenging premise, it’s the rare film I’ve seen that captures the transphobia and biphobia that can exist in lesbian spaces — yes, in 2006, but also now. It’s a funny and sweet portrait of a misguided cis boy navigating a queer community that’s plenty flawed itself.

For this oral history, I spoke with Rhys and Ariel, as well as several trans cast members, two of the film’s producers, and former Indiewire critic Jude Dry, to give a complete picture of the intentions behind the book and film, the experience of making the film, and the difficulties born from the backlash. This wasn’t a movie made by cis and straight people about us. It was a movie made by queer and trans people about themselves. Whether you love it or hate it, that makes it worthy of a closer look.

“All of a sudden there were men in this group.”

What was it really like to be a queer in 2006 Bushwick?

Ariel Schrag (screenwriter, author of Adam: A Novel): My particular scene was mostly made up of punky, arty dykes. It was during the era of [feminist genderqueer collective] LTTR — K8 Hardy, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Every Ocean Hughes. It was art-focused dykes. Then slowly it started to include trans men. Some had already transitioned, but many had previously identified as butch lesbians and were now transitioning. There was an interesting thing going on where staunchly lesbian-identified women suddenly found themselves in a relationship with a man.

That changed their understanding of their own identity and it changed the group dynamics which, to be honest, were a little man-hating. You got a bunch of dykes together in a room and there was shit-talking. “Yeah we don’t need men!” But then all of a sudden there were men in this group and that was really interesting and really different. The world of Adam grew out of those shifting dynamics and the shifting demographics happening in this particular social scene.

Rhys Ernst (director): In 2006, I was in my very early 20’s and I was out as trans to a point. I was out to friends and my community but not to my family and not in the workplace. It was just such a different world for trans conversations. It was really taboo to be trans. Full stop. There was nothing in the mainstream other than a negative association and then little pockets underground.

It felt like I couldn’t be out at work even though I was very gender nonconforming. I was freelancing in New York trying to work in film and TV and I would respond to a job listing on craigslist, I’d send in my resume and they’d be like “you sound great.” But then I’d come and meet them in person, and the vibe was very weird. I got shut out of a lot of work opportunities pretty obviously due to the fact that I was androgynous.

But at the same time in the queer world, especially the lesbian/sapphic/etc. world, there was a minor explosion of trans discourse.

Ariel: I went to Columbia like [Adam’s sister] Casey and graduated in 2003. The book takes place in 2006 but to be totally honest I’d say it takes place more in 2003/2004. It was kind of based on that period right after I graduated college and moved to Bushwick and started my real adult life. But I changed it to 2006 because I wanted the characters to watch this specific L Word episode. It sounds crazy to care about a couple years but the way queer culture changes now I think it’s significant. Everything really evolves year by year.

Rhys: There’d been some transmasculine discourses happening on college campuses in the early 2000s but then it really hit a critical mass with Max on The L Word. Suddenly it was this big topic: Would you date a trans guy? What do you think about this? There was a lot of conversation and intrigue and sometimes negative feelings. It was a hot topic.

Ariel: I do take some responsibility for Max. I interviewed to write on The L Word in 2004 or 2005. Most of the writers were older and I was 24, so during my interview process Ilene Chaiken the showrunner was like, what’s it like for young lesbians now? And I was like well what it’s like for young lesbians now is a lot of our group is men. And she was like EXCUSE ME?? And I was like well yeah, and I explained to her what it looked like in my friend group. She was really interested and wanted to explore that on the show.

Originally, I had pitched that Jenny would be dating Moira, a butch lesbian, and then simultaneously start dating a trans man. I thought there could be an interesting relationship between the butch lesbian and the trans man. But instead because it was TV and everything gets streamlined and simplified, the butch lesbian became the trans man. And then, as you know, there were many cringe aspects to how that story was told.

We were working with pretty much nothing coming before us that wasn’t a horrible cliche of trans panic though.

Rhys: Someone recently reminded me of how Sex and the City dealt with trans characters which was not… great. That’s what we had.

Ariel: I think it really was groundbreaking in a lot of ways even with the missteps. I don’t want to disown it. I know it was really important. And I know Daniel Sea who played Max has people still coming up to him to say what he did was really powerful. There are positives too. But obviously there were parts that were very bad.

Rhys Ernst and the cast of Adam watch an episode of The L Word

“It’s written in a limited third.”

The Adam book was published in 2014 and the first wave of controversy arose.

Ariel: There were a lot of different things that inspired Adam, the book. I wanted to capture how lesbian identity was changing, and also the hypocrisy and biphobia and transphobia that I observed lesbians having. This hating on cis men but then fetishizing trans men, this fetishizing trans men but then excluding trans women. I’m always interested in ripping back the surface of the groups I’m in. What are we actually saying here? What does this mean? I wanted to expose what I saw as hypocrisies or just shallowness and self-absorption. But I wanted to do it in a loving way too. What does it mean to struggle with your identity and hold onto something you thought was a core part of your self?

Howard Gertler (producer): I think Ariel brilliantly illuminated queer NYC in 2006, a world that I traveled in. (It was set in the same year a film I’d produced, John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus, came out.) That world was the center of the story’s universe, and I love how the best of its values — especially around community, joy, and self-actualization — became aspirational not only for the queer characters, but transformative for this cishet teen.

Dana Aliya Levinson (actor, Hazel): It is very of the time that it’s set. I didn’t transition that far back, but I was aware I was trans during that time. So I was on the message boards and aware of the culture and how trans people were talking about things. I think it did a really good job evoking the early aughts queer and trans New York scene. I was out as queer in the early aughts and living in the city in and around that time, so I knew that world pretty well and thought it captured it quite nicely.

Jude Dry (writer of ‘Adam’ Applies a Trans Lens to a Cis Gaze. Is That Too Complex for Cancel Culture?, former critic for Indiewire, filmmaker): I loved the book. I read it when it came out, because I liked Ariel Schrag as a graphic novelist. I’m not someone who is particularly attuned to controversy — or I wasn’t then — and I actually really liked that it was told through a cis boy’s perspective. As a trans man, I was like, this is cool. When you’re reading a novel, you’re in the POV of the main character and I thought that was actually a really smart way to tell a trans story. And, you know, it’s a fun reversal.

Plus it’s pretty sexy. I was young when the book came out. I was in my early 20’s. And I was like, this is hot. He’s going to sex parties! (laughs) And then I felt a little silly for not being upset about the things other people were upset about. I guess I was just okay with the nuance in the story.

Ariel: I definitely did not anticipate the level of controversy. I think part of that was I started writing it in 2007 so it took seven years from putting down that first sentence to finishing it and it coming out. While I was first writing it, these identities — dyke identity, trans guy identity — they just didn’t feel like something the larger world knew anything about. I thought I was writing primarily an insider book. A book for my friends and for people in the community to poke fun at ourselves.

But I wasn’t thinking about the next generation coming up and the way the culture was changing. That’s what surprised me. I wasn’t expecting a whole new generation of queer and trans people being like, how dare you write this about us? Who are you?

It’s written in a limited third. And it seemed like many people didn’t know what that meant. People thought it was an authorial voice. Because it was written in third person, they thought it was my thoughts. Some people didn’t seem to get that limited third is actually the character’s thoughts.

Rhys: I was in LA working on Transparent and was really ear to the ground about trans stuff because we were trying to keep up with everything trans-related. I remember hearing about this book that had caused a little bit of a stir of controversy and I thought it was really strange because I knew of Ariel. I didn’t know her personally, but she’d been well-loved and revered in the queer and lesbian space. She even gets a shout out in the Le Tigre song “Hot Topic.” And I had read some of her early graphic novels and they were cool. So it was bizarre to me. This book sounded distasteful. Why would this person make the choice to write this weird off-color book? But I didn’t look that closely. I just moved on.

Ariel: There were thoughtful critiques. There were definitely people who read it and had issues with it and I respect that! It’s not for everybody. If someone is offended by it obviously that’s their right and I’m interested in what they have to say. It’s provocative, it’s asking difficult questions, that’s part of it. But I sometimes wonder what would have happened to the book if it had been pre-social media. Because so much of it became people warning others against the book or the whole Goodreads phenomenon. I don’t know how much you follow the shit show that is Goodreads but there are people trying to bomb books they haven’t read. So there was a bit of that.

But when it was just the book, it felt like it was more these critical essays and people really thinking about it. I felt when the book came out it was more positive. It feels like history has been rewritten where now it’s like this universally hated book, but when it came out that just wasn’t my experience. I felt like most of the reviews were really positive and that’s from straight people, cis queer people, and trans people.

James Schamus (producer): I just loved the humanity of it. The idea that this kid had to learn that the “real” world is not a straight one but a fundamentally queer one. And he’s not given a happily-ever-after ending. He may be the center of the novel, but he’s not the protagonist — the community is the protagonist.

Ariel: Another big inspiration for the novel was an idea that was sparked by a cis straight white wealthy male friend of mine who I grew up with. He was the pinnacle of privilege. But I remember him saying to me once, “God you are so lucky. Everywhere you go you get to tap into a scene and just meet people and you have instant friends. It’s so hard for me to meet and connect with people.” I was really struck by that. Like yeah it does rule. Being queer is probably the greatest thing that has happened to me in my life. I felt really sad for him in that moment, this pinnacle of privilege. So I was interested in exploring that. What does it mean to put that character into this world where there’s all this upset about what identity actually means? It felt like a really interesting combination.

Jude: For me, when I’m like ugh I wish I’d been born cis, I’m like… but then I wouldn’t be queer. So, of course, this cis boy wants to hang out with the cool queer kids.

Margaret Qualley, Nicholas Alexander, and Chloë Levine in Adam

“I was still expecting to pass on the project.”

The script was brought to Rhys in the spring of 2017.

James: A few days after getting the boot from Focus [Features where James was CEO from 2002-2013] I went to a cocktail party and bumped into my old friend Howard Gertler. He mentioned he had optioned the book, and I told him that EVERYONE in my household — me, my kids, my spouse — had all read and really loved it. I wasn’t sure what I was going to be doing post-Focus, but nine months later, with some modest financing in hand and a new small production company, I called Howard to see what was up with the project and we took it from there.

Rhys: I’d just directed the season finale of Transparent season four and I went to my parents’ house on vacation to sort of regroup and chill out after that production. I wasn’t planning on working right away, but then I got this cold email from the producers of Adam that I’d been recommended as a potential director for this project. That book Ariel did that sounded weird and controversial? Oh God. I was nervous about how to respond. But these producers had excellent reputations. James Schamus is an iconic creative producer and I knew Howard Gertler had produced John Cameron Mitchell’s films and just a lot of really eclectic, queer work. So I was taking this seriously, but I was still expecting to pass on the project.

I read the script all at once. I kind of devoured it. It was really fun, juicy, and scandalous. A wild ride. I was blown away! It was doing this crazy magic trick because it sets itself up as one thing and then does this interesting trans-affirmational journey instead. It takes a cishet person on and by extension a cishet audience on, but it also includes all these insider jokes and wry observations for queer and trans people. By the time I closed the script, I was totally in. It surprised me. I thought it was going to be like American Pie at the expense of trans people. And instead it was doing this really deft thing that was so pro-trans.

It also described these spaces that I had literally been in after moving from Astoria to Bushwick around 2006. I went to The Hole, which is a bar depicted in the film, every Friday night. It was the coolest place I could ever imagine. It was iconic for me. It was my Pyramid Club. It was so exciting and elicit and weird and cool. It was this place that exists in this liminal space in mind still to this day and it amazed me that the script depicted that bar on the night I used to go to and my old neighborhood and all these spaces. And the conversation we were having! These were the people I was friends with — well, not Adam — but the world he enters into was my friend group at that time. How could something so specific to my experience come to me that I didn’t generate? It was really uncanny and irresistible.

Howard: James, Joe Pirro, and I were looking for everything we found in Rhys! Someone familiar with the world of the film, who’d already done their own deep thinking about identity and art, and who would present Ariel’s story in a new way to a wide audience.

James: Someone who would let the humor emerge organically and who wouldn’t simply play the situations “for laughs.”

Rhys: After I read the script, I got back to the producers. Then they brought me out to New York to have an in-person sit down to figure out if I was really the person to do this. And on the flight there, I read the book.

I knew it was a different animal from the script and that Ariel had worked to shape things based on the feedback she had received. She had already reinvented and restaged the work as a script, so I knew in going back to the book it wouldn’t really matter if it had anything I wasn’t crazy about. But if I saw any cool details I liked for the film, I could take them. And as long as we were all on the same page, the film really should be its own thing. That’s the beauty of adaptation.

Ariel: It was now a collaboration with the producers and when Rhys came on with him. To me they’re the same story, but the movie has softened the edges. And a big part of that was a hope that by making the changes the movie could be more embraced.

Rhys: Ariel was trying to utilize an unreliable narrator with Adam to show his ignorance. That was the point. But then the book would get criticism when people would take paragraphs or pages out of context and say, “Look how offensive this is.” But it’s Adam’s perspective. When you read it in context, you see that he’s ignorant and has to evolve. If a character is at their most enlightened, there’s nowhere to go in the story. So I thought those were ridiculous criticisms.

But the book was different from the script, most notably the ending. The epilogue from the book wasn’t in it at all. The script was more focused and for me it worked better.

Ariel: Would it have been possible to pull off the controversial sex scene on film? I don’t know. I can’t say. I definitely think it would have been harder because you’re not inside Adam’s head and not given as much room to explain things. But I don’t want to say it couldn’t have worked because I don’t know. The producers, Rhys, and I all made the decision to give this movie the best chance it could have while staying true to the core story. So we removed certain elements that were particularly contentious.

Rhys: I gave script notes to the producers and Ariel. It wasn’t a lot of stuff, but I think it worked to make it even more from a trans perspective. It was also about making Adam so unwitting that this truly feels like an accident. Clearing out any ambiguity that this is premeditated because I think that’s the way this thought experiment works best.

Ariel: To me, the biggest difference at the end — other than the removal of the epilogue — is the way you have Ethan call Adam out in this way that explains why what he did was wrong. I know one of the criticisms of the book was that Adam wasn’t punished enough, but, in my mind, it was obvious that what he did was wrong and he knew that it was wrong. But I understand wanting to make it clear to everyone, so now there’s this scene where Ethan says that in a very simplified way.

Howard: The film is such a unique blending of their sensibilities. Rhys’ previous work includes a mix of non-fiction and scripted — the non-fiction work, for example, had already prepared him for working with performers with less professional acting experience. And his visual sense has this combination of both rigor and dreaminess that accented Ariel’s tart writing so perfectly to bring us deeper into the hearts of the characters.

Rhys: After that first meeting, I had a good feeling about the producers and I ended up having a great experience with them the whole time. That was the beginning of a really great collaboration and friendship with them. Ariel was there for part of it too and we got to meet, but there was also a passing of the baton that the producers made clear. Now the baby gets handed to Rhys.

Dana Aliya Levinson and Rhys Ernst on the set of Adam

“The whole cast is all shining stars.”

Casting started as Rhys and the producers tried to begin production in 2017 before the leaves fell off the trees.

Rhys: Casting the role of Adam was really tough. It was one of the biggest challenges of the project. I looked at hundreds of casting tapes and there were some people I recognized and lots of people I didn’t. It had to be someone over 18 but who could play younger because there are sex scenes. Eventually, I landed on Nicholas Alexander who was sort of under the radar and living in Florida. He’d done some TV work and some other smaller films, but was mostly a newcomer. He was really, really special and had that thing.

Margaret Qualley I cast early on, before Nick, because she’d been floated and there was no question she would be perfect for Casey. I was already a fan of hers. Once we had those two, I was like, okay we can get this done this summer. I relocated to New York from LA. I brought my cat and my partner and everything. And once I was in New York, we hit the ground running and put together the rest of the cast.

Bobbi Salvör Menuez (actor, Gillian): I had met Rhys working on Transparent some years prior and I respected his work. I sent in a tape and then we met for coffee a month or so later when Rhys had offered me the role. We had a chat about it. The script has a lot of complex content so I was curious to discuss it with him. And I just left that conversation feeling really confident in Rhys’ vision and excited to support him in that vision.

And I was excited to see a trans director given the opportunity to tell a complicated story that included characters with imperfect morals and imperfect choices. I was like, oh wow they’re letting a trans person tell a complex story? That’s really cool. (laughs)

Dana: The audition process was pretty short for me. I submitted through open call channels and got an appointment, had my first audition, and then it was two or three weeks later I had a call back. The original audition was just with casting and then for the callback Rhys was in the room. I did the two audition scenes a couple times and then I was put on hold for the role literally the next day. Maybe three or four days after that I found out I’d booked it.

Rhys: Leo Sheng, who plays the roommate character Ethan, was actually one of the last actors I cast, because I was having trouble finding the right person. There were some people I was thinking about and talking to, but I just wasn’t quite there.

I was referred by some friends to Leo’s Instagram. He hadn’t acted before, but he’d done some activism and influencer stuff so he had a bit of a social media following.

Leo Sheng (actor, Ethan): I’d been primarily using social media for transition-related documentation and I’d grown a bit of following through just the culture of queer social media.

I had to turn off notifications and fix my priority settings after being part of The Happy Hippie Foundation’s trans pride campaign. I was getting a lot of messages and it was beautiful but I was really overwhelmed. So I was checking my requests one day and I saw this interesting message about casting for a film. Because of the permissions, it was a couple weeks old, so I thought maybe I missed my chance. But I still responded.

Rhys: He sent in an audition where he was reading with one of his parents. I couldn’t quite get a feel but I could tell there was a spark there. We brought him out in person and we worked together and that confirmed I could get this performance out of him. He just had this shining light. He brought this grace and sincerity to the character.

Leo: I remember getting the sides, auditioning, doing a callback, and flying to New York to meet with Rhys. And then as I was boarding the flight to go home, Howard Gertler called and asked if I wanted to join the film. Most of this was in the span of like 48 hours. I didn’t have an agent or a manager or a lawyer. I didn’t know what was happening but I decided to go with it.

Rhys: The cast was all so lovely and sweet. I could go on and on. I mean, Bobbi, Dana, Chloe, the whole cast is all shining stars and lovely people. Some of the cast was brand new. We had a lot of trans actors who came out of New York theatre but who maybe hadn’t had a lot of on-screen experience and then some people who were quite experienced. It was this really cool, fun, supportive atmosphere among them all.

Nicholas Alexander and Leo Sheng in Adam

“I was surrounded by trans people.”

How did the production’s treatment of trans people compare to other movies and TV shows?

Rhys: Since the Transparent days, and even before on the short films I was making, I was trying to come up with ways to innovate and foster inclusive sets and trans-positive sets. How do we build this? And for me it always had to be a mix of cishet and trans and queer people. It had to always be a mix. I don’t see myself living in a bubble. I want to reach outside into the greater world and bring these worlds together and that’s part of the work. What I’ve learned over time is there’s no way to do that perfectly. Kind of the same way there are no safe spaces, just safer spaces. I think about that a lot now in regards to sets. You can try to create a safer set but you can’t account for everything because it exists in the world. You can’t prevent the world from being the way it is. There’s sexism in the world and racism in the world and ableism and transphobia. That’s not to say you can’t take a lot of steps, but you can’t prevent certain things from happening sometimes because people are people.

On the production of Adam, we took a lot of steps that I had been a part of developing during Transparent. First of all, we were really careful with hiring and tried to employ queer and trans people when possible. We hired the heads of department with a lot of care. There were a lot of women and people of color and queer people who were a part of the crew. There were some trans people, but if you go looking for trans crew, it’s tough. Trans people are a small part of the population period, so it was hard to have a crew with trans people all the way through. But we did our best. And I was interested in it being diverse in all directions, not purely just queer and trans. That was really important to me.

And then all the department heads hired everyone else with a lot of care as well. There were definitely no assholes on-set. People knew what they were getting into and that this was a queer and trans positive journey that we were all going on. There were a lot of really good, warm, lovely people. And there was a lot of excitement and love for what we were doing. People felt like they were working on something special.

Bobbi: I had a great time on-set. There was a lot of amazing cast. I really loved working with Leo Sheng. It was his first time working on a feature. I also met Jari Jones and Mj Rodriguez. There was just a lot of amazing trans and queer talent who I met on that set who I’m still friends with. I remember talking to someone who was a singer about being on T and this was before I’d ever been on T. It was a big gay cute vibe generally.

I remember seeing Mj do her scene and being like oh my god you’re literally a star. That was the day we were shooting at Trans Camp and a lot of the actors we had come in for that were people who I was already in community with and friends with which was really fun. And then everyone I met was really special. It was funny because we started that day doing a pronoun circle and then we filmed a scene with the characters doing a pronoun circle.

Dana: I had a great experience. It was my first professional film gig and so I didn’t have much else to compare it to. But I’m very grateful it was my first professional film gig because I was surrounded by trans people. There wasn’t any of that minority stress of like, will I have to educate people on what being trans means? Am I going to have to play dramaturg and actor? Am I going to be the only trans person on set? We had tons of trans people on set, among the actors, among the crew, obviously Rhys directing, so it made the process much easier because I could just focus on acting. I could just focus on the role instead of concerning myself with the social politics of being trans on a film set.

Leo: It was my first experience acting in front of a camera. I remember just being in awe. A bit of a deer in the headlights, because I just wasn’t sure what to do and I was afraid of doing the wrong thing.

But my first wardrobe fitting was so much fun. I felt so cool and I loved the jacket Ethan wears. And his sneakers. Everybody was so nice. Throughout the shoot, everyone was really patient with me. Patient with basic technical things like hitting my mark, certain movements, being careful not to bump into certain things. All things I’m sure people who are more experienced have intuition to do, but I was brand new. Rhys was so patient and so understanding and so gentle. He was a very gentle director. There was no shaming, no that was wrong. It was always just, let’s try that again, let’s have fun with it. That took a lot of the pressure off of me.

Rhys: I tend to run a really nice set. Maybe “nice” is too light of a word. Positive, loving, not stressful, no shouting. I like to create an environment that people feel good in, so that was definitely happening. And there was a lot of excitement from our cast and crew.

Bobbi: I really like Rhys’ approach to directing. He knows what he wants but he also listens to his actors and is sensitive to the nuance of the scenes.

Leo: I would love to work with Rhys again someday. And Howard and James the producers were great. I really did feel seen. They were treating me like an actor and treating me like somebody who deserved to be there. And that was really big as somebody who, again, had never done anything like that. I was afraid to ask questions, but they were like come to set, come watch, come see what’s happening. Personally, I felt really safe there, in that environment.

Rhys: With everyone’s start paperwork, they were given a short dossier on trans-related best practices on-set and what to expect and how to refer to people and how to be sensitive and respectful. That’s not normal. Those things don’t go out on most sets. We’d do things like pronoun circles especially during big scenes where there were newcomers and more extras. During the morning safety meeting, we’d go around and say our pronouns and talk about why that was important. We would try to bring people into what we were doing and why and make it clear we wanted everyone to be a part of it. We had to all sit together at the table and get the cishet teamster to be able to talk to the nonbinary person who has never been on a movie before. That’s important. We want to foster these conversations and build community. And demystify and de-stigmatize.

Bobbi: The more the people at the top — directors, showrunners, etc. — who either are queer and trans or have trans literacy the better. Ideally both because, believe it or not, cis queer people don’t always have good trans literacy. And then making it a priority to share with crew at all levels.

But there’s also the factor that’s financial capacity to support that effort. I’ve worked on projects where everything is supposed to be really queer and lala but I can just feel because of financial limitations there is someone who is working on the crew for the day who doesn’t know who you are and is just there to do their job. And mistakes happen.

Rhys: On Transparent we had more money and more resources to do additional trainings. That was a TV show put on by Amazon. We had a lot more money and money equals time equals resources. On Adam, we had a pretty small budget. It was a true indie. There was a lot less buffer time. You can’t bring people on early for trainings. So that was part of what led to a couple of bumps. To be honest, I only really know of one bump that I can verify.

There was an extra who was misgendered by somebody in the costume department. We were shocked and horrified to hear that had happened, because we’d been doing all this work to prevent it. So how could it happen? It was really frustrating and upsetting to learn. The producers and I talked to the wardrobe department and talked to the ADs to try to get to the bottom of it. We learned there was a day-player in the wardrobe department — which means someone who came on just for that day, someone who floats in to help when extra help is needed — and they didn’t get the sort of cultural update as thoroughly as everybody else had. And they also might not have been chosen with as much care. They were just somebody to help dress extras for that one day and they used a different pronoun for someone who used they/them. It wasn’t malicious, but it was a fuck up.

Bobbi: Being misgendered sucks. I’m familiar. But compared to other productions this was so much better. I’ve definitely been misgendered on projects since being out as trans. Even when I’ve been lead talent. It just happens. Everyone is just doing the best they can.

Jude: It’s hard. There are so many people around. Any time as a trans person you go into a place where there are strangers, not everyone is going to be completely informed on how to talk to you. Even on a trans film set. They had a monumental task to make sure no one on the crew ever misgendered someone. That’s a gargantuan task that they seemed to mostly pull off. It’s hard. You don’t know these people. It’s nearly impossible to know every extra’s pronouns and how they identify while also trying to actually make a movie.

Rhys: I hate that it happened, but I also know that even trans people might sometimes accidentally use the wrong pronoun for another person. It’s not always ill-intended. Generally, it’s not. I wish there were different words for an accidental misgendering vs. an intentional misgendering. Because those are so different. I’m not trying to make excuses. It shouldn’t have happened. But maybe it would happen on an all trans set too, and what do you do about that?

Bobbi: I know this background actor was also upset they didn’t get to read the whole script. And as someone who has worked in the industry for a long time I’ve literally had roles where I have a character name and a whole speaking role and I still never get to see the full script. (laughs) That’s standard and, from my perspective, reasonable.

It’s rare to be on a set where people’s complexity in their gender is being honored at all times. But it does happen and it is possible and when it happens it’s really cool and special. And my experience on the set of Adam was that. Of course, that wasn’t the case for everybody.

Rhys: It was just so weird because my job on Transparent was to create and foster trans-inclusive sets. So then when I’m working on a smaller production with less resources, there’s a mistake that happens and it becomes part of this huge backlash. It was frustrating, because I was really working hard to prevent this kind of thing. But I learned that you can’t. You can’t prevent it all.

Michaela Jaé Rodriguez and Rhys Ernst on the set of Adam

“I decided that I needed to get out in front of this.”

While still in post-production, the first negative responses to the movie began.

Rhys (on Medium, June 5, 2018): Because of the long history of harmful and outright false depictions of trans lives, our community is rightfully distrustful of material that might add to this negative legacy. However, I believe in the power of trans art and storytelling, even when it is challenging or uncomfortable. Creating trans art often requires difficult conversations, and I strive to show up, be present and responsible to this dialogue.

Howard: I wasn’t familiar with the extent of the backlash to the book until after we’d shot the film.

James: The trans folks I knew really liked and recommended the book.

Rhys: A small publication put out an article saying this movie was secretly the most transphobic thing ever. It was half-formed but it started to catch on because of the headline. This was in 2018 when we were still in post-production. So I decided that I needed to get out in front of this and introduce myself to audiences who might not know who I am. I wanted to build a little bit of trust, because I had built a certain amount of trust with a certain audience but it was quite small in comparison to the social avalanche that happened. I realized a lot of people didn’t know of me and my work and it didn’t matter all the work I’d done beforehand. So it was preventive. To try and prevent the dam from breaking.

Howard: Once I learned of the backlash to the book, we knew there would probably be a backlash to the film. Rhys wrote a beautiful piece on Medium to provide more context, and we posted a statement as a team shortly before the film’s release.

James: Strangely, one of the things I most treasure about the Adam experience was working with Rhys, Joe, and Howard through the very difficult period in post-production when a flurry of online invective started surfacing against the film — a film, of course, which no one had as yet seen.

One reason was watching Rhys so humanely and thoughtfully make the effort to, as we say, make space for people’s negativity, which we always reminded ourselves was coming from a place of actual vulnerability and pain. We realized we had to focus on the work and be patient with people, which is not as easy as it sounds. So patient, in fact, that I ended up, in a very painful call, having to tell the programmers at Toronto [International Film Festival], who loved the film passionately, that we were going to rescind our submission because we really felt we needed to give Rhys the time and space to think about how to engage and present the work.

The kind of abstract rage some people were (at least in my mind) wrongheadedly directing at, well, the idea of the film, was coming from a place that needed to be recognized as real; we couldn’t honestly share that recognition if we were simply putting ourselves and Rhys into both a defensive crouch and an offensive “crisis management” PR position. The extra months gave Rhys the time to put his thoughts together, and for us to quietly pre-screen the film for people whose critical and political acumen and opinions we valued and who, through their own responses, gave us and Rhys the affirmation that, yes, Rhys was right to have taken the risk to make the film, and that we knew we would be forever grateful he did so. I thus have the pleasure of being able to be proud both of the film, but also, by association, of Rhys’ very loving embrace even of those who, at least before the film actually premiered, had it out for his work.

Rhys: I mean, I’d been working towards a career in directing for a long time. I started making short films in undergrad in the early 2000s and my first significant effort played in a lot of film festivals. After undergrad, when I moved to New York, I knew I couldn’t work as a director right away. You have to pay your dues and cut your teeth so I worked on sets and tried to learn as much as I could wearing all these different hats. I did sound department and camera department and editing and PA’ing. But that was all in the interest of gaining more skills so I could ultimately be a better director.

When I decided to leave New York, I went to grad school at CalArts. I did a three year MFA with a focus on directing and narrative construction and working with actors. And I left school with a short at Sundance. Then at Sundance, I met Joey Soloway, and that’s how I got scooped into Transparent. It was never the plan to be a producer. That was a weird and unexpected left field thing.

Transparent ended up being a really amazing education for me as a producer, but I was really trying to keep my eye on the prize of moving toward directing. There had been a conversation of me directing some episodes since season one but it kept getting postponed. It took longer than it should have in my opinion, but then it finally happened and I was like, yes, I’m going in the right direction. I’d just signed with an agency and I was feeling on an upswing. That’s when Adam came to me. I was ready to go.

But the people upset about the movie hadn’t seen my films. They didn’t know my work. If they knew my name it was only from Transparent, and they probably didn’t even know that.

Rhys Ernst and cinematographer Shawn Peters on the set of Adam

“Trans stuff is a risk. Period.”

The movie went to Sundance in January of 2019 — with an additional out trans cast member.

Bobbi: It’s a special movie for me because it’s the first thing where I’m credited under my new name. And I’m so grateful this was the project that was coming out around the time I was transitioning.

Before filming, I had privately identified that I was nonbinary, and I had a lot of questions about what that would mean for me. I was in an interior, private place. I had very few close friends who were connected to that reality for me. I still had long hair and was outwardly presenting in a way that wouldn’t read as trans to most people. Rhys didn’t even know this about me when we were filming.

But by the time it was getting submitted to festivals, we had enough social overlap that he had heard from mutual friends. At some point when they were in post-production, Rhys checked in with me and asked about the name credit. And I was like oh my God I do secretly have a new name. Having a trans director who has amazing trans literacy, I felt very held through the whole thing. After filming, I was looking inward and felt like I needed to take a break from auditioning and from modeling. I needed to take a break from things that required my visibility. I communicated this to my team and they were really supportive. And it was around that time the film got into Sundance.

Rhys and I went on a walk when I was visiting LA. He was like: Do whatever you need to do, it’s no problem, but I’ll be really sad if you don’t keep acting. I think you’re a talented, special person. And also if you decide that you want to come to Sundance, me and my producers are here to support you in whatever way you need.

I made the decision that I did want to do that and then they set up meetings for me with people at GLAAD who did media training about how to navigate this. I was having a really hard time changing my handle on Instagram because I was verified and it took someone at GLAAD emailing Instagram a hundred times. It took months.

They were just there for me. I’d been to Sundance before so it wasn’t totally unknown territory. But it was just nice. Getting dinner with Leo after a day of doing press and being with Rhys. I don’t know. It just felt like oh okay I can do this. I felt really supported. And a lot of talent flew out for it who were really excited about the project.

Rhys: The premiere of the film at Sundance was truly incredible. I was really nervous! I didn’t know how it would be received. Is it funny? Is it too spicy? Will people like it? Will they take away the message I’m trying to tell? And it was above and beyond my expectations. It played through the roof. There were some parts where people laughed so hard in the right way at the right time, to an extent that shocked me actually. We were on cloud nine. We had six screenings at Sundance and every one was that. Every single screening. People were like oh my God your film is getting so much buzz, it might win the audience award. It was that kind of vibe. Unfortunately, we didn’t win the audience award. But I think we were close! That was the word on the street at least. And that tells you about the reaction.

Howard: Screening the film at Sundance was a dream. Rhys, Ariel, the actors and crew put their hearts and souls into making the film, and the audiences were so receptive, the Q&As enlightening. It felt like it was reaching both queer and cishet audiences.

Rhys: Our premiere was full of queer and trans people. I knew a lot of them or knew of them. It was totally packed at the Library Theater in Park City. I saw this one person who used to be a pretty big film programmer at different queer film festivals and they couldn’t believe what we pulled off with this movie. They were speechless. It was crazy. It was incredible. We felt like we caught lightning. And people got what it was trying to say. Completely unambiguously. There wasn’t even a shred of pushback or negative feedback at all. Like zero. Zero. And that included reviewers — straight and queer. That was the story out of Sundance. It was amazing.

James: Playability with an audience is only one factor, and Adam hit the market just at the beginning of the end of the big streamers’ paying reasonable licensing fees to independent distributors — Sundance became what it still mainly is, an all-or-nearly-nothing roulette wheel.

Rhys: Some of the bigger distributors were nervous about the potential blowback even though nothing had happened after that initial article. But they were doing their due diligence and had googled. They got cold feet. So we ended up with a small distributor, but it wasn’t because anything had happened. It was more speculative. Trans stuff is a risk. Period.

James: I think the sale of the film was most probably hurt by the online venom.

Howard: No distributors would ever vocalize to us that they were hesitant to support this kind of trans project — but selling queer films is always a challenge. We were so glad that Wolfe picked it up and gave us a theatrical release.

Bobbi: I went from that Sundance to within a month landing two new projects after thinking my career would be over because I was trans. One of those roles was on Euphoria.

Rhys has such a paternal energy toward me. I cannot imagine a better director to be at a festival with when publicly coming out.

Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Chloë Levine, Rhys Ernst, Leo Sheng, and Nicholas Alexander at Sundance (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)

“It just felt like anger directed at the wrong people.”

Between Outfest in late July 2019 and the movie’s release in mid-August, the controversy reached its peak.

Rhys: To be honest, I don’t think the Medium article was that widely read. When people are angry online they don’t actually care. They just don’t care to read any further. Even if it’s like, “hey there’s this thing that contradicts what you thought were facts.” They don’t care.

Dana: It wasn’t surprising, because we knew that the book was controversial. But it was frustrating. Some of the things that were considered problematic about the book weren’t even in the film. Ariel knew what the criticisms were. And while she wasn’t going to address every criticism, because one was literally the premise of the book, she changed the big things around consent. So it was a little frustrating, because it was like can you just wait until you actually see the movie before assuming it’s going to be terrible?

Bobbi: I felt really confident in the decisions that Rhys made as a director. There were really graceful, dynamic choices to show characters who are making fucked up choices in a way that wasn’t condoning that behavior. I didn’t feel like the film condoned any of the problematic behavior that happened in it. At all. It was actually very directly called out time and time again in the film itself.

It’s such an interesting dynamic script in what it does with this story. I remember in Q&As highlighting the fact that it was mistaken identity of the genre thinking it’s a romcom when actually the more important relationship is the friendship between this cis guy and this trans guy. That’s the real love story in that movie which to me is so interesting and dynamic. I’d never seen that.

Ariel: We’d go to these screenings where it would play really well, we’d have a great Q&A after and a really interesting conversation, and then we’d go home and go online and it would be totally different. It was a bit confusing.

Rhys: Outfest was a weird weekend for me. The backlash tipped over irrevocably on my doorstep within the 24 hour span of getting an award at this LGBT film festival. The cognitive dissonance of those different experiences was so bizarre. There was one conversation that was happening online among people who almost entirely hadn’t seen the movie and another conversation that was happening at film festivals and with critics and with engaged viewers who had actually watched the film. They were completely different conversations. And there was no way to reconcile those two separate worlds.

Howard: What really stung were attacks from folks who hadn’t seen the film. But I also recognized that we were and are living in a time of pain for the queer community, for our trans friends and family in particular, and finding healing for that pain is more important to me than wincing at being review-bombed on Letterboxd.

Leo: I was not a stranger to online social media community discourse. And I felt really torn because I felt at the time — and I still sort of think this — that if I hadn’t been a part of the project, if I didn’t know what I knew, I probably would have felt the same way.

When you hear it summarized in a particular way, it’s like oh my goodness what is happening? But because I was up close and got to hear the process, I felt more trust. I knew it wasn’t going to be this throwaway thing where yeah a trans director was hired, but he didn’t care because xyz. No, he cared a lot. It’s hard because I think everyone’s feelings were real and everyone’s feelings were valid. Because if you weren’t there at the time period, in the community, the idea of going back to 2006 and watching that feels not fun.

There were real people involved on both sides. There were real people who were upset by the film or their perception of the film. And there were real people who were involved in the making of it. I felt very sad. And I felt like as a trans person in the film, I was getting more of the backlash than some of the cis actors. I tried to engage a little bit in conversation. Sometimes it went well. Sometimes it did not go well and I was like maybe I shouldn’t say anything at all. I saw the things that were being said to Rhys and that was really hard to witness.

Rhys: Honestly, it was heartbreaking. On one hand, I had a great experience with the film at screenings and with viewers in person. That was overwhelmingly positive. So I had this great ride with the movie in a sense. And I’m really proud of the movie and the experiences I had as a result and the people I met. I really like the movie. I really worked hard on it, you know? And I really believe in the ideas that the movie is trying to communicate in terms of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and having empathy. That’s what the fucking movie is about. It’s a trans-affirming movie.

But it was also heartbreaking at the same time. It’s very frustrating to be misunderstood, to try saying that being trans is good and other people are like, this is transphobic this is transphobic this is harmful. That’s an incredibly frustrating experience.

To have an internet pile on is a pretty terrible experience that I think most people are even scared to imagine. It was a bad experience. I think it made me stronger, but I did have to go to therapy as a result. That was important to let go of a lot of it. But I wouldn’t wish it on an enemy. It was terrible.

Bobbi: The film includes complicated stuff, so I was disappointed but not surprised by the internet takedown. It felt like this familiar situation of queer in-fighting. Being in queer community a lot of us have experiences of trauma, have experiences of trauma around our gender — or I can just speak personally — I have trauma around my gender. Sometimes I might not feel so generous about something. And, of course, it’s going to be someone within reach who it’s going to be easiest to take down. I think that’s very prevalent in queer community and it makes me feel sad.

Jude: Rhys directing a feature in 2019 was huge. Silas Howard had done A Kid Like Jake in 2018, but that film isn’t really about the kid, it’s about the parents. This is a much queerer film. Then there was Sydney Freeland who made Drunktown’s Finest in 2014. But I remember making a list of trans directors and it was so hard to find them pre-Isabel Sandoval.

The trans movies that were getting made were still things like The Assignment with Michelle Rodriguez. They were terrible. Then you’d see Laverne Cox in something here and there but that usually wouldn’t be very good either.

We were coming off Tangerine which was a fun, hopeful moment. But [cishet director] Sean Baker is still in the conversation while [trans actress] Mya Taylor hasn’t had the career she deserves.

Ariel: It felt like a lot of the people commenting online, especially because they hadn’t read the book or seen the movie, were using this as an opportunity to platform their views on trans representation in general. They were like, here’s a chance to say what I want to say about this topic. It had nothing to do with art. It was a political statement. Which I think is unfortunate, because art certainly is political, but it’s not political in that way. We weren’t creating a social justice manifesto. And people seemed to be treating it that way. In a lot of ways, I don’t think Adam was really given a chance to be engaged with as art. And that makes me sad. I wrote it to ask questions, not to provide answers.

Leo: I think about Disclosure when Jen Richards says it wouldn’t be so problematic if we had more stories out there. As a community we want so badly to be seen well, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for experimenting and exploring stories that are complicated. It’s a really hard line to balance. So I felt very torn. Because I did feel for the people who were scared this would set our stories and our voice back. But I also was like — the transphobia was the point. The point is that this is reflective of the real community in the 2000s that was transphobic! I understand not wanting to see that. But I didn’t feel like it was very fair for the real people involved in the movie.

Jude: There was a sense that this is it. This was our one trans film for the year. And it’s good for trans people to want more, to expect more, to expect better from media, but it just felt like anger directed at the wrong people.

Rhys: If we had a larger distributor, the kind of blowback might have looked pretty different. It’s quite common for there to be rumblings of controversy around a lot of projects and bigger distributors have dedicated PR departments to manage it. Controversies go away all the time.

And while it was awesome to do a theatrical release — it was a lifelong dream of mine, to have the film on the marquee at IFC Center, it was awesome — because it was limited access, it let the rumor mill spin and spin. Then the message became don’t watch this movie, it’s harmful, and that makes it impossible to check if it’s actually harmful or not.

Dana: I was grateful that when the movie came out, there actually was a lot of positivity around it from the queer community and from the trans community. I feel like in the end a lot of people did see it and did form their own opinions. And that’s not to say it’s above criticism! But in the end it felt like the backlash was just a very loud minority of people, rather than feeling like this onslaught majority opinion.

Bobbi: I was really heartwarmed by so many trans friends who came and saw the movie and felt pissed because the people taking it down on the internet largely hadn’t watched it. They weren’t taking into account the ways the film is a departure from the book — if they had even read the book. It was very get mad about a headline.

Rhys: I really think, as trans people, we need to be much more careful about eating our own. We need to stop terrorizing people within our own community without true interrogation into what the issues truly are. It was a classic bad faith reading. It was what Eve Sedgewick would call “a paranoid reading.” And actually the backlash was what ended up being harmful! It made it harder to get certain trans things financed and distributed. We didn’t have a lot of examples of successful trans films out there.

Bobbi: The thing that sucks about it in my opinion is it affected a movie that could have, in theory, shoulda, woulda, coulda, had a different kind of trajectory with more support. When a complex film by a trans person is supported, it supports the future of trans filmmaking, because that’s what executives care about. How did the movie do? How did it do financially? Rhys is such a talented director and should have already made other features since then. There should be big A-list people who are so excited to work with him. That’s the part that makes me be like… guys, can we not do that?

Rhys: It definitely limited the trajectory of the movie. I think if there hadn’t been this kind of backlash the movie could’ve had a very different life. I’m sure it would’ve had a different life. There’s no question. It would’ve been seen more broadly and I think it would’ve opened more doors for me. The fact that my first feature didn’t go the distance in terms of success or whatever, yeah, it was a setback.

Margaret Qualley and Rhys Ernst on the set of Adam

“So much has changed in five years.”

How would Adam be received if it came out today?

Rhys: After the backlash and during the pandemic, I thought a lot about whether I would shy away from something perceived as controversial in the future. Would I change course around a work like this? And, honestly, the decision I came to was no. I will continue to go toward the thing I’m compelled by, to the interesting stories I feel need to be told, even if they might be perceived to be controversial. In fact, it made me feel even more of a conviction in what I’m doing.

Jude: What should we want from queer media? That’s the question we spend our careers as critics exploring. And everyone is going to have a different answer. Personally, I want big swings with trans people at the helm.

Leo: So much has changed in five years, in our community, politically, social media-wise. I think the discourse would look different now, but the same passion and same feelings would be there. I just think it would take a different form.

Ariel: If it came out now, it would be easier to see it as a period piece about a specific time. 2014 was only seven years after the time it was about, and 2019 was only thirteen years. It was pretty recent. Even though a lot of people knew it was set in 2006, it wasn’t far away enough for people to remove it from the present. And maybe now in 2024, you can really see that was a very different time. These identities were just coming into visibility, and people were more widely claiming them for the first time. It was just a completely different environment.

Bobbi: If it came out now, I think the people taking it down would just be transphobic people. And then maybe the queers would band together to defend it. At the time, fewer people were obsessed with being transphobic in the public eye. I mean, even J.K. Rowling was less annoying back then. Now there’s this emboldened transphobic contingency on the internet. Shit is weird in a different way now.

Jude: My sense is there has been a pivot among young people. I think people observed over-reactions like this one and now think, it’s just one film. If you want a different kind of trans film, go see a different one. There are more options now, so I think there’s less pressure.

Dana: I remember speaking with someone on the production team who said every minority group in media has to go through the sinner phase then the saint phase and then, finally, they’re allowed to be represented dimensionally.

One of the things I was super excited about in playing Hazel was I felt like she was pushing back. She was a kind of trans character we just weren’t seeing on-screen at the time. And I feel like in the past five years, that’s started to change. Queer audiences started to see themselves more and therefore became less guarded in the representation they wanted. People are less focused on what cis and straight people might think and more interested in seeing themselves as fully dimensional humans on-screen.

Rhys: My sense is that queer audiences are more adventurous now. I think there’s a fatigue with purely affirmational, light, pandering, vanilla work. People are excited about things that are transgressive. I’m noticing that with much younger people. They’re interested in transgression. The pendulum swings back and forth. Now would have been a better time for Adam to come out.

Leo: It’s still around. It’s still streaming. I’m so curious how people watching it for the first time now will feel.

Adam is streaming on Hulu. It currently has a 2.4 on Letterboxd.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!