How ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ Star Brigette Lundy-Paine Became a ‘Space-Alien Cowboy’
When Brigette Lundy-Paine met director Jane Schoenbrun, they knew they needed to be a part of A24’s emo horror hit, I Saw the TV Glow. It wasn’t that Lundy-Paine (who uses they/them pronouns) shared in Schoenbrun’s specific obsessions; before joining the cast, they had not once watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the film’s loudest inspirations. Instead, as Lundy-Paine explains it, they have “the same way of delighting in obsession” as Schoenbrun. The two are both into philosophy and theory, and, before long, they were exchanging manifestos about dildos.
I Saw the TV Glow is a story about longing, nostalgia, queerness, and oppression. The film explores, as Lundy-Paine put it at one point during a conversation with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, what it means to suffer through a social prison—“but also the suffering that is required to break free from it.”
Alongside films like Theda Hammel’s Sundance comedy Stress Positions and Vera Drew’s Warner Bros. parody The People’s Joker, Schoenbrun’s film has helped make 2024 a big year for mainstream films that center trans issues. While Lundy-Paine recognizes the power that trans cinema holds, they also emphasized their belief that it’s not especially healthy to preoccupy oneself with what’s trendy—“especially if it's based around an identity, because in order to exploit an identity, the power must be taken from it.”