‘Fire Island’ Director Andrew Ahn Breaks Down the Film’s Spin on That Famous ‘Pride & Prejudice’ Rain Scene

In the Andrew Ahn-directed Fire Island, odes abound to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. Not just in the dialogue or characters, who are modern queer spins on the Regency-era ensemble, but in entire scenes that serve as direct callbacks or references to the original book or its various screen adaptations.

In one notable sequence, the film recreates Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy’s iconic rain interaction from the 2005 Joe Wright-directed movie starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. Set between Noah (Joel Kim Booster, who doubles as writer) and Will (Conrad Ricamora) as they make their way through the meat rack, the verbal spar-turned-near-kiss is one of the clearest ways Fire Island pays homage to the Pride & Prejudice-adapted universe.

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But it does so through a distinctly queer lens, from its director to its writer to its leading actors, delivering a new (and refreshing) way of experiencing the familiar period rom-com. Scenes between Booster and Ricamora’s characters — particularly this one, where they’re trading both barbs and embraces — are electric. It’s certainly a product of the duo’s acting strength and chemistry, but also the authenticity of the shot.

“I think it’s really important that we had an all queer cast so that, when they kiss each other, they’re not thinking about, ‘Oh, I’m straight and then having to play gay,'” the director told The Hollywood Reporter about the power of having gay Asian men play that onscreen during the Hulu movie’s most (dramatically) romantic moments. “The authenticity of their queer experience really lends itself to subliminally showing: this is queer. These are queer kisses.”

Speaking to THR, Ahn unpacked the creative choices around the gay, modern retelling, touching on everything from the writing and acting to sound and cinematography that helped deliver one of the film’s most vulnerable and striking odes to Jane Austen and queer romance.

What was your overall artistic concept or vision for this scene, including those references to the 2005 film, and how did it fit within Noah and Will’s larger love story? 

When I read the scene in Joel’s screenplay, it was scripted as a rainy meat rack fight, and I immediately thought of the moment from Joe Wright’s adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. I picked up on the fact that Joel was referencing that scene. I love Joe Wright’s adaptation. I think it’s brilliant, and it’s one of my favorite movies. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to make this movie. I love how that film brings out the modern qualities of Jane Austen’s writing. I thought about the scene from a very emotional place, which was that these characters are finally telling the truth to each other. They’re finally confronting each other. They’re finally articulating things they’ve held close to the chest throughout the film.

I think a big part of that is because of the rain. You want to get out of the rain. These characters are wet and angry. I think there’s something about rain that just ups the stakes. At one point, the studio had suggested we lose the rain because it’s expensive. It’s a pain in the butt. It’s going to slow you down. But Joel and I both felt very strongly about it because there is an emotional reason why the rain is there. I think that these characters wouldn’t be as truthful to each other, there wouldn’t be as much immediacy and urgency to say these words, if it weren’t raining during the scene.

Noah and Will are hearing for the first time what the other really thinks about them. Capturing emotional candidness and vulnerability between two gay Asian men on screen is not unfamiliar territory for you. How were you thinking about exploring that in this specific scene versus your past work? 

I think there’s something about the scene that, for me, feels like that moment where things have to get worse before they get better. I think that is part of the emotional process that a lot of people want to skip, but that I think is so important in the building of any sort of relationship. So I really love the desire to go to some dark places. There are a lot of accusations, there are a lot of attacks. But I think it’s important as queer people that sometimes we have those come-to-Jesus moments. (Laughs.) Even if they’re not totally accurate. Sometimes it just comes out of passion or the moment carries you away. But it was really important to me to find a real sense of vulnerability in both of the characters. That’s emphasized in the setting, in the rain and even their costuming. They’re both shirtless, still coming from the underwear party. I think that was important, especially for that moment at the end of the scene when they touch each other in a very intimate way. As harsh as they are to each other, we also wanted to find that kind of fleshy softness in the scene.

I think more so than in my other work, it is a very dialogue-driven scene, and that was really important to the moment. The scene was actually rewritten quite a bit after we cast Conrad Ricamora because originally the character of Will wasn’t scripted as Asian American. In casting Conrad, we had to make some adjustments because before, there were more differences between Will and Noah, and now they actually had this one very significant thing in common. So we had to emphasize other differences and the one that I think Joel pulled out of the character is straightness. Being able to pass as straight is something that a lot of people see as a privilege, and I think that’s a really fascinating way to talk about the privilege of a Mr. Darcy character within a gay context.

You didn’t use any needle drops or composition to fill out the scene’s soundscape. Why did you want the full sound of the storm as the primary backdrop for the actor’s dialogue? 

I think it’s really important to have the scene feel stormy. I wanted the visuals and the sound to mirror what’s happening emotionally between these two characters. I think there’s something about heavy rain that immediately you’re having to yell to someone. Kind of instinctually, these characters are already pitched very high. They’re ready for an argument, even if they don’t realize it. It’s a little bit like that moment in the underwear party on the dance floor where Noah and Will are pushed together by the crowd. There’s something about the situation that forces them together, and then they have to deal with each other. So in this scene, yeah, they have to yell at each other from the get-go so that they can just hear each other. We emphasized that in our sound design.

Our sound designer, Gene Park, is brilliant and knows a thing or two about creating a mood. He was the sound designer for Midsommar, which is a very different movie. (Laughs.) But I think that just goes to show his sensibilities. We added additional rain sound to really get that scene to feel dramatic in the way that we wanted to. It’s all over. It’s close-sounding rain. It’s distant rain. We really wanted you to feel engulfed by this storm. Then I love the visuals. It was a pretty heavy pour from the rain towers. It wasn’t a sprinkle. Our cinematographer Felipe Vara de Rey did a really beautiful job of lighting the rain in a way that let it sparkle like jewels. If you take a look at Conrad’s left ear, our frame right, there’s a trickle of rain coming off of his earlobe. It’s just sparkling and I love it. It’s one of my favorite things to look at. I definitely wanted it to feel as experiential for the audience as possible.

One of the biggest differences between Fire Island’s rain scene and the 2005 film is where the camera goes and how it frames the conversation. Why did you want to frame these characters with the added darkness and moonlight? 

Felipe and I had a very, very thorough shot list of that sequence and it was very honest. We didn’t want to overcomplicate the visual design of the scene because it’s a scene about directness. We didn’t want to make something flowery. We wanted the visual design of the scene to be as direct as the emotions of the scene, as the characters. So one of the things we did was very deliberately throughout the scene, we get closer to our characters, but also closer to eye line. We really start to get into each other’s perspectives, whereas earlier in the scene, we play them a bit more objectively, and so it gets more and more subjective as they really dig into each other.

I think the lighting is really interesting. The movie’s a very bright sunbleached palette and with the underwear party sequence, and in particular, this rain scene and then the after-party scene, Felipe and I talked a lot about shifting into a different mode and wanting to kind of play the darkness of it to hide things in shadow. To have these characters enveloped by darkness and hit by something very specific, whether it’s dance floor light or the moon. So I think that strategy really gives the film that quality that Joel writes about in the screenplay, which is that time on Fire Island seems to stretch on forever.

Did you have Joel and Conrad play their performances differently through various takes and if so, how did that affect the final cut? 

We played with the power dynamic of the argument with the various takes. I remember asking Conrad to try a take where he fights fire with fire, spitting insults back to Noah. In another take, I asked Conrad to de-escalate the situation, try to reason with Noah. For Joel, I tried to show various degrees of hurt. Does he internalize what Will is saying to him? Or does he deflect it? I believe Brian [Kates] and I wove the various takes together, crafting micro beats of aggression and hurt throughout the scene. It made the scene feel more like a push and pull, more alive.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

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