Kristen Stewart Recalls 'Annoying' Studio Notes About Her Hair and Wardrobe on “Happiest Season ”Set

Navigating the queer holiday rom-com, Kristen Stewart says, “the identity was beaten out of my goals”

Kristen Stewart is — with characteristic candor — remembering her time making Happiest Season.

Speaking to Them magazine, the 33-year-old star recalled “getting so many studio executive notes about my hair and my clothes.”

Featuring Stewart and Mackenzie Davis as girlfriends, 2020’s Happiest Season was distributed by Hulu and Sony Pictures internationally. Billed as the first lesbian holiday rom-com from a major studio, it broke premiere records for the streaming service as its most-watched original film.

Related: Kristen Stewart's Love Lies Bleeding Costar Breaks Down Their Sex Scenes: 'So Not Glamorous' (Exclusive)

Stewart, who stars in the radically queer thriller Love Lies Bleeding (in theaters now), considers Happiest Season “a family-friendly movie designed to promote tolerance,” according to Them.

“The identity was beaten out of my goals there,” she said of the film. Receiving notes from studio executives, “I was like, ‘You did read the script. You did hire me. What are we doing here?’ It was f---ing annoying.”

Directed by Clea DuVall and co-written by DuVall and Mary Holland, Happiest Season followed the structure of a holiday rom-com — featuring Stewart’s character Abby accompanying Davis’ closeted character Harper to her family’s Christmas celebrations — but centered on a queer relationship, largely unprecedented in mainstream cinema.

In retrospect, adjustments from producers were “fine,” Stewart told Them, “because I guess there are ways that you need to shroud things for everyone to easily digest. And I’m down with that.”

She added praise for her director, saying, “Honestly, f---ing hats off to Clea, because I don’t have the patience [to do] that.”

Related: Kristen Stewart Says If She Wasn’t an Actor She’d ‘Probably Be a Caterer’ and ‘Keep the Set Running’ (Exclusive)

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After publicly identifying as bisexual in 2017 and resisting defining her sexuality, Stewart began playing more and more queer roles in film, from 2018’s JT LeRoy and 2019’s Charlie’s Angels to Happiest Season.

Interviewed by DuVall for InStyle magazine in 2020, the Twilight actress discussed feeling “cagey” about navigating relationships while in the public eye. "The first time I ever dated a girl, I was immediately asked if I was a lesbian," Stewart said at the time. “I didn't like giving myself to the public, in a way. It felt like such thievery."

She added that the “pressure of representing a group of people, of representing queerness, wasn't something I understood then.”

Happiest Season also starred Aubrey Plaza, Mary Steenburgen, Victor Garber, Alison Brie and Dan Levy — a cast partially made up of other openly queer actors.

Related: Aubrey Plaza Wants a 'Happiest Season' Sequel in Which Her Character Ends Up with Clea DuVall

The Rose Glass film Love Lies Bleeding extends Stewart’s streak of playing queer characters, costarring with Katy O'Brian as a vengeful bodybuilder. Speaking with Them, Stewart called the critically acclaimed A24 hit “pretty f---ing sick.”

Among Stewart’s upcoming projects are playing critic Susan Sontag and making a feature directorial debut with an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir The Chronology of Water.

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