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As But I’m a Cheerleader celebrates 25 years of being a trailblazing cult classic on July 7, star Clea DuVall is reminiscing.
“It was very ahead of its time,” the actress-filmmaker, 47, tells PEOPLE. Not only were there “not a lot of queer-centered stories at the time,” she adds, but an LGBTQ+ romcom set at a conversion therapy camp “was approaching such serious, real issues that we were dealing with then — and, in some ways, still now.”
In the Jamie Babbit-directed movie, DuVall starred as the punkish Graham, eventual love interest to Natasha Lyonne’s high school cheerleader Megan. But I’m a Cheerleader followed their journey at a camp where boys in blue and girls in pink learn traditional gender roles through bizarre exercises and simulations. The movie famously featured a roster of campy supporting stars, including RuPaul, Melanie Lynskey, Michelle Williams, Julie Delpy, Cathy Moriarty and Mink Stole.
“It definitely was the most rewarding thing I had ever done,” says DuVall of filming it back in 1999. In the 25 years since, fans have told her the movie “gave them the courage to come out, and it made them feel comfortable, and it made them feel seen… That is so powerful, and it’s not true for everything you have the privilege of doing as an actor.”
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When asked for a favorite highlight from the movie’s set, DuVall’s answer is more personal. “There were a lot of fun memories; some things that I cannot share with PEOPLE magazine,” she quips. “But then, I think [of] Natasha. She’s very special to me, and she’s such a special performer. I feel like working with her on that, working with her in everything we’ve had the privilege of working on together, something comes out when we’re in a scene together that doesn’t come out, for me at least, anywhere else.”
DuVall and Lyonne, 46, had become friends prior to Babbit and screenwriter Brian Wayne Peterson putting together But I’m a Cheerleader. In fact, it was only because the Russian Doll star saw a draft of the movie’s script in DuVall’s car that she ended up asking to audition and winning the lead role.
“The memorable moments for me on set are not even necessarily that extraordinary,” shares DuVall. “I remember there’s a scene where our characters are finally kind of getting along and we’re washing dishes together and having this nice conversation. And I remember just feeling maybe the most grounded and the most present I had ever felt in a scene before, in that moment with her.”
Those kinds of grounded moments are “the gold as an actor,” she adds. “What I’m always striving for is just being able to exist in the scene and not aware of all of the other things going on. [When] you can just be present with someone, it’s really, really special.”
After But I’m a Cheerleader, DuVall and Lyonne reunited on screen with each other and Lynskey, 48, in 2016’s The Intervention. DuVall also played sister to Lyonne’s Poker Face character in one episode of the Peacock mystery-comedy.
