Cover story
S.F.-born actress sees parallels in first starring film role
We look at the 2017 Frameline Film Festival. Pictured: author Armistead Maupin, who appears in “The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin,” the opening-night movie.
For actress and singer Lena Hall, it has never been a conscious choice to seek out LGBTQthemed material: Queer characters have just frequently been the ones to resonate the most strongly with her.
“I think at the core I’m always drawn to the struggle of a character that’s kind of an underdog trying to be understood,” says Hall, calling from a cafe near her home in New York City. “A lot of times that underdog, that character, happens to be LGBTQ. It’s just something that keeps coming to me. I very much relate. I was born in the Haight-Ashbury; I was raised in a very nontraditional home. I had drag queen and transgender nannies and mothers.”
The 37-year-old performer, born Selina Carvajal, won a Tony Award for best featured actress in a musical in 2014 for the role of Yitzhak (a gay man) in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and also was in the original production of the similarly
queer-themed musical “Kinky Boots.” In October, Hall not only reprised her role as Yitzhak opposite Darren Criss at the Golden Gate Theatre, but, in a first for the production, she played the title role of the transgender rocker for one performance a week.
Now Hall is also starring in a film for the first time, “Becks,” directed by Daniel Powell and Elizabeth Rohrbaugh, co-starring Christine Lahti and Mena Suvari. The film will be the centerpiece of the Frameline LGBT film festival on June 21 with Hall in attendance. “Becks” tells the story of singersongwriter Becks (Hall), who after getting dumped by her Los Angeles girlfriend seeks refuge with her conflicted former-nun mother (Lahti) back in her Midwest hometown.
“I was excited when they came to me with the script and the idea,” Hall says. “I had wanted to do film or TV that also incorporated my musical talents, singing and playing guitar. I got to play a singer-songwriter in a complicated family dealing with complex issues and kind of growing up.”
While making the film, Hall related to parts of her character’s journey personally. “It’s funny, a lot of what I do reflects what’s going on in my life, and there were a lot of little parallels to me and the character. I grew up a lot during the filming.”
Part of what attracted Hall to “Becks” was the way the personal challenges between her lesbian daughter character and her religiously conflicted mother were portrayed. Hall appreciated “the empathy you have for both characters in the script,” which she says makes it a more realistic portrait of the characters’ journeys. Hall says that during filming, she “learned a lot” from Lahti as she made the transition from stage to screen.
“Our mother-daughter conflict is maybe not what a lot of what people go through; I don’t know a lot of people with ex-nuns as mothers,” Hall says. “But I do have a lot of LGBTQ friends whose parents don’t understand who they are and want them to be something they’re completely not. I think the tone of this will resonate a lot with both sides of the story.”
Mena Suvari (“American Beauty”) plays Hall’s love interest in the film. Hall says of Suvari’s character, a sexually repressed housewife: “I think that it’s a really universal love story that’s not often told in the LGBTQ community and film. For me, this is
the first time I’ve led a film, and it’s also the first time I was in sexual situations (on film). I was really nervous; she (Suvari) really put me at ease.”
Looking back, Hall says when it came to entering the arts and show business, “I kind of had no choice.” She’s the seventh generation of artists in the family of her father, ballet dancer and choreographer Carlos Carvajal. Carvajal is also the longtime co-artistic director of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, and Hall’s mother, Carolyn Houser Carvajal, is a retired ballet dancer. Hall grew up in a house in the Haight “filled with art” that the family called Villa Satori.
“I grew up in this magic land I didn’t appreciate when I was younger,” Hall says. “I always wanted my family to be more corporate or more, you know, ‘normal.’ I didn’t want all the stuff around and all the art and all the craziness. As I matured, I really realized it was such a blessing for me to grow up in that environment.”
Hall attended the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in the vocal music and dance departments. Immediately after high school, she went into touring productions of the musical “Cats” in the role of Demeter, which she said the Asawa school prepared her to undertake: “There was almost no transition between doing performances at school and then going into the show,” Hall changed her name professionally in 2013 shortly before her acclaimed performance opposite Neil Patrick Harris in “Hedwig.”
For the moment, Hall is thrilled with life personally and professionally. She’s in a relationship and lives with her Pomeranian, Ziggy Starfox, in New York City. In addition to the film, she says there are some “really exciting theatrical projects on the horizon” and an album of original music following her “Obsessed” tribute albums to Radiohead and David Bowie. Ideally, she would want to carve out a career like the singer-actress Cher, with whom she has a newfound interest in common: motorcycling.
“Cher is a badass, I love her,” Hall says. “There was an interview with her where her mom said, ‘Honey, why don’t you marry a rich man?’ She said, ‘Mom, I am a rich man.’ I would love her career in movies, on TV, as a recording artist.”
For Hall at this moment, it all seems possible.