Following last year’s lesbian crime caper road movie starring Margaret Qualley, Drive-Away Dolls, Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s latest collaboration, Honey Don’t—which also stars Qualley—queers the film noir by subverting the genre’s gender norms in a delectably dark comedy. Stylishly shot by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Ari Wegner (The Power of the Dog), with enticing characters brilliantly performed, the film’s intriguing, beautifully woven hard-boiled narrative, blends a private-eye story with a murder mystery wrapped in seduction and lies, drawing inspiration from the grit of lesbian pulp novels.
Qualley stars as small-town California private investigator Honey O’Donahue, who, with the help of enigmatic cop MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza) delves into a series of strange deaths linked to a mysterious church, the cultish Four-Way Temple, led by the charismatic Pastor Drew Devlin (Chris Evans).
Ahead of the US theatrical release of Honey Don’t! from Focus Features on August 22nd, writer-director-producer Ethan Coen and writer-editor-producer Tricia Cooke speak exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about reuniting with Margaret Qualley, their vision for queering the noir, the fun of coming up wth inventive ways to kill their characters, and putting Chris Evans in a jockstrap.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: what is the appeal of film noir for each of you and how you describe your fresh queer take on the genre with with Honey Don’t!?
Ethan Coen: “We both grew up on that kind of fiction. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and the whole hard-boiled thing. It was like mother’s milk to us. So all of that is internalized and it’s easy for us to think about stories in those terms.”
Tricia Cooke: “It’s very atmospheric in a way that lends itself to the screen. With Honey Don’t! we thought that instead of having a noir take place at night, or in shadows and fog, it’d be interesting to have it take place in the glaring sun, set in a sunbaked location like Bakersfield. When it comes to the queerness of it, I think Bound is another noirish lesbian movie. It’s fun to change the gender norms in that genre because it’s not something you see that much.”
MG and Honey are both so unapologetic about their queerness. I love how the film others heteronormativity in some ways, by placing these queer characters at the centre of the story. Like the detective character Marty, played by Charlie Day, who is continually asking Honey out on a date is the weird, funny one, not Honey.
Tricia: “Yeah, exactly. In most movies, the queer characters are marginalized, but with this world we wanted it to feel like they were at the centre of the universe, not marginalized in any way and that that was the norm. Marty, Charlie Day’s character, is a bit of a pest. He doesn’t get it. He wants to be a part of that world, but he can’t be.”
Similarly with Billy Eichner’s character is not weird in the world of the film because he’s gay, but he’s weird in other ways.
Tricia: “We wanted to fill the movie with as much queerness as possible, but also have it feel natural that it was a detective story and that it was in a real world.”
I love Honey as the central character. What did Margaret bring to playing her and what it like to work with her again?
Ethan: “Oh, she’s fantatsic. Margaret totally understood the character and everything about those movies. The name Lauren Bacall kept coming up because she’s in a lot of them and because of that voice. Margaret’s voice in the movie isn’t an imitation of Lauren Bacall, but it’s that nice Honey tone that sounds really of the period, but not self-consciously. Margaret made it sound really good.”
Tricia: “She’s such a great actress. If you give her a note, she always nails the note. She was excited to work on the character and she super devoted to the movie. She’s so easy and fun to work with. She’s goofy in a way that we both appreciate. She also looked exactly what we imagined Honey to look like. When we met her we were both immediately like, ‘That’s Honey!’ We’re lucky that she’s as talented as she is.”
We get to hear her sing on the end credits too.
Tricia: “I know! She’s so talented and she can do everything. It’s a little annoying actually, but whatever!”
How would you describe the dynamics between the MG and Honey and what Aubrey and Margaret brought to playing off one another?
Tricia: “When we were writing it, we wanted to flip the gender norms and what you would imagine as the femme fatale to be the detective in the story and the more masculine, butcher character to be the femme fatale. We initially wrote a butch/femme dynamic, but that changed a little when we shot it based on what Aubrey and Margaret wanted to do with the characters.”
“Aubrey and Margaret had such great chemistry and they loved working together. They got on really well and literally dove into everything, including the sex scenes, in a way that we weren’t anticipating. So that worked out well for us. They really liked working together. The sex scene after they meet in the bar was so fun to shoot because they were both like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna go for it!'”
Could you talk about the distinction between the queer sex scenes and the straight sex scenes in the film?
Tricia: “Well, Ethan will have to talk about straight scenes!”
Ethan: “I don’t know what it means, but obviously the queer sex scenes are great and hot and the straight sex scenes are ridiculous. What does that tell you? I don’t know! But that’s something that Chris dove into. He was totally up for it. We were like, ‘Hey, Chris, we’re going to put you in a jockstrap’ and he was like, ‘Great!'”
Tricia: “We wanted those scenes to feel comedic in a way that we didn’t want the lesbian scenes to feel comedic. Although the final one is pretty funny, when Aubrey is screaming with Margaret behind her. But generally we wanted the queer sex scenes to feel much sexier and we didn’t want the straight sex scenes to feel sexy at all.”
I’m glad we got a mention in for Chris Evans in the jockstrap because it was one of my notes when I was watching the film. We don’t see enough jockstraps in movies.
Tricia: “Especially not enough Chris Evans in a jockstrap!”
How much fun did you have coming up with such inventive ways to kill off your characters? They’re funny and gory, but they’re also chilling and feel real. You get the tone just right with them and you never know what someone is going to get hit with next!
Tricia: “Literally! Yeah, the slamming of the head with the tea kettle. That was really fun to think about and then to write and to shoot and to cut. It was like, ‘Okay, this is just grotesque and funny!'”
Ethan: “That’s really nice to hear James, because, God, it’s hard to come up with new ways to kill people when you’ve been around for so long! The older I get, the more I like Sam Raimi’s movies. He’s just great. Not that we were consciously trying to do that, but looking at his work in retrospect—especially the scene with Jacnier and Josh Pafchek in Hector’s aunt’s house—I look at that and think, wow, we’re really doing Sam Raimi! There are moments where it’s kind of like a horror movie or a monster movie.”
By James Kleinmann
Following its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Focus Features will release Honey Don’t in theaters nationwide on Friday, August 22nd.
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