The Black List Interview: Harry Lighton on PILLION

Our filmmaker interview series returns on Substack!

Harry Melling, Harry Lighton and Alexander Skarsgård making PILLION (via A24)

Kate chats with acclaimed filmmaker Harry Lighton, the writer and director behind PILLION, the only BDSM-tinged queer biker rom-com zooming onto screens this Valentine’s Day. Keep scrolling to read about how Lighton cast such captivating leading men, made PILLION feel massive on a modest budget and much more…

 I thought a great place to start might be with your experience of reading the novella that PILLION is based on, BOX HILL by Adam Mars-Jones. What was your experience of reading BOX HILL for the first time and when did the idea of turning it into a film first germinate for you?

The book was sent to me by someone called Eva Yates, she’s the head of film at BBC and was an executive on the project. So she sent me the book and said “I think you’ll find this interesting.” I found the tonal cocktail of it very intriguing, it kind of gives you a bit of tonal whiplash — you go from laughing to being shocked or outraged or turned on from sentence to sentence. And I thought was a really interesting challenge, to see if a film could house that kind of tonal combination. Very quickly after reading it actually, I was like, “Okay, this is the project.” And then it took a long, long time to arrive at how that tonal combination could work in a film.

From what I understand, you’ve made some pretty radical adaptation choices from the novella to the film, including updating the 1970s setting and fleshing out the character of Ray, who Alexander Skarsgård plays in the film. I think killing your own darlings as a writer is a tall order to begin with, but how do you work through killing someone else’s darlings to make the film that you ultimately want to make?

Well, the first thing you need is an author who’s up to letting you kill their darlings. I was very lucky. [laughs] Adam Mars-Jones, in our meeting at the beginning [of the process] when I asked him a few questions about the novel, said, “You go off and you do WHATEVER you want with this. I’ll be interested to see what comes of it, but I’m not remotely precious.” Actually, I think he said he’d kind of be more interested if it wasn’t a totally faithful adaptation. So I was lucky there.

And then in terms of when you go to find the alternatives…I think whenever you read anything, there are always things that you respond to and things that you don’t respond to, you know, based on your own subjective view of storytelling I guess. The funny thing about adaptation is you can always try to get a few steps closer to something which YOU might crave. It’s like a combination of your own ideas plus the original ideas.

I heard Paul Thomas Anderson recently say, in talking about ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, “I think the way to approach adaptation is to grab hold of the bits you like and then run as fast as possible from the other elements.” And you know, films are such a different medium than novels — necessarily, I think the adaptation process needs to account for what’s different about films versus novels.

In this instance, the novel’s written in first-person narration, and I didn’t want to have a voice-over throughout the whole of the film, so I tried to find a way of creating the equivalent of voice-over without narration, which was one of the big challenges of this film.

It’s a difficult needle to thread, but I think you really nailed it. We’re so seated in the perspective of Colin throughout the film and so grounded in his particular reality, which is a great segue into talking about chemistry. So much of PILLION depends on the chemistry between Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård. It’s all so grounded and feels really lived-in. I wanted to ask about the casting of those two actors, particularly Harry, who has to portray this really delicate balance of authentic naïveté, but also absolutely genuine curiosity. How did you know that Harry and Alexander were the right actors to portray this very complex romantic power dynamic?

I sort of decided, along with the casting director [Kahleen Crawford] that we should cast Colin first and then find Ray once we got Colin. And I didn’t really have any idea who could play Colin — there wasn’t an actor who I’d had in mind when I was reading the novel or when I was writing the script, even. And then someone — it might have been the casting director — sent me THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS and I saw Harry’s performance in that and I was blown away by how original his characterization was and how magnetic he was in a way which felt quite rare — rare in comparison with a lot of other male actors.

And so I then became a kind of like, Harry Melling completist — I watched all of his work, and was consistently impressed with how he managed to make marginal characters, or characters who weren’t your typical sort of heroes, totally magnetic. And I was like, “Okay, well that’s what I need for Colin. I need someone who can be, be a bit of a loser or someone on the margins of a scene or quite passive, but still have the audience in the palm of his hand.” And Harry has that.

We sent the script to him, he said yes, and then we started talking about who would be a good Ray to play opposite him. I’d been watching SUCCESSION at the time, and was obsessed with Alexander’s performance in that — I thought it was psychologically so fun, the way he dominated the Roy kids. I knew I wanted Ray to obviously, physically be a specimen, which Alexander is, but I also wanted him to be psychologically able to kind of own any room. And that’s what [his portrayal of] Lukas Matsson kind of showed me.

So then we sent it to Alex, very much expecting to either not get a reply or get a negative reply, but to my shock horror, he said, let’s get on a Zoom. And then he joined the project. It was such a nice surprise.

(Via A24)

I wanted to talk about the ongoing conversation (and endless discourse) around this idea of the “narratively essential sex scene.” In just the last six months, we’ve seen media like HEATED RIVALRY and PILLION show how absolutely integral explicit sex is to the underpinning of the larger relationship we’re watching — and I really appreciated how genuine the eroticism in this film felt. That said, I really can’t imagine this film being made in the America of right now. So, I was wondering how making this film in Britain allowed you to portray really authentic queer sexuality and kink dynamics so freely, the way they needed to be portrayed.

I was very lucky in that I was working with very supportive producers and partners. My first conversation with my producers at Element was about how I thought it was totally necessary that the film didn’t seem prudish in the way we approached the sex. I thought that if you made this film in a prudish fashion, where you sort of panned away from the sex, or alighted the sex, it would be like you were judging the kind of sex you were portraying. And so, a non-negotiable for me in wanting to make this film was that we would be able to do it in a way that the sex felt truthful and not sanitized.

Coupled with PILLION’s blunt, sometimes shocking eroticism is this real sense of tenderness – and a really deeply felt emotional musculature, both in the scenes with Colin’s biological family and with his leather family. Tone is one of the trickiest things to nail in a film like this – or, in any romantic film really, but particularly, a romantic film with this kind of dynamic at the center of it. How did you find your true north emotionally, especially throughout the final edit of the film, when you’re starting to get more opinions from test audiences and other viewers? How did you assure that the tone of this film was landing the way that you intended?

We didn’t do that many test screenings, but we did one test screening for like, twenty people whose opinions I really trusted. And then we would do screenings for the executives every couple of weeks. Those can be painful, but I find them incredibly useful for gauging when something is working emotionally or not — getting new people into the room, seeing if they’re finding stuff funny or moving or shocking or whatever. I kind of rely on other people’s reactions — I’m not one of those filmmakers who has complete faith in their own opinion. I quite like courting other people’s opinions.

PILLION is a real crowd-pleaser – I saw it at a press screening here in Los Angeles and even in our little room of about thirty people, there were many laughs and gasps and even a couple of weepy moments. So I have to imagine the film is playing really well, particularly with a film festival audience…

Historically with my short films, I used to kind of hate sitting through them with audiences, I always found it so painful. But PILLION is just a really fun film to watch with an audience. You get quite varied reactions — it’s fun to watch it with different audiences. Sometimes, the laughter is quite dominant in the room, and then sometimes the atmosphere is more…”somber” is not the right word, but the emphasis is less on the comedy. You just get different things when you’re watching the film with a different audience.

(Via A24)

I also wanted to ask about the really fantastic location shooting throughout PILLION — I was particularly fond of the queering of the English countryside during a sequence set around Colin’s birthday. I know you made this film on a really tight budget, only around $1M USD, but you never feel that while you’re watching it — there’s still a tremendous sense of scope and scale in the film. I’m wondering how you were able to utilize local locations to make the film feel so big, even on a small budget.

It was a challenge. By and large, we shot everything in Bromley, which is a town on the edge of London/South London. You have to be kind of inventive when you’re working on a shoestring budget. So for instance, one of the ways we achieved scale in Bromley was by using hidden cameras (and concealing cameras in shop windows or dustbins) and then shooting documentary style. We put Harry and Alex on Bromley High Street, and just sort of used all the actual pedestrians — we got permission to do that from Bromley Council, they were very helpful. A. That creates a sense of scale; and B. that also creates a sense of realism. So all of that stuff during the “day off” that happens towards the end of the film…that was all shot using hidden cameras.

PILLION is being released in America just in time for Valentine’s Day. What do you hope that couples who might be going to see this movie on a date, particularly those who might not be well-acquainted with kink culture, take away from the story of Colin and Ray?

I hope that on one level, they find the film stimulating — they find the relationship stimulating and thought-provoking. With regards to what they might take away from the kink community…I hope they realize that the relationship between Colin and Ray isn’t any kind of blueprint for how you should go about entering or enacting a dom/sub relationship, it’s certainly not meant to be a model to follow. But I hope they can also see the variety that exists [throughout the film], even within the biker gang — as well as the companionship. There’s the sexual element, which is key, but there’s also, as you said, a family element to it. And I think if you sit with the film for 100-ish minutes, you’ll come away with empathy for people who are in that community, even if you don’t share their kinks.

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PILLION opens in limited release on February 6, 2026 and expands into wide release on February 20, 2026 — cheers to Harry and the entire cast and crew!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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