Oh, how we long to return to the verdant fields of Crema, the scene of Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name. Well, it seems the director has a new Italian epic in the works, an HBO series called We Are Who We Are, a coming-of-age drama which hopefully will let us indulge in our Euro fantasy once again. It was announced by distributor Fremantle that the series will include Chloë Sevigny and Kid Cudi, alongside It’s Jack Dylan Grazer (who played germaphobe Eddie). Why American actors, when the series is set in Italy? The show is about two teenagers living on an American military base, and “centers on friendship, first-love, and all the unknowns of being a teenager, which could happen anywhere but in this case happens to be in this little slice of America in Italy.”
We’re quite fascinated by the role Sevigny gets to play, given her willingness to throw herself at all types of roles — see her recent stint as a bespectacled cop in Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die. Guadagnino’s women are a multifaceted bunch to say the least, as exemplified by his storied working relationship with Tilda Swinton (who ones hopes will make an appearance disguised by prosthetics ala Suspiria). Will Sevigny play a mysterious mother, an undead demon, a repressed housewife, or a combination of the above?
Guadagnino’s vision often encompasses English speaking foreigners getting into mishaps abroad, both romantic and deathly, whether with CMBYN, his remake of horror-classic Suspiria, or 2015’s A Bigger Splash. The director will also serve as showrunner and writer for We Are Who We Are, so the series is sure to hem closely to his vision. We’re unsure as to whether that includes a peach or any other fruit.