Why did you want to focus on characters at that particular age?

That strikes me as an interesting age, because you’re definitely developing a stronger sense of identity, and yet you’re still wholly dependent on your parents. It’s said that when you’re grown up, you know more about yourself, but truthfully all of these characters feel lost.įraser and Caitlin are both 14.

Of course, there’s a transitional element of being a teenager that is specific to that age. This show is about the kids not knowing who they are, not knowing what they are, and feeling displaced. I do believe that despite every action we can take to claim the nature of our identity, eventually the human condition is that we are always trying to reclaim an emotional state of belonging. I never feel in the right place as a person. Did you view the setting as a larger metaphor? That geographic dichotomy seems to mirror the way that many of the characters feel a kind of emotional displacement or discomfort. In the show, the characters refer to the military base as ‘America’ despite the fact that it is in the middle of Italy. They can be in Japan or Africa or anywhere.” From synapses connecting to each other, I had this image in my mind.īecause this is a series, I said to Lorenzo, “If this goes well, next time they can move to another base. I had a very wonderful conversation once many, many years ago with Amy Adams - you get to have these meetings with these great actors as one of the privileges of this work - and she told me that she spent part of her upbringing in Vicenza, in a military base in Italy. I think in order not to be generic why don’t we set this in a micro-America, a place that can work as the part for the whole. I’m more interested in the behavior of these people. When they talked to me about it, the first thing I said was I’m less interested in the topic as a sort of starting point. Lorenzo Mieli and Paolo Giordano and Francesca Manieri had developed a concept about the life of teenagers today vis-à-vis gender fluidity in American suburbia. The greatness of doing TV is that if there’s a good outcome, this can come back, which would be beautiful to me. I truly love all the characters in this show. I have sort of a penchant for bringing back to life characters that I love. This is a series and it depends on how it clicks with an audience if we will see these people again. It feels like a movie to me, but I enjoyed the episodic-ness of the story. I feel like on the one hand that this is a new film of mine. How would you describe “We Are Who We Are”? Is it a TV series, a longer narrative feature, a miniseries? Guadagnino spoke to Variety shortly after the first trailer for “We Are Who We Are” was released.

We are who we are episode 2