Lessovitz uses female pronouns and sees herself as "quite genderless", explaining: "gender [is] a sort of weird thing for me, because I don't necessarily feel one way or another".
[4] Living in Kansas City, Lessovitz was surrounded by a largely evangelical community, in which she experienced a lot of shame for being queer.
The film is set in the New York ball subculture and tells the love story of Wye (Leyna Bloom), a black transgender woman, and Paul (Fionn Whitehead), a homeless white man.
[1][10][11] The film was executive produced by Martin Scorsese, who Lessovitz said she was scared to reveal the final product to,[12] explaining that "to feel like you have one of the most if not the most important American auteurs opening up his wisdom and his mentorship to you is surreal".
And we need to have a middle ground where we're not working in a space that's commercial or fetishistic and sort of wanting to exploit or profit off of the beautiful cultural contributions of a class of marginalized people.
[4] Kohn said that Lessovitz's "ability to address the drama's specific hook in measured terms enables this scrappy little movie to strike a quietly progressive note".