Hayley Kiyoko's 2015 breakthrough single "Girls Like Girls" has been adapted into a feature film she co-wrote and directed, a project she describes as a love letter to her 17-year-old self. The film expands on the story told in the song's music video, following 17-year-old Coley as she falls for a girl who, in Kiyoko's words, "put me through my own heartbreak and haunted me for a long time."
From Music Video to Feature Film
Kiyoko, now 35, became known to fans as "lesbian Jesus" after the single's release, but feeling comfortable in her sexuality came only later. Her gay identity was, at the time, the topic she was "the most scared of writing about," and the song's confident refrain "Girls like girls like boys do, nothing new" came from wanting to "manifest feeling confident."
After directing the music video, in which two teenage girls, one with a boyfriend, develop romantic feelings for each other, Kiyoko became "very fixated on being able to tell this story on a feature film level." It took over a decade to make that happen, with a "pivot" through the 2023 YA novel Girls Like Girls helping to get the film greenlit.
A Personal Story with Asian Heritage
The film stars Maya da Costa, a Canadian actor of Vietnamese heritage, as Coley, and Myra Molloy, from Bangkok, as her love interest Sonya. Kiyoko, who is of Japanese descent on her mother's side, said it was important to create not just a queer love story but one that reflected her Asian heritage. Growing up in Los Angeles, "I never was able to buy a ticket at a cinema and see myself reflected back to me in my own experience as a queer person, as a mixed-race Asian person," she says.
Kiyoko grew up close to the limelight: her father, Jamie Alcroft, is an actor and comedian, and her mother is figure skater and Emmy award-winning choreographer Sarah Kawahara. She has been performing since age five, learned drums at six, wrote her first song at eight, and was part of the all-girl band the Stunners, which supported Justin Bieber in 2010.
Political Climate and Queer Joy
The song was released just days before same-sex marriage was legalised by the US federal government in June 2015. Now, Kiyoko describes the current political climate as "heartbreaking," noting it's "not safe for our community, and we are continually fighting for pride events and pride festivals to continue to be funded." She reflects on her 2016 video for "One Bad Night," which highlighted violence transgender women experience, saying she would make it differently now—focusing less on violence and more on "queer joy and showing us in spaces where we are thriving."
She asks: "How radical is it that right now in this awful political climate, we get to release a movie called Girls Like Girls in cinemas and to remind the world that our stories and our love matters and that we will never go anywhere?"
Healing and Future Plans
The film shows Coley unequivocally accepted by her father, a choice Kiyoko says was important to show an accepting father figure. "We go to watch movies to dream and to fantasise and to see representation that maybe we lack in our lives," she says. Kiyoko, who got engaged earlier this summer to Becca Tilley, a former contestant on The Bachelor, says promoting the film has been "really healing."
Kiyoko will headline the 35th iteration of the lesbian music festival The Dinah and hopes to take on more film and TV directing jobs. "I really do feel like I finally found my home, which is directing," she says. "And I hope to continue to do that for ever." Girls Like Girls is in cinemas 2 October.
