Every generation gets its coming-of-age stories, but for queer girls, they’re still in all too short supply. Back in 2015, Hayley Kiyoko’s alt-pop hit “Girls Like Girls” was one such outlier. The song was a refreshingly sensitive and playful addition to the pop landscape at the time of peak-EDM (Billboard chart toppers that summer included the Fast & Furious anthem “See You Again” and “Cheerleader” by OMI). The song’s music video, which has raked up more than 163 million views on YouTube, conjured all the nervous butterflies and cautious rituals of first crushes: biking through suburbia, trying on makeup, summer afternoons by the pool, dares, and scraped knees—as well as a Hollywood-esque brush with danger.
Kiyoko always had bigger designs than just the Hot 100, though. She directed the music video alongside August S. Winchell, and it provided enough fodder for Kiyoko to spin it out into a best-selling novel of the same name in 2023. Ten years after the song’s release, she’s also adapting it into her first feature film, starring Myra Molloy and Maya da Costa, in theaters June 19.
The film is also a first for Molloy. Although the young star has drawn eyes as Eurydice in the Broadway production of Hadestown and had a small role in Netflix’s He’s All That, this will be her first time gracing theater screens across the country. Ahead of the film’s release, Kiyoko and Molloy got together to discuss the process of bringing this song to the screen, the importance of queer joy, and the personal truths that shaped the making of Girls Like Girls.
Can you tell me what the beginning of this project looked like and how you brought it to life?
Myra Molloy: When and how did “Girls Like Girls” become a film? We all know the music video, obviously, and the song—iconic. That was, what, 11 years ago at this point?
Hayley Kiyoko: A lot of perseverance. As artists and creatives, we create out of necessity when we feel that there is no space or representation for us in the industry and in the media. A lot of my art has been inspired by necessity. Writing “Girls Like Girls” in 2015, I felt the need to share who I truly was. I was manifesting feeling confident in who I was, but I wasn’t actually confident, which led to the music video, which I didn’t put myself in. I put myself more in the back, but I was still able to share my story through Coley and Sonya [the two main characters].
That led to trying to get the movie made, which led to the movie not getting made, which led to me thinking, If I die tomorrow, I have to share this story. So I wrote a YA novel version of Girls Like Girls and released that in 2023. That led to getting the green light for the film, finally, which led to finding Myra to play Sonya.
We shot the movie in Kelowna, Canada. As a director, you make every decision, but one of the few decisions you don’t make is where you shoot the film. Production chooses where you shoot. A lot of people don’t know where that is, but it’s east of Vancouver.
Molloy: I was trying to gatekeep it.
Kiyoko: Sorry. It’s so nice. It’s like the California of Canada. Everyone’s going to know about Kelowna. But my grandparents on my Japanese side are buried there, and I actually grew up going to Kelowna when I was really young. This whole journey of Girls Like Girls has really been about embracing my authentic truth. So, to shoot this film in a place where my grandparents met each other and grew up, and to get to shoot one of the scenes a couple of blocks down from my grandparents’ house, was really wild.
Molloy: Every time you persevered, you were just rewarded with something completely unexpected and beautiful. You’ve been doing this for the past 11-plus years of your life. But even as someone who came on to do it the past couple of years, because of this world you’ve built and created, I got to experience all the magic along the way, too. I still think about it to this day. It was the best summer of my life.
Myra, I’m so curious what your relationship was to the song when you first read the script?
Molloy: Hayley and I weren’t friends when I first heard of her when I was younger, but as a mixed-race person growing up [Molloy is Thai-American], I was just like, “Oh my goodness, there’s someone like me.” Especially when I’m blonde in the movie, we look like twins. It was just so cool to see someone out there doing their thing. I drafted out a letter to Hayley because that was how much the script moved me. It spoke to me so deeply, not just to my teenage self, but to my current self. I was just like, “I need to tell her I don’t know if she’s ever going to see this, but I just need to tell her how much this affected me.”
I initially went on tape for Coley, which is the funny part; of course, it wasn’t my vibe. Then Hayley wanted me to come in for Sonya. When you read the book, you’re like, “Wow, Sonya, girl, you’re putting Coley through the wringer.” But I went in as Sonya, and something in my brain and my heart just clicked. This girl is actually so much of what I grew up experiencing, and even so much of what I’m experiencing now.
What kind of things did you relate to in the character?
Molloy: The people-pleasing aspect. Not just pleasing your family, but pleasing the people in your circle, pleasing the people around you, pleasing people you don’t even know.
Also battling that inner turmoil of when my heart wants one thing, but my head is telling me another thing. To this day, I’m still discovering myself. In my personal life, I was going through quite a tumultuous time, so I feel like doing that in tandem with Sonya was almost exposure therapy for me. To have Hayley at the wheel, someone with such a clear vision who has persevered this long to have their vision be seen as an entirety, was a huge honor for me.
What was it like going from the music industry to producing a film?
Kiyoko: It’s very different. But a lot of people don’t know that musicians are the CEO. When you go on tour, you’re paying for everything. You’re doing the budgets. You have 10-plus people working with you for the tour. You’re paying for the bus.
A lot of that resonates with building a team and world-building. I’ve realized I’ve always been a director, I just didn’t know what the title was. My job is to bring out the best in people and to identify everyone’s strengths, to elevate the story, to elevate the world, the performance.
Early on, I directed 12-plus music videos, and I realized directing is my path. Storytelling is something that I absolutely love. I’ll always love writing music and performing, but this vehicle of being able to direct and to share a story on the big screen is all the things that I love to do. I love collaboration. I love teamwork. I love discovering new talent.
But it’s definitely been a big jump. With anything you’re doing for the first time, you’re thinking, I hope I’m making good decisions, because every single decision leads to the final product. You really have to tap into your instincts. That was one of the biggest challenges.
It’s interesting to hear you say that because so many great filmmakers used to come up making music videos: Spike Jonze, David Fincher.
Kiyoko: They give you your training wheels.
Do you think of yourself more as a director or a musician? Do you think there has to be this dichotomy?
Kiyoko: I definitely feel like I finally found my home. We have the inspired by the movie album coming out June 12, a week before the movie, and I got to write music with a bunch of queer artists and collaborators through the lens of these characters. But I really see my future as a director. I want to make as many movies and TV shows as possible. I’m so happy that I finally found my place and my purpose.
Myra, when you were helping bring the character to life, what were your touchstones? What are your favorite coming-of-age movies?
Molloy: Hayley is the reference. It is Hayley’s story, and the book was a huge reference for all the details. That was our rubric for everything. In terms of coming-of-age films that inspired my performance, I kept thinking about Lady Bird by Greta Gerwig. Lady Bird‘s set in Sacramento, and this is set in a similar, small-town suburban vibe.
I’ll give you two favorite coming-of-age films, one that I grew up loving and one in more recent times that absolutely broke me. One that I grew up loving was Spirited Away. Growing apart from your parents, being an individual, learning and going through all those trials. That girl went through a lot. Then, in more recent years, a movie that broke me in theaters in a way that I’ve never had that experience in a movie theater before was Close by Lukas Dhont.
Kiyoko: I second that.
Molloy: If I ever do a Letterboxd top four, that film is going on there. That is a crazy film. It’s just so visceral and so real, I can’t believe that film was made. It’s so incredible. Everyone, go see that. But go see Girls Like Girls first.
In terms of explicitly putting gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans stories onscreen, it’s pretty recent in the history of queer cinema. Was there a type of story that hadn’t been on screen yet that you were trying to bring to life?
Kiyoko: Growing up, I was so terrified of being queer and knowing who I was but not being able to share it. A lot of my experience was a silent experience. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Coley and Sonya are sitting in the back of the minivan, and they’re putting their legs over one another. There are no words, but it’s such a powerful scene because it’s experience that I lived very viscerally.
I wish I had been able to buy tickets when I was 18 to go see a movie of two girls that looked like me, who were mixed race, and fell in love. I had so much representation of the trauma. I didn’t have a lot of representation of queer joy. That’s what Girls Like Girls is for me, a film that we desperately need more of. There should be hundreds of films like this. But for some reason, we don’t have that, and for some reason, it takes 10 years to tell a story about two girls, ending in hope.
More of our favorite stories from CULTURED
Introducing CULTURED’s 2026 Young Writers List
What Does a ‘Queer’ Art Collection Look Like? Here Are 10 Answers.
Oscar Isaac and Julian Schnabel on Why Making Likeable Movies Is Besides the Point
‘The Gilded Age’ Has Only Made Morgan Spector More of a Socialist
This Item From Diane Keaton’s Estate Sale Just Sold For 98 Times Its Estimate
Sign up for our newsletter here to get these stories direct to your inbox.
in your life?
