Fans of HBO’s Euphoria won’t see a second season anytime soon, since it suspended production earlier this year due to the pandemic and isn’t exactly the type of show that one can film while social distancing. There’s some good news on the horizon, though, if you don’t mind trading glitter makeup and tears for a different type of coming-of-age HBO show set in a dazzling, sun-soaked Italian landscape with a story helmed by Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino.
We Are Who We Are (which is not a limited series, as Guadagnino has left the door open for multiple seasons) will arrive in a few short weeks, and the new trailer reveals more about Jordan Kristine Seamón’s Caitlin, an anchoring presence U.S. Army brats on a Veneto base. Jack Dylan Grazer’s Fraser has transplanted to the base with his two mothers (played by Chloë Sevigny and Alice Braga), and both teens are grappling with identity and sexuality. All of this sounds like an Italian-set romance (with twists) and might stir up comparisons, but Guadagnino doesn’t want that. He recently told Variety that those thoughts are slightly “lazy” because “Call Me By Your Name is about the past seen through the prism of a cinematic narrative and this is about the here and now. This is about the bodies and souls of now. I think they are so different.”
Duly noted. This series also stars Kid Cudi, as well as Francesca Scorsese as “an outspoken, witty, sexually uninhibited girl,” according to HBO. From the synopsis:
A story about two American kids who live on a U.S. military base in Italy, the series explores friendship, first-love, identity, and immerses the audience in all the messy exhilaration and anguish of being a teenager – a story which could happen anywhere in the world, but in this case, happens in this little slice of America in Italy.
We Are Who We Are — which also stars Spence Moore II, Ben Taylor, Corey Knight, Tom Mercier and Sebastiano Pigazzi — will debut on September 14.