BRYAN FULLER
SCREAM QUEENS
BRYAN FULLER TALKS NEW DOCUMENTARY SERIES QUEER FOR FEAR
WORDS: TARA BENNETT
RICH FURY/INVISION/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK, ALAMY
I IF YOU PERUSE ANY LIST OF the most critically lauded, and fan beloved, sci-fi and horror television shows of the last 20 years, you’ll find that Bryan Fuller’s creations are well represented. After honing his TV scripting skills in the writers’ rooms of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, Fuller then forged his own path creating or developing series like Dead Like Me (2003), Wonderfalls (2004), Pushing Daisies (2007), Hannibal (2013), American Gods (2017) and Star Trek: Discovery (2017).
As a gay creative in Hollywood, he’s always baked diversity and inclusion into the DNA of his storytelling, which gay and straight audiences have responded to with equal fervour. Fuller writes outsider characters and their complex relationships – from the untouchable lovers of Ned (Lee Pace) and Chuck (Anna Friel), to the homoerotic tension between Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) – as entirely relatable and understandable, regardless of how an audience member labels their own sexual identity.
But it’s as an aficionado of horror that Fuller finds his own happy place, not only because of the thrills and chills, but because of the subtext that he’s always found speaking to him throughout the genre. “I have always seen a queer narrative in horror stories from the various early experiences that I had with horror,” Fuller tells SFX.
“My earliest experiences with horror were The Munsters and the [General Mills] monster cereals,” he says, referring to ’70s and ‘80s products like Count Chocula and Frankenberry. “They’re all sort of queer and childlike in terms of looking at these stories innocently, but seeing so much more going on when you start to apply queer thematics to the dynamics.”