Murray Bartlett, River Gallo, and Indya Moore appear in the new Ponyboi trailer. (Fox)
The first trailer for queer neo-noir thriller Ponyboi has landed, and it features a roster of TV’s biggest stars including Murray Bartlett and Indya Moore.
Ponyboi is written by and stars intersex actor and activist River Gallo, and is based on their 2019 short film of the same name. Gallo plays the eponymous Ponyboi, a New Jersey laundromat teller by day and sex worker by night, who is forced on the run after an encounter with a gangster goes terribly wrong.
Ponyboi is Gallo’s first ever film appearance, and it’s a historic one too: the 2019 short was the first film to feature an intersex actor in role as an intersex person.
Joining Gallo in the critically acclaimed drugs drama are You star Victoria Pedretti, who plays Ponyboi’s pregnant best friend and fellow laundromat worker Angel, and Twinless star Dylan O’Brien, who plays macho multifaceted hardman Vinnie, who is also Angel’s boyfriend, and Ponyboi’s pimp and part-time lover.
The White Lotus star Murray Bartlett joins the cast as the mysteriously seductive cowboy Bruce, driving through New Jersey en route to Las Vegas, who helps Ponyboi find their freedom. Pose star Indya Moore appears as Charlie, a trans bar worker and Ponyboi’s old friend.
In the first full-length trailer, Ponyboi promises bloody violence, bodies and gun-toting gangsters. Yet it also looks set to be a moving reflection on the realities of living as an intersex person, from troubled familial relations to blossoming relationships.
Speaking to PinkNews last month as Ponyboi screened at BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, Gallo reflected on making a film with an intersex through line, as an intersex person themself.
“I just can’t believe that I made a film like that, that was so personal at a time when information of me being intersex was still new to me. So my experience of coming into myself and that part of my identity – the film has helped me do that,” they shared.
“My own confidence has grown by the sheer fact of me choosing to make the film about that experience and those personal experiences.”
Though Ponyboi is currently only confirmed to have a cinema release in the US, Gallo confirmed to PinkNews that they are “hopeful” a UK release gets “worked out” soon.
Ponyboi lands in US cinemas on June 27 this year.
Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
How did this story make you feel?
