With ‘100 Nights of Hero’ arriving Dec. 5, filmmaker Julia Jackman is opening up about the challenges and inspirations behind her queer-centered, parallel-universe period drama.
In a conversation with Gayety, Jackman reflects on adapting Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel, shaping its characters for the screen and fighting to bring a boldly queer story to life.
In the tale, Hero is portrayed by Emma Corrin, whose quiet strength anchors the story. Cherry, the innocent bride, is brought to life by Maika Monroe, capturing her vulnerability and inner resolve. The seductive house-guest Manfred is played by Nicholas Galitzine, whose arrival at the castle upends the fragile balance between Hero, Cherry, and Cherry’s neglectful husband. Together, this trio drives the film’s tension, a dark, period-fantasy tale of loyalty, temptation, and power.
Jackman says she may never know the specific reasons some studios hesitated to greenlight the project, but she recognizes a familiar pattern in how queer narratives are often received. “People don’t often say their qualms outright,” she explains. “But you see a pattern of words when there are queer storylines: worries that a story is too ‘niche,’ intense focus on it not feeling ‘alienating,’ fears that it won’t have a wide enough appeal.”
For Jackman, those concerns feel out of step with the world she sees. “I don’t think of queer stories as niche at all,” she says. “I want to see as many varieties of them as possible.”
The film also marks a notable creative pairing between Jackman and pop star Charli XCX, who appears in the project as Rosa. Though it has been widely reported that the two met on one of Charli’s sets, Jackman clarifies that their introduction was far less glamorous, and far more serendipitous. “I didn’t meet Charli at a set (I wish),” she says. “I met her en route! We sat down together and spoke about the script and films we connected with, and what inspired her about acting.”
As they refined Rosa’s character, some moments naturally fell to the cutting-room floor. Jackman says the team trimmed certain complexities from every character to maintain narrative flow. “There was a bit more of Rosa being cheeky and rebellious with her sisters, and her time with her wooing merchant,” she says. “I love them all!”
She went on to add “There are moments and complexities that got trimmed from every character, Rosa (Charli’s character) included. Sometimes that feels necessary for story flow, and sometimes it’s really sad for the director.”
Adapting the novel meant striking a balance between fidelity and reinvention. Jackman emphasizes that many of the book’s core story beats were essential to preserve, even as she expanded or reimagined them for the screen. “Even when I reinvented things…the core tenets of Isabel’s novel were there in my mind,” she notes. Key character arcs, especially the fates of the women at the center of the story, remain true to the source material. But Jackman also embraced opportunities to bring implied emotions, like desire and longing, more fully into view.
The movie tackles weighty themes: power, misogyny and control. Yet it maintains a sense of optimism, something Jackman credits to Greenberg’s original work. “Isabel wrote a graphic novel that managed that balance, and I was really trying to uphold that,” she says. Translating that hope to live action can be challenging, but Jackman leaned into the story’s fable-like quality. “These stories can express our more outlandish hopes and complete impulses that feel hard to find in real life,” she says. “But hopefully, make us feel closer to finding them.”
‘100 Nights of Hero’ Arrives in theaters December 5.
