[ Note: This article contains a spoiler regarding an important plot twist. ]
To prepare Julianne Moore for her role as a lesbian parent in The Kids Are All Right, out director/co-writer Lisa Cholodenko supplied her with some crucial materials to study: gay porn.
"Yeah!" Moore laughed. You see, Moore and Annette Bening play Jules and Nic, a middle-aged Los Angeles lesbian couple who spice up their sex life by watching gay male porn—which their 15-year-old son, Laser ( Josh Hutchinson ) , discovers and has a very awkward discussion with them about. "That stuff is really funny," Moore admitted regarding the scenes. "I love the honesty with which they explain it [ to him ] . It's really adorable."
Holed up in New York's Waldorf Astoria to talk about the film, Moore, who played lesbian and sexually fluid characters in films such as The Hours and Chloe, said she had been determined to work with Cholodenko since before they even met. Smitten with Cholodenko's 1998 feature High Art, she met the director at a Women In Film luncheon a few years later. Moore approached her and asked, 'Why hadn't I seen the script?'
"We said we'd like to work together," she recalled, "so we had a meeting and later she sent me [ an early draft of The Kids ] but I probably would have done anything. For me, it's an examination of a long-term relationship and middle age marriage and that's really interesting and unusual."
Attached from that point, it took more than five years for the script to get to screen, and it underwent numerous drafts, changing in tone from more of a drama to comedy. Moore was always kept in mind by Cholodenko and co-writer Stuart Blumberg during these revisions, however the actor who would play Nic remained nebulous until late in the game—and Moore can be credited with bringing Bening ( with whom she shares amazing onscreen chemistry ) on board.
"By the time they finally had the script they wanted" Moore shared, "a kinetic tone, Lisa had a short list of people and said, 'What do you think of Annette, she's the one I really see in this.' I was like, 'that sounds great—I don't know Annette but I'll email her.' So I did. It's a way to cut through. Things can take months if you send things to an agent, but you can get a response from a peer generally pretty quickly."
The character of Jules, who—in stark contrast to the disciplined and focused Nic, is lacking a rudder as far as her career and destiny—proved an irresistible, meaty prospect. "What really was compelling to me is she's caught in a moment in time when she's so uncertain," Moore said, "she doesn't know what her next move is. She doesn't even understand why she feels the way she does. You've been taking care of the kids for 18 years and suddenly are like, wow, I've got to get it together because they're going [ away ] . So I like that and her swipes at change. It's messy and interesting and compelling."
As for the aspect of Jules she liked the least? "That she cheats," Moore responded. "It's not admirable what she does, it's really tough. It's not intentional and it's hurtful. It was a challenge to play. How do you rebound from something like that."
To Moore, that Jules has sex with Paul ( Ruffalo ) , a man, doesn't say anything about the character's lesbian identity: "It's very important that when Nic says to her, 'are you straight now?', she's like, 'no.' It's authentic—that's the last thing on her mind. This guy was just someone who validated her. She needed to be seen as other than what she was within that family."
Moore said that she knows plenty of gay families, both male and female, with children and didn't draw inspiration from anyone in particular. As for what she feels Jules and Nic's sexuality brought to the film—this would be a conventional smart, sharply drawn dramedy were the characters merely heterosexual—she pondered this question for a moment. "I don't know," she replied. "Everything and nothing, really. It's a portrait of middle-aged marriage and a family in transition. In terms of them being lesbians, the most interesting thing is. … I think films, rather than influence popular culture, reflect popular culture. So the fact we can have a movie like this means this is an ordinary American family. We're seeing this all over the USA. So that, in itself, is something."
