In her own words, talking femininity and the male gaze, head behind the scenes of Ella Hunt's Velasquez and Helmut Newton inspired self-directed music video.

I have a recurring nightmare where my boyfriend breaks up with me without giving me the chance to become someone else first. In the dream I scream “BUT JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT AND I’LL BE IT. I CAN BE ANYONE”. I’m aware that this sounds batshit crazy but I also mean it…

 

I feel like I can be anyone for anyone, like that’s my superpower but often my shapeshifting to please others comes at the cost of pursuing my true interests and ambitions, leaving them discarded and ignored like “trash on the subway”.

 

To me ‘Subway Trash’ is a song about the male gaze industrial complex and being stuck in a seemingly unbreakable cycle of seeking male approval, even when I feel I’m rebelling against it. It’s something I’ve watched a lot of my female friends struggle with, this pressure to reinvent ourselves to meet the desires or societal expectations of others.

 

It’s also my way of playfully reckoning with my life as an actress where I am literally “remaking myself and remaking again”.

 

The video is a recreation of Velasquez’s masterpiece The Rokeby Venus and inspired by a Helmut Newton photograph of the same title that I grew up with in my childhood bedroom (my Dad is a photography collector).

 

I spent a lot of time as a kid imagining being the women in the photographs around the house and if not being them, then messing with them and altering the composition.

 

Since the song is about the male gaze, I wanted to find a way of leaning into traditional depictions of the divine feminine and to then fuck with them.

 

I was inspired Manet, Goya, Titian and Velasquez especially.

What I love about The Rokeby Venus is that although her pose is in the style of so many classic depictions of the divine feminine (a woman romantically reclines, naked, on a chaise longue, with a demure pout on her face) in this instance she has her back to us while her face is sneakily catching us in a mirror reflection. It’s like she’s saying “Caught you, male gaze!”

 

I was excited to recreate the beauty of that composition and then to unceremoniously tear it apart.

 

Making this video was cathartic AF! I felt like I cracked my life open like a nut making it. It was such a huge step for me to get behind the camera and direct having been directed by others my whole life. (Something I plan to do a lot more of!)

 

The beauty of directing was getting to collaborate with a crew of friends; including my favourite NYC indie female production company ‘Ser Nocturna’, Bellamy Brewster as creative director, Gianna Reisen on movement and one of my besties, Monica Sanborn even intimacy coordinated for us!

 

I wanted the world of the video to feel lush, like a Caravaggio painting had a baby with David Lynch. Bellamy my creative director has a very distinctive and epic instinct for colour and bold composition, we didn’t want the video to feel subdued or melancholy, even though my music is unabashedly ‘indie sad girl sits at a piano’ music. We both wanted to create something that felt confrontational and alluring.

 

Having not picked up a pencil since I was a kid I ended up storyboarding the whole video myself. My mother and brothers are incredible visual artists and I’ve been so intimidated by their brilliance that I’d stopped drawing all together but after a conversation with my friend Fabien Frankel I was encouraged to give it a go and it became such a joyful rediscovery of my love of drawing and visual communication. Bellamy and I communicated almost entirely through these drawings and the most rewarding piece of this process was seeing them come to life.

 

I used to shy away from all things feminine, intimidated by the attention and expectations that came with it (and eager to assert my androgyny in queer spaces) but I’ve recently really come to embrace and indulge in my own femininity. I’m inspired by my queer and trans friends carving out spaces for all things divine and femme. This music is femme as fuck to me. It feels like the beginning of a conversation I’m having with myself about femininity and the impact of the imagery I grew up around and how I can feel empowered by the feminine as opposed to diminished by it.

It took an amusingly long time to get the lighting on my ass right! I’d assembled the loveliest team of creatives together to make this and we all knew the sensitivity of the subject, that I was gunna be naked and we wanted to create as safe and comfortable an environment as possible. It was so moving and honestly funny to watch us all navigating conversations around making my body look as luminous and dreamy as the painting while also being sensitive to antiquated traditions of discussing women's bodies.
Our ‘Rokeby Venus’ inspo
Me and Sasha Borax doing some midday touch ups
Putting on that fantastic Alex Perry dress and feeling so relieved to be clothed again having spent all morning directing naked
I look at this photo and I wanna insert the Saorise Ronan Little Women meme of her saying "WOMEN --" !!! In this photo Monica Sanborn my dear friend and intimacy coordinator is feeding me raspberries while Gianna Reisen our movement director is discussing alterations to the pose, while Arielle Friedman my epic exec producer and CHERUB is BEING A LITERAL CHERUB ANGEL IN THE BACKGROUND.