The Old Guard's Charlize Theron and cast on centuries-old same-sex love stories

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21 hours ago

The Old Guard movies teem with astounding action sequences from hand-to-hand combat to a daring helicopter rescue. But a pair of centuries-long same-sex love stories, platonic or otherwise, adds emotional heft and heightened stakes to these tales of a band of immortals fighting for humanity.
Based on the graphic novels from writer Greg Rucka, The Old Guard (2020) delivered a love story for the ages between Marwan Kenzari's Joe and Luca Marinelli's Nicky while hinting at a deep connection between Charlize Theron's Andromache of Scythia (Andy) and Veronica Ngô's Quynh, who's been trapped in an iron maiden in the ocean for centuries.
Henry Golding, Luca Marinelli, Marwan Kenzari, Charlize Theron, Kiki Layne in 'The Old Guard 2.'Courtesy of Netflix
Spoilers ahead.
In director Victoria Mahoney's The Old Guard 2, Uma Thurman, who recently played the president in the queer favorite Red, White & Royal Blue, stars as Discord (the earliest immortal) unshackles Quynh to reach the newest Old Guard member, Nile (KiKi Layne) through her relationship with Andy. With Quynh, who pervaded Andy's memories in the first film, free from her watery prison, a reunion between them, 500 years in the making, becomes a centerpiece of the sequel.
'It's truly been one of my top favorite relationships that I've ever been a part of in the development period because we get to explore it as a thought, really, in the first one. And it really served one purpose, and that was to just say that Andy is haunted by something, right?' Theron tells Out.'
'I knew that she was going to be a big part of it just because of how much we emotionally leaned on her for Andy's emotional story. And therefore, it was never kind of like this linear exploration. It's been this kind of searching and grabbing,' she adds. 'We've had to discover it in a way as we're going along. And to me, that is almost exactly who they are to each other. They had to do that same thing with each other. And since they haven't seen each other in 500 years, they're grabbing onto memories the way I can't even remember things when I was five years old. We make history, we remember it the way we want to.'
A quick internet search turns up fan sites devoted to Andy and Quynh and their truly epic story. Andy wields a long double-sided axe, a labrys, an ancient Greek symbol of power adopted by lesbians in the 1970s (who can forget Corky's labrys tattoo in Bound?). Still the mystery of their relationship is a draw for Theron, who's starred in overtly queer roles in Monster and Atomic Blonde.
'I love that the two of them are coming together with all of that and that we don't get into the specifics. They just are. We're not underlining them. We're not saying who they are to each other, they're just living those circumstances,' Theron says. 'And I love those kind of relationships.'
Uma Thurman as Discord in 'The Old Guard 2.'Courtesy of Netflix
The first Old Guard film from Gina Prince-Bythewood released at the height of the pandemic in 2020, introduced the immortal love story between Nicky and Joe that included swoon-worthy speeches about their love.
"He's not my boyfriend. This man is more to me than you can dream,' Joe says at the start of a romantic speech.
They're back in The Old Guard 2, forever at each other's side, hundreds of years into their relationship.
'For me, it's a very rich connection. And whether the audience picks up the fact that they're lovers or soulmates or brothers or in my mind, it can have any of those qualities and doesn't necessarily have to be specifically one of those forms of sharing love,' Kenzari says.
Luca Marinelli as Nicky and Marwan Kenzari as Joe in 'The Old Guard 2.Courtesy of Netflix
Friendship among women and a mentorship between Andy and Nile deepens in The Old Guard 2 as well. Layne touches on the film's chosen family onscreen and off.
'[Mentorship] it's something that the first film really started to set up, just kind of this beautiful journey that [Nile and Andy] go on of literally first starting off fighting each other and then Nile, I mean, sacrificing her life. She's immortal, but saving Andy and coming back for the team and really choosing the Old Guard as her family,' Layne says. 'We see that continuing in the second film, and seeing what she's learning. Nile is learning from Andy, and I get to learn from Char and learn from Uma this time around too.'
Though Discord is The Old Guard 2's villain, she's imbued with a sense of ethics gone awry. Thurman says her character has a 'deep respect' for what 'Andy has created for herself…which is the ability to continue to connect and to have closeness with others and give her life meaning.' Existential questions of humanity are the themes of the film, Thurman says, but Andy and Discord face them from differing perspectives.
'They're just coming at the sort of pondering good and evil and losing faith and losing hope. … I think Discord is…is a little bit shadier or at a different point in her own struggle with giving up, losing hope, losing faith, and letting darkness consume,' she says. 'I think people go through that in their own lives.'
is now streaming on .This article originally appeared on Out: The Old Guard's Charlize Theron and cast on centuries-old same-sex love stories