Fiona Mackenzie’s ‘Tell Me I Love You’

Out writer and filmmaker Fiona Mackenzie has released a new film titled Tell Me I Love You that is now available on VOD and DVD. Starring Kaniehtiio Horn, Paulina Cerrilla, and Sam Clark, Tell Me I Love You is a modern, romantic comedy revolving around three young bandmates—straight, gay, and fluid—living together as a musical tribe in a borrowed beach house in Malibu. As they work tirelessly to record their first album and catch a break in the cutthroat music industry, something unexpected happens that will leave viewers on the edge of their seats.

Prior to becoming an independent filmmaker, Mackenzie was a former journalist and a development executive at Sony Pictures. She currently has a variety of projects in development, and most of her scripts are based on strong female protagonists.

OUT FRONT had the opportunity to chat more with Mackenzie about Tell Me I Love You as well as upcoming projects and how her career as a journalist has helped her with filmmaking.

Hi, Fiona! Thank you so much for chatting with me about your new movie Tell Me I Love You. Without giving too much away, can you tell us more about it?
Hi, Denny! Great to meet you! So, to answer your question, Tell Me I Love You is a music-driven, romantic comedy with conventional as well as LGBTQ relationships. Who ends up with whom isn’t resolved until the very end of the movie. So, I am hoping audiences will keep guessing and be surprised and happy with the final romantic combinations.

Can you talk more about how you came up with the concept?
I am a huge music fan and used to be a music journalist in New York City covering lots of bands, as well as solo artists. I was backstage at shows, in studios during recording, and on tour at live events. So, the world of musicians to me was a familiar and intriguing place to set a romantic comedy and to weave in characters living a somewhat unconventional, non-traditional life.
Tell me I Love you is a standard, romantic comedy presented to us in an unconventional manner.

What inspired you to create this film?
The classic boy-meets-girl rom-com is something we have all seen, but this story, with these three roommates who are also ex-lovers, felt new and very relevant. Many people today are living with their chosen families, their tribe, which is a big theme of the movie. So, putting a new spin on a familiar genre was something that was challenging and also inspiring for me.

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Have you always had a passion for writing and filmmaking?
The answer is yes, although, I didn’t know I would make a career out of it at first. I am a huge reader and movie lover, both classic and contemporary. The very first job I had out of college was as a journalist at a magazine in London, and I have never done anything since then that didn’t involve some form of writing and communication.

I didn’t necessary set out to be filmmaker, but later, when my first TV boss (during a shoot for CBS in Paris) handed me a camera crew, I felt I had found my calling. I loved blending writing and storytelling with the technology of cameras, lenses, editing, music, and sound. The next step was to work with actors and a full film crew, which was at times terrifying.

As the director, you know every minute on set is costing money. You have to get the shots, complete the scenes, and finish your days, and sometimes make on-the-spot adjustments. Sometimes, the weather or other circumstances conspire against you, but ironically, I feel it’s from my many years as a TV journalist where I would literally get “dropped” into a foreign country and sometimes be working with a crew that I didn’t share a language with, where I really honed my skills in terms of quick problem solving. We had the get the story and complete the scenes, no matter what.

Your scripts and projects are often based on strong, female protagonists. Why is it so important to tell their stories?
For me, there is a universe of characters and stories out there that, if told from the female perspective, can actually add something new and exciting. Why not see an interesting woman doing something that we traditionally assign to a male character? Especially as that is what reality is. Fifty percent of small business owners are women. Many are heading up families as the sole breadwinner. So, I want to tell stories that are inclusive of how the world really is, not just how Hollywood perceives it, and help move the needle forward with inclusivity.

Since you are a former television journalist, you sometimes create characters based on people you have interviewed. Did you do this for any of the character in this film?
Great question, and the answer is yes. Definitely. I am so, so grateful for my years as a journalist. The characters in Tell Me I Love You are based on an amalgamation of various musicians and friends who I met during my time as a journalist in NYC. But, before and after that time, I did quite a few investigative stories, some with hidden cameras which involved, shall we say, some quite “nasty” individuals: criminals, drug lords, etc.

I actually write more thrillers and dramas than comedies. So, especially within that darker world, I have hundreds of real people that I have met and spent time with that I can draw upon as personalities from the past, to breathe life into original characters as I build them on the page.

Having said that, I am extremely glad I am no longer in close proximity with some of those underworld individuals I had to do stories on! I appreciate having spent time around them, as they helped me to create some of my most memorable, darker characters moving forward. So, to answer you, Tell Me I Love You was based on friends and musicians I knew well, but not one, specific person.

How has Tell Me I Love You been received by audiences?
So far, the reaction has been extremely positive, I think partially because of the isolation that people are feeling during this pandemic. We are realizing that the concept of “family” may have an entirely new meaning than it did this time last year. Many of us are now suddenly together 24/7 with people who are not are conventional “family” but who have become our life support during these extremely challenging times. Also, the fact that Tell Me I Love You is an upbeat, summery movie may have helped. Perhaps just a little bit of positivity and romance feels good for audiences right now!

Since we see love manifesting through a variety of bonds in this film, what message did you want to share with us about love?
Well, I feel the greatest thing in life is if we can find love, and I think that’s what this movie has to say. When we find it, or stumble upon it, whatever shape or form it takes, everything else seems to sort of fall into place. That kind of love should not, in my opinion, be just reserved for certain sections of the population just because they are in so-called ‘traditional’ relationships or families. It’s something everyone should have, a universal right.

What have you personally taken away from this film?
Both my parents have now passed away, and the majority of my family lives in the U.K. I rarely get to see them. So, for me, my friends are my family. We check in all the time. What they are doing every day matters to me. Their successes are my successes, and vice versa. So, what I personally took away is that inevitably, you can find your family, and you can create your tribe and your support network however that works for you. We all have the option to define what works best for us during our time on earth. No one should prescribe that for you.

You currently have a variety of projects in development, but your biggest is your multi-LGBTQ thriller Beautiful Lover that is being made into a television series. Can you tell us more about that?
Yes, definitely. Beautiful Lover is a passion project of mine and is a suspense-driven, LGBTQ thriller set in the fashion world in London. I used to work in fashion as a journalist and came across some very unusual situations that have now manifested themselves onto the page in Beautiful Lover. The script was an Outfest Lab finalist, first written as a feature, and some producers have encouraged me to expand it into a series, which we are now doing. We have managed to attach some incredible cast from Succession and Homeland, both shows I love, and some of the U.K. creative team from Game of Thrones. I feel that Beautiful Lover could shine a bit of light on other forms of discrimination, some of it LGBTQ and faith based. That’s about all I can say right now, but it’s a very, very exciting project that I am focused on bringing it to life.

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And what are some of the other projects we should be on the lookout for?
Besides Beautiful Lover, other projects I have in development are Alpha Numeric; an Interpol, espionage series with a female lead; The Club, a murder crime series set in Northern California with a female lead; Warrior Queen, a historical epic with female lead, in development with a studio; The Castle, a gothic horror thriller with LGBTQ overtones; and My Summer in Scotland, a romance coming-of-age, set in the Scottish highlands. So, I guess you could say it’s quite a diverse slate of projects, —and it definitely keeps me inspired!