Newcomer Jason Patel stars alongside Ben Hardy in the LGBTQ+ romance. <\/p>
New film Unicorns arrives in UK cinemas today having debuted at Toronto International Film Festival last year \u2013 telling the story of an unexpected cross-cultural romance that develops between a single father mechanic and a drag queen.<\/p>\n
The film \u2013 which is co-directed by Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd \u2013 stars Ben Hardy and newcomer Jason Patel in the lead roles and shines a light on London\u2019s queer Asian scene while also exploring the difficulty Patel\u2019s character experiences having to hide his true identity from his socially conservative family.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a moving film, and in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com<\/a> ahead of the wide release, Patel revealed an impactful message he\u2019d received from a fan who\u2019d been touched by a screening at a festival last year.<\/p>\n \u201cI had someone DM me on Instagram, saying about how much the film had touched them,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnd that it got them to, like, come out to their parents \u2013 which I think is so lovely. It\u2019s so sweet.\u201d<\/p> He added: \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t want to cry about it. But it\u2019s so nice\u2026 the impact that cinema has, and the work that you make\u2026 it just makes you realise that you\u2019re doing the right thing, and you\u2019re making work that you care about.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Hardy explained how he and Patel had \u201cinstantly had some chemistry\u201d when they first met, and revealed that the directors made the interesting decision to keep them apart before shooting to help keep that chemistry fresh.<\/p>\n \u201cSally and James wanted to keep hold of that and not let that\u2026 saturate, for lack of a better word. So they kept us apart until the first day of filming. And that helped kind of keep that sort of nervous energy around the two of us, but still having that natural rapport.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n He continued: \u201cThe first time we filmed together, we were doing the lovemaking scene as well. So it was kind of like, \u2018Hey, good to see you again for the second time in our entire lives. Let\u2019s get naked!\u2019 It was pretty intense.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s that thing when they say like, is it picture the audience naked or something like that?\u201d Patel added. \u201cAnd the fear goes away. But for us, like, we were actually\u2026 we just were there like that. And so afterwards, it was like, well, we\u2019ve gone in the deep end, like, it doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n Unicorns is now showing in UK cinemas.<\/strong><\/p>\n Check out more of our\u00a0Film<\/a>\u00a0coverage or visit our\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Streaming Guide<\/a>\u00a0to find out what\u2019s on.\u00a0<\/strong>For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to\u00a0The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Newcomer Jason Patel stars alongside Ben Hardy in the LGBTQ+ romance. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":54418,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/07\/unicorns-star-recalls-impactful-message-from-fan-empowered-by-film.jpg",1212,808,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/07\/unicorns-star-recalls-impactful-message-from-fan-empowered-by-film-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/07\/unicorns-star-recalls-impactful-message-from-fan-empowered-by-film-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/07\/unicorns-star-recalls-impactful-message-from-fan-empowered-by-film-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/07\/unicorns-star-recalls-impactful-message-from-fan-empowered-by-film-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/07\/unicorns-star-recalls-impactful-message-from-fan-empowered-by-film.jpg",1212,808,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/07\/unicorns-star-recalls-impactful-message-from-fan-empowered-by-film.jpg",1212,808,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Newcomer Jason Patel stars alongside Ben Hardy in the LGBTQ+ romance.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/54417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"