This 'Dash & Lily' Clip Will Give You All the Queer Holiday Feels

Ready to experience a super-sweet, queer-inclusive romance this holiday season? Well then look no further than Netflix's upcoming series Dash & Lily! 

Based on the Dash & Lily's Book of Dares young adult series from authors Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, the holiday-themed, romantic comedy tells the story of the budding romance (and epic game of dares!) between two New York teens named Dash (Euphoria's Austin Abrams) and Lily (The Birch's Midori Frances), who communicate their innermost thoughts, hopes, and feelings with each other using a red notebook. 

To put you in the queer holiday spirit, PRIDE has an exclusive first-look clip of Dash & Lily where we see Lily (Midori Francis) get the pep-talk she needs from her brother Langston (Troy Iwata) and his BF Benny (Diego Guevara) who help give her the courage to go put on a bright sparkly dress she's been eyeing for a long time for a big night on the town!

PRIDE also got to chat with series creator Joe Tracz about Dash & Lily's inspiration, the YA book series it was based on, and having hopeful, real queer representation in a holiday series! 

PRIDE: Can you just take me behind the creation of the show and why you wanted to bring this to the world at this time right now? I know it was based on a book. What made you want to adapt it and make it into its own little cute holiday rom-com series?

Joe Tracz: I'm a huge YA book nerd. I love YA books, even though I'm no longer YA myself. And I know David Levithan and Rachel Cohn who wrote the book it's based on, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares. I knew the work and when I read this book in particular when I was living in New York in my twenties I just really connected to how their story really captured how it feels to live, to be young in New York City. I didn't grow up in New York, but I always was jealous of people that did because it felt like every day must be an adventure. And yet even if you're like a jaded, cynical city kid, you still have that vulnerability and yearning that every teenager has. And I thought the book just told that story so well, and it set it in my favorite time in the city, which is Christmas in New York. And so, years later after reading it, when I started thinking about what I might want to adapt, it just felt like the obvious choice.

So I know Dash and Lily are obviously the titular characters, but I also loved Lily's brother Langston and his storyline. Can you take us behind the creation of his character? He has his own storyline obviously, but that could very well not have been explored. It could have just been all Dash and Lily. Like other rom-coms, they could have forced the queer characters to the side, or they could have just become as a stereotype, but I feel like Langston, he gets to be messy, he gets to have love, he gets to have a crush, and he gets to be real.

I'm so glad you said that because it was always important to me. Obviously in romantic comedies, you do have those supporting characters who are there, who sometimes in the bad versions, are just there to bolster the leads. But you know what I always loved about Langston in the book and what I talked with Troy (Iwata) about, is that Langston, even though Langston often gives Lily advice, he's going through a lot himself. He's kind of a hot mess and that his advice is often terrible. And he has his own arc as well, which is he starts off, we see him have his own holiday romance, and just like Lily, he has to reconcile his idea of what a relationship should be when Benny's going to be moving.

And of course, we have a fun reveal about that, but Langston has to sort of put aside the relationship in his head to reconcile with the person that's actually there, which is something that Dash and Lily are doing as well. So, it was really important to me that Langston has his own version of that story and have his own arcs and desires, and get to be the sort of fabulous hot mess that he is.

Besides Langston, the series is also very casually queer. There's other queer characters within the series, like Lily's older queer friends in her caroling group, there are drag queens in it. As I said, it very well didn't have to be. Side characters could have just been straight, but I liked that it was this conscious decision that was made to include queer people, even in the background to be there like they are in real life. Can you talk about, the intentionality of that as well?

That was so totally intentional. David and Rachel wrote the book, so that goes back to the book they wrote. And David, as an author, who's a trailblazing gay author, his book, Boy Meets Boy, was the first time that I ever read a YA book where gay characters weren't playing out a tragedy. That was just, they were there and they fell in love and they had a happy ending. It goes back to David and the work he's always done to have queer characters just normalized as part of life the way they are in New York, the way they are in the world. It was even when we had a shot of Dash sitting in a movie theater, surrounded by happy couples, we made sure that those couples are represented. It's not just straight couples, it's gay couples, it's lesbian couples, it's queer couples. And the sort of having casual LGBTQ+ representation was something that we really worked hard for and strove for throughout.

So, obviously, there was no way for you to predict what could have happened this year, but knowing what you know now, what do you hope that the series gives audiences when they finally get to see it?

On one hand, I hope the show gives people a chance to escape. Obviously, there's so much going on in the world right now, so to kind of escape into a world where there's no pandemic and where you can find love by picking up the right notebook on a shelf, and go on this fabulous adventure. I hope people are able to find comfort and joy in that. Beneath that, I hope people take away it's a story of people who are two very different people who find common ground and by learning to see the worlds from each other's point of view. And so I hope that if there's something that people take away beyond the Christmas fun and the New York adventure, it's that sense of opening yourself up to people who have different points of view who are different from you.

Do you have any hopes for the futures for these characters? One day if production can get back to full a hundred percent like it used to be, would you want to expand more on Dash and Lily?

Oh, totally. Dave and Rachel actually wrote a second book, and they have a third book that's coming out next month. So, it's fun for me to know that at least on the page, the character story continues. I love them so much. I love our cast and I love the characters, and I'd love to be able to, if the holiday gods allow, be able to keep telling stories about Dash and Lily.

Dash & Lily premieres November 10 on Netflix!