Writer/director Siobhan McCarthy felt “so much reticence for a movie like this,” but explains the complex road to theaters.

How She’s the He flipped the trans bathroom panic into a raucous comedy (exclusive)

Writer/director Siobhan McCarthy felt "so much reticence for a movie like this," but explains the complex road to theaters.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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April 28, 2026 10:00 a.m. ET

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Nico Carney and Misha Osherovich in 'She's the He'. Credit:

Obscured Releasing

- *She's the He* flips the script on the trans bathroom panic debate for a raucous queer comedy.

- Writer/director Siobhan McCarthy tells EW why distributors were scared of the subject matter.

- "There was so much reticence for a movie like this, especially at the beginning of the Trump presidency," McCarthy says.

Young director Siobhan "Shiv" McCarthy is fully aware of the politics so often leveled at their indie movie, *She's the He*, but it's those very politics that inspired the modern queer comedy.

In mid-March at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival, everyone was riding high off the standing ovation out of the world premiere. Actors Misha Osherovich and Nico Carney star as Ethan and Alex, respectively, two high school seniors who dress as trans women just before graduation in a stunt to squash the gay rumors circling them.

The gag, however, proves enlightening for Ethan, who realizes she is, in fact, trans.

The events that unfold from there are inspired by the highly politicized and so-often weaponized trans bathroom panic, especially in U.S. states like Texas, which hosted the *She's the He* debut out of the Austin event. Months ahead of SXSW, McCarthy acknowledged the circumstances around the premiere with a comic Instagram post: "Bout to be trannies in Greg Abbott's Texas."

The ensemble cast of 'She's the He'.

Obscured Releasing

"More than anything, what the film is about and what my life is about, really, is just creating joyous art," McCarthy told ** at the time, sitting in a vacant theater at Alamo Drafthouse's South Lamar location. "I think that there is a desire to speak to the politics of the film. At the end of the day, I've always seen it as, honestly, another coming-of-age high school movie. It happens to include my experience, but it is just about kids being kids."

In April 2026, *She's the He* now officially has distribution in theaters and VOD through Obscured for later this year. McCarthy looks back on that SXSW moment in a follow-up interview a year later. "I'm just proud of myself back in the day for thinking that," they say, "because I was so stressed out."

Nico Carney as Alex in 'She's the He'.

Obscured Releasing

*She's the He* came on the scene during the first year of the Trump administration's second term, a time that already felt volatile for trans people. It began that January with the president signing an anti-trans executive order to change the federal government's official stance on gender, and the political hits only escalated from there.

"A lot of us felt in the air, in the ether, that all of this was coming," McCarthy recalls of that time.

Several U.S. states, including the home of SXSW, no longer allow individuals to update their gender markers on driver's licenses and/or birth certificates. There's also a U.S. policy requiring passports to reflect the sex assigned at birth. As a result, a general fear of trans visibility quickly spread through Hollywood.

Misha Osherovich as Ethan in 'She's the He'.

Obscured Releasing

"There was so much reticence for a movie like this, especially at the beginning of the Trump presidency," McCarthy acknowledges. "We're at an interesting point right now where the future of the film industry stands on that. We were definitely feeling the slings and arrows of the political climate when we came out."

On top of that, indie filmmaking as a business is in flux. Amid declining box-office sales and the continued consolidation of the major Hollywood studios (this time with the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger), it's simply harder to sell an original, small-scale project like *She's the He*.

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McCarthy estimates they have spoken with about "20 different distributors" since SXSW to find a home for the movie. Most of the time, the feedback was the same: either "the market doesn't exist for this right now" or "the market isn't ready for this."

Misha Osherovich and Malia Pyles in 'She's the He'.

Obscured Releasing

"It really was a game of talking to people and not getting a negative response on the quality of the film or on the messaging of the film, even necessarily," McCarthy adds. "It was just a fear, truly, of the subject matter. Truthfully, I think that fear was just trans-ness."

What persisted was the reaction out of the film festival circuit. *She's the He* kept gaining traction at the Seattle International Film Festival, Frameline, FICValdivia, Reeling, and NewFest, especially among queer audiences.

It's a piece by a predominantly LGBTQ cast and crew, including actors Suzanne Cryer, Malia Pyles, Mark Indelicato, Emmett Preciado, Tatiana Ringsby, Kyle Butenhoff, Emma Orr, and Aparna Nancherla.

The movie is a coalescence of McCarthy's reflections on their childhood with other personal experiences and observations, like coming out in high school as trans. They describe one particular moment that happened later in life.

Tatiana Ringsby and Nico Carney in 'She's the He'.

Obscured Releasing

"Me and my mother were just walking into two separate bathrooms. We both got stopped by someone trying to correct us and to go to the opposite bathroom," they recall, "and then trying to pick which one to send both of us into, and eventually gave up. [They said,] 'You know what? Use whatever you want,' and turned around and left. Having someone look at both of us, try to dictate how their politics should slot onto the two of us, and be unable to figure out how to categorize us felt so emblematic of the inherent absurdity of this entire conversation."

Everyone involved felt compelled to tell this story of *She's the He*, and in the face of constant rejection, they seriously considered self-distributing the movie or partnering with local theaters. Owners of art house cinemas in small towns across the South and Midwest, in areas where *She's the He* played for festivals, would send cold emails to McCarthy to offer limited showings for free — another convincing sign that there was indeed a market for this.

"That was the only clear path ahead," McCarthy says. Then Obscured contacted them "out of the blue."

Obscured Releasing, launched by RJ Millard and Bill Guentzler, already took a chance on another complicated LGBTQ title: Elliot Tuttle's *Blue Film*, starring Kieron Moore (*Boots*) as camboy Aaron Eagle, who's hired to spend a night with a much older man (Reed Birney) who ends up being his disgraced former elementary school teacher.

Mark Indelicato in 'She's the He'.

Obscured Releasing

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"It was the first meeting I ever went into where there wasn't the same fear of the subject matter," McCarthy says of their exchange. "So many of those initial meetings [with distributors] felt like not only was the other party tiptoeing around the subject matter, there was also a lot of fear of the inherent controversy that comes with the logline of this movie."

Obscured announced the acquisition of North American rights this past January, and *She's the He* will finally have that traditional distribution this year on June 5. McCarthy is noticeably breathing easier after a year-plus of trying to get to this place.

"When we first talked, I was so fearful. Everyone was so fearful," they reflect. "Now, if anything, the thing that has been entrenched is that it is normal to be scared, but also, we will find a way. That was what we were talking about then, and it's been proven by where this movie is now. I didn't necessarily know if that was gonna get proven when we talked a year ago. It's really lovely to come back and have some tangible proof that, if you just have hope and you believe and persevere, it will happen."

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW LGBTQ”