Essie Davis on The Babadook Becoming a Pride Icon: "I Love It"

You could say she is… babashook.

It’s hard to remember how exactly the Babadook—that top-hatted fantasy monster from the iconic 2014 Aussie flick of the same name—came to be a queer icon.

All any of us retain now is this:

The Babadook voguing at pride im SCREAMING. Happy #PrideMonth pic.twitter.com/2z06kevZqq

— 👑 Ryan 👑 (@doscadenas01) June 14, 2017

But if you can send your mind back to 2017, you might vaguely that Netflix accidentally categorised The Babadook as an LGBT feature, and that was enough for the internet to run with.

Today, you’ll still find people dressed in a long coat, stovepipe hat and spindly gloves at pride marches, in honour of the Babadook’s flair for the dramatic and theatrical. Its American distributor even released a special "Pride Edition" Blu-ray in 2019.

.@Scream_Factory is offering a Pride edition of the cult horror film, ‘The Babadook.’

The internet turned the monster into a Pride icon in 2017 after Netflix accidentally filed the movie under LGBT films. pic.twitter.com/sqwTsEyyQk

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) June 3, 2019

So, when given the chance to interview The Babadook’s star, Essie Davis, we knew we had to ask: Did she see this coming?

"You know what? At first it made me giggle, and now I love it," she tells Student Edge.

"It’s a fantastic film. It speaks to so many people on so many levels; it has to do with grief and mental health and repression. I know that it started as a bit of a mistake, but it’s kind of absolutely wonderful that it's reaching an even wider audience just through word of mouth. Whatever reason people come to watch it, I think they’ll get something amazing from it."

Davis now stars in Foxtel’s wild drama series Lambs of God as a nun who lives with two other strange sisters on a remote island convent (played by Jessica Barden and The Handmaid's Tale's very own Aunt Lydia, Ann Dowd). Though the show has its supernatural and sometimes spooky elements, it’s also an audacious black comedy, and an examination of faith.

"Foxtel making this, it’s a very bold piece of work," she says.

"As was Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang [in which Davis also stars]. There are things being made by the bravest people who are real artists, creating great drama and high comedy and beautiful cutting edge work here, and I think that’s a marvellous thing."

She continues to be "deeply proud" of The Babadook.

"I love that more and more people have come to it. And I love that more and more Australians have come to it. Because it was highly acclaimed overseas, and it was really only the acclaim overseas that seemed to alert people in Australia to watch it," she laughs.

"I find [it] a sad case with a lot of really amazing Australian work [getting] buried until it gets a big round of applause from the rest of the world."

Lambs of God premiered on Foxtel's Fox Showcase channel Sunday 21 July. It can be streamed on Foxtel Now.

Header Image: Umbrella Entertainment