Patterns Director Rex Glensy on Fate Landing Him the Role
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Life is cyclical, and the new British anthology, Patterns, examines life’s circles through the perspective of interweaving characters throughout episodes that take on both life and LGBTQ+ themes.
Written by Asad Moghal, the eight-episode series, available on the gay streaming app Dekkoo or to purchase on Amazon Prime, is a masterclass in British humor and a unique look into what it’s like to live life as a queer person.
The series director, Rex Glensy, also carved out some time to have a chat with me about the making of the show, noting he was in Los Angeles during the pandemic when the idea initially came to him.
Creating Patterns
Glensy as having a last pre-pandemic party a few days before LA went into lockdown when the idea struck him. A few of his influencer friends (who remained nameless) started talking about short films being dead as an art form, and how making them would never lead to any money.
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“So I thought, ‘You know what? Just because I hate being told I shouldn’t do something is a good reason to do it,” he says.
From there, he took the idea of the short films and munched on the thought of turning the short films into an anthological but connected series that either focused completely or at least mainly on an LGBTQ+ theme in every episode.
“I wanted them all to be comedies because we were going through a very, very dark period at the time and I always think that if you’re going through a dark period, you try to make people happy and do as much as you can,” he says.
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He then connected with Moghal, who he had known as a “very talented up and coming writer” and asked if he’d be interested in joining on. He knew Moghal was waiting for his big break, and although Glensy couldn’t guarantee this would be it, Moghal liked the idea of having the same characters in and out throughout the anthology but still maintaining a story that allows each episode to be viewed on their own or in any order. After playing around with the ideas for individual episodes for a while, things started finally coming together.
“By the time we were writing episode three, it was pretty clear where we wanted to go,” says Glensy. “If you notice, there’s no overlap between characters in numbers one and two. That only starts in number three.”
Finding the Patterns Cast
When it came to casting, Glensy notes it was particularly challenging due to the nature of the pandemic at the start of the project. Rugby legend and LGBTQ+ advocate Ben Cohen made his acting debut in the series, which was something of a personal favor to Glensy.
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“I’m lucky enough to have been Ben’s friend for over a decade,” he says. “He is a true ally and not someone who puts it on for show, he really believes in what he’s doing. When I showed him the script, he didn’t even bat an eyelid. He said, ‘Rex, I’m probably going to be shit, but I’ll do it anyway.”
Another friend and favor came in the form of Nina Senicar, who played the Serbian supermodel Vedrana on the show. Outside of the friendships, Glensy says the casting initially started as an open call online, and each of the applicants was reviewed and had their resumes, CVs, and audition tapes viewed by someone on the production team.
They ultimately found their star and lead for the show, Rufus Shaljean, who plays Foster, and Glensy noted the process was long because they took a lot of care in finding the perfect actors to accompany the roles.
What to Expect in Season Two
Those who have seen the show know about the meta and open-ended finish after the last episode, and Glensy says the second season is already in the works.
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“Just to give you a preview, it will be a nice combination of new characters and characters that you’ve already seen,” he says. “Probably 60% will be characters that you’ve already seen and the other 40% will be someone new. Hopefully, it will be satisfying.”
As to the plot, the theme will remain that each plot is self-contained within the episode, although there are some relationships from the first season that we’ll get to see progress throughout the second.
“We’re trying to do something quite radical at the end of it,” he says. “I think it’s going to be less ubiquitous in season two than season one. Let’s see if it will fly.”
In regard to choosing who came back, Glensy said their criteria were based on how well they worked together in the first season and how their characters were portrayed. They also wanted to hold off on pursuing a second season until the show premiered, because if it wasn’t well received, they didn’t want to waste their time.
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Fortunately, the show has been met with some pretty positive reactions, and although Glensy isn’t given the data for specific numbers, the popularity of the show is starting to speak for itself.
How Glensy Landed in the Director’s Chair
For Glensy, this is exciting for many reasons, one of which being he didn’t even mean to direct the series in the first place. He’d done his time working in film in LA after attending law school prior to becoming a producer but wasn’t considering any directorial roles. After his mother fell ill and he returned home to the UK with Patterns, he was only meant to produce it.
“My director got COVID just before the first episode,” he says. Up until then, he had only ever been a second unit director on a major production in Italy, but Patterns ultimately became his first full-on directorial role.
“When he got COVID, there was no time to find another director and really the only two people who knew the blocking and the writing well enough were me and Asad [Moghal].”
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Moghal wasn’t keen to take on the responsibility, which led Glensy to the director’s chair. “Like many things in life, I sort of fell in it by chance, really. And I’m very, very happy that I was able to do that. But I also have to say this: What’s lovely about making movies or television is it is really about the teamwork. You cannot make it without a great cinematographer and a gaffer and actors and editors, colorists, everything.”
At the end of it all, Glensy says, “We’re very happy at being able to have made this and we’re very happy that we’ve been financed for a second season. We hope that people think it’s fresh. We hope that portraying LGBTQ+ lives just as live as opposed to ‘LGBTQ+’ lives takes things to the next level in LGBTQ+ cinema.”
Stream Patterns on Dekkoo or purchase the series on Amazon Prime.
