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I’m doing another Ask Me Anything in January to celebrate four years (!) of Paging Dr. Lesbian. Ask me any questions you want (within reason) about pop culture or whatever else here. For reference, here is Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3.

Today’s treatise falls into the category of why aren’t more people talking about this, a thought that has been on my mind ever since I watched the film we’re about to discuss. The year was 1983, and the movie was Silkwood. Directed by Mike Nichols with a script from Norah Ephron, the film follows Karen Silkwood (a mullet-sporting Meryl Streep), a woman working at a nuclear facility in Oklahoma alongside her boyfriend Drew (Kurt Russell) and roommate Dolly (Cher). After becoming involved in the union, Karen uncovers evidence of safety violations and the harmful effects of radiation poisoning.

Though it did well at the box office and was reviewed favorably by critics at the time, the film isn’t as well-remembered as Nichols’ other work, such as The Graduate and Working Girl. Moreover, the film wasn’t available to stream anywhere until it was added to Hulu’s catalog this fall. As such, Silkwood hasn’t been rediscovered by younger generations or permeated the contemporary cultural milieu.

This is a shame, for several reasons. Streep, less than a decade into her long and illustrious career, gives one of her greatest performances in the film. Karen is awash with contradictions – she’s tender but harsh, caring but mercurial, loyal but easily distracted – and Streep imbues her with gritty humanity. Though he sleeps underneath a giant confederate flag, Kurt Russell has never been hotter as Karen’s macho and occasionally sensitive boyfriend. At one point in the film, angry and unable to deal with the brewing tension in the house, he pours an entire beer on his head and walks away, which is just as magnificent as it sounds.

Norah Ephron and Alice Alren’s script deserves plenty of credit, too. Despite the nuclear contamination whistleblower plot, the film spends ample time focusing on the daily lives of our ragtag trio of roommates, digging into the ins and outs of their patched-together domesticity. It perfectly balances the story of corporate conspiracy and capitalist malevolence with that of romance and friendship and working-class drudgery.

But if there’s one thing that I think readers of this newsletter should be talking about more, it’s the fact that in the movie Silkwood, Cher plays a lesbian. I’m sure plenty of you are aware of this fact, but I imagine others haven’t yet experienced the pleasure of this discovery.

How did Cher come to play a lesbian in the movie Silkwood? By not being Cher, as it were. Cher had been trying to become a serious actor for quite some time prior to starring in the film, but was having little success in that endeavor. Everyone thought she was too Cher and she couldn’t pull off being anything else. Cher’s first breakthrough was in the Broadway play and film version of Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, directed by Robert Altman, a fascinating piece of trans cinema.¹ Ephron and Nichols saw Cher in the play and immediately knew she was right for the part of Dolly.

However, transforming Cher into Dolly wasn’t easy. As Nichols put it in a New York Times article from 1984, “We had to bring Cher way, way down from herself to play Dolly.” They dressed Cher in too-big pants belonging to a male crew member, “several extra sets of underwear,” and a baggy t-shirt. According to Mark Harris’ book Mike Nichols: A Life, the director didn’t want her to wear any makeup, and he’d often run his finger across her cheek to see if she obeyed his rule, once reprimanding her for curling her eyelashes. “She began to enjoy what for her was the sheer novelty of looking awful,” the Times reported.

Of course, there is no universe in which Cher’s character in Silkwood looks anything close to “awful.” For one, she’s Cher, and her bone structure is immaculate. But even more than that, she’s playing a swaggering, butch-adjacent lesbian in 1970s Oklahoma, and the power of that cannot be overstated. Cher’s look in the film will no doubt appeal to contemporary queers, particularly those of the thrift-shop-frequenting variety, and Dolly would have no trouble finding suitors in the 21st century.

Cher, in case you forgot, is an incredible actress, and she plays the role with beautiful, natural ease. Dolly carries herself with a sense of confidence and nonchalance, but that demeanor masks her insecurity and the knowledge that her community’s tacit acceptance of her sexuality is conditional at best. Indeed, her sense of confidence wanes as the film goes on, and the seriousness of what they’re up against sinks in. The way Dolly lives in her body – with hard-won strength but also softness – is unlike any other Cher role, and she embodies Dolly’s fascinating contradictions without any ego.

Dolly plays the role of the lesbian best friend, which, of course, is different from the gay best friend. The gay best friend is full of witty quips and offers comedic relief, while the lesbian best friend is often a tragic figure, socially sidelined and relegated to loneliness. Perhaps the most moving portrayal of this dynamic occurs in The Children’s Hour, wherein the lesbian’s love for her best friend has terrible consequences.

There is an element of tragedy to Dolly, and certainly to the film as a whole. Dolly is in love with Karen, as we might expect, and that love is unrequited. Karen tends to take Dolly’s loyalty and affection for her for granted, particularly when things start to go awry with Drew. Though we don’t see as much of Dolly’s inner life as we do of Karen’s, we can surmise that Dolly must feel very alone at times.

But Dolly doesn’t just give up, or take things lying down. In one of the film’s best subplots, Dolly brings home a woman one night and, much to their surprise, introduces her to Drew and Karen the next morning. Though they know she’s gay, this seems to be the first time they’ve confronted that fact so obviously. Dolly’s new beau, Angela (Diana Scarwid), a beautician mortician – yes, she’s a beautician who works at a funeral parlor – moves in with the trio shortly thereafter. Dolly’s brazen actions here are heartening to see, though Drew constantly butts heads with Angela and isn’t too happy with their new living arrangement. Asshole boyfriends aside, the scene where de-glammed lesbian Cher gets a makeover from her heavy-handed high-femme girlfriend should be put in the Smithsonian.

Amazingly, all of this happens amidst a harrowing story about labor organizing and radiation poisoning. As Roger Ebert writes in his review of the film, “Mike Nichols' "Silkwood" is not predictable. That's because he's not telling the story of a conspiracy, he's telling the story of a human life.” Or, as Chris Feil writes in my favorite Letterboxd review, it’s “as much about the immorality of the capitalist forces demolishing the lives of everyday people as it is about having hot roommates.”

Yes, Karen Silkwood was a whistleblower, and her David and Goliath-esque fight against a fossil fuel corporation is a story that needs to be told. But in the movie Silkwood, Karen is also just a woman trying to live her life. Let’s think back to a scene early in the film, when her friend Dolly is sifting her weed in the kitchen and her boyfriend Drew is drinking a beer on the counter. Karen gets mad at Dolly for leaving days-old spaghetti in the fridge, and Dolly makes some silly quip, and Drew laughs. Silkwood is about three flawed people living in a world where nothing comes easy, and one of those people is a lesbian played by Cher. Sit with that for a moment, will you? I’ll be waiting.

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Would hugely recommend this film! It’s available to rent on Apple TV+

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