We interview Dylan O’Brien, Murray Bartlett, Jari Jones and River Gallo about Ponyboi on the red carpet at the New York City premiere of the film.
River Gallo’s Ponyboi has had a long journey. The movie was first presented as a short at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, but more recently debuted at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival as a feature-length film. Gallo, its writer and star, has been crafting this personal and thrilling story for over ten years, and it is now finally reaching larger audiences.
Ponyboi is titled after its protagonist, who is an intersex sex worker living in New Jersey in the year 2003. The events of the film take place over the course of Valentine’s Day. Ponyboi (River Gallo, of Every Body) works for his pregnant best friend Angel’s (Victoria Pedretti, of You) boyfriend Vinny (Dylan O’Brien, of Twinless). While Vinny is Ponyboi’s pimp, the two have their own romantic relationship that is explored throughout the film.
After telling him he has the night off, Vinny ends up making Ponyboi take a regular client who is connected with the Italian mob in hopes of pushing Vinny’s new batch of meth to wanting customers. Things quickly take a turn for the worse, and Ponyboi decides he needs to get out of New Jersey by any means necessary. When a handsome cowboy, Bruce (Murray Bartlett of Opus), arrives, it seems like Ponyboi’s prayers have been answered. Or so he thought. If he’s lucky, he might be able to run from his problems, but he cannot run from himself.
During the red carpet for Ponyboi‘s New York City premiere, we interviewed writer and star River Gallo, along with costars Dylan O’Brien, Murray Bartlett and Jari Jones. In the interview, they spoke on the film’s long journey, what drew them to Gallo’s story and what they hope Ponyboi’s release will do to further conversations about diversity, inclusion and visibility in the film industry.
River Gallo, Jari Jones and Murray Bartlett on Ponyboi’s journey to its NYC premiere
Ponyboi has had an incredible journey, from being a short film at Tribeca in 2019 to receiving critical acclaim at Sundance. How does it feel to finally be standing here at its New York City red carpet premiere?
River Gallo: It actually started even further back, as a theater piece that I did when I was an undergrad at NYU. That became the source material of the short film, which became the source material for the feature film. This project has spanned 10 years, through multiple disciplines and through multiple collaborators that have championed my voice.
I’m just so excited that, in Pride Month, during this time in the country where to be trans, intersex, and queer is so inflammatory, I could make this movie and it can be seen by a broad audience, with the message of acceptance and redemption and finding who you are reaching the people who need it.
Jari Jones: The cast is star-studded, and not only with names that the mainstream sees, but a lot of new faces too, especially queer and trans new faces. When you have somebody like River who is writing a beautiful story and includes the community, that is so important in telling queer stories in the most authentic way possible. I’m so excited that the world finally gets to see it.
How did you meet River and get involved in the world of Ponyboi?
Murray Bartlett: I met River at Tribeca, when the short was there. River doesn’t remember, but I do, because I was really struck by them. I think it’s a really unique story. River’s got a unique voice and I think I said something like that to them at that time.
Weirdly, I was writing a short film at some point, and wanted to get in touch with River for a role in it, but I didn’t have any contact for them. I looked and saw we were friends on Facebook; I saw this button that had a phone on it, I pressed it, and River went “Hello?”. We talked over Facebook phone, which was very weird and awkward, but we had a really lovely conversation.
That short film didn’t happen, but when River was making the feature of Ponyboi, they reached out, and I was on board immediately. They are just amazing, and I loved this story.
Murray Bartlett and Dylan O’Brien on their roles in Ponyboi
In your career, you have taken on a wide array of roles. Why did it feel important to get involved with Ponyboi and this particular project at this particular time?
Dylan O’Brien: I’m somebody who doesn’t love hearing from the same voices over and over again in this industry. As much as I can, as an actor who has the fortune to make any sort of choice at times in my career, I want to be doing things that feel fresh and new from people that we’re not hearing from every day. I think that’s really important.
When I first read the script, it was one of the most unique and cool rides I had ever seen. There’s just never been anything like it, by fact. There’s never been a lead intersex character before, which is kind of a wild thing. It’s an amazing moment to be a part of something like that and have it come out now. I think it’s huge for the intersex community, which is largely unrepresented in this industry, and it’s also a big moment for the trans community with what’s been going on in the country. It’s amazing I got to lend any piece to it whatsoever.
How did you go about crafting your character, who really serves as a sort of knight in shining armor and beacon of hope within this story?
Murray Bartlett: When you’re playing some sort of heroic character, you don’t always want to make them human, but with this character, I wanted to make him very normal and human and not out of reach. Just someone who is open and willing to connect.
That was really what I was intending and trying to do in the scenes. It was beautiful to work [with River Gallo] because we just had to breathe and look into each other’s eyes, and connect with each other.
Dylan O’Brien, Jari Jones and River Gallo on how they hope Ponyboi is able to impact the film industry
How do you hope Ponyboi will push conversations about diversity, inclusion and representation within the film industry?
Dylan O’Brien: This industry, whether we like it or not, is largely responsible for what we perceive as being normalized in culture. The fact that this movie is infused in pop culture right now makes me hopefully about people coming to see it. That is another aspect of this that sort of matters to the industry more than anything. Despite all these hurdles of getting it made and getting it out and getting it sold and getting it into theaters, hopefully, people will show up to see it.
It can be educational. There are so many people who aren’t even familiar with the concept of being intersex. River didn’t even find out about this community in their own life journey until very late in the game through their parents.
It’s a very unique journey and one we do not see told in stories and visual media a lot. I hope people, in even hearing about the movie, are able to learn about what being intersex is. I look forward to everyone getting to know River because they are such a special person; they are such a star. I hope [the release of this film] is just a huge coming-out party for one of my favorite people.
Jari Jones: I think this film shows we can do it! I’ve been in so many rooms with directors and writers who were like, “I don’t know any queer actors!” or “I don’t know any trans actors,” and we’re here. We’ve been here.
Hopefully, this allows yet another set of information for Hollywood to see us and really say, “Okay, they can do it, so let’s hire them”.
River Gallo: I think the movie does this brilliant thing of making it fun and entertaining, but underneath there’s this core story about identity and the drama of what it means to not feel like you belong somewhere. That transcends beyond any one identity, so I hope that people watching the movie can see that to be an intersex person is to be a human. It’s universal, and this film creates more compassion towards all kinds of people.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Ponyboi had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2024 and was released in select US theaters on June 27, 2025. Watch the video of our red carpet interview in the clip above and read our review of Ponyboi!
