Hayley Kiyoko discusses directing debut film Girls Like Girls, based on her breakthrough single

Singer Hayley Kiyoko has discussed the experience of writing and directing Girls Like Girls, a film based on her 2015 breakthrough single of the same name, in an interview with The Guardian.

The film expands on the story first depicted in the song's music video, following Coley, a 17-year-old protagonist. Kiyoko, 35, said the film draws on her own teenage experiences, including falling for a girl who, in her words, "put me through my own heartbreak and haunted me for a long time."

Kiyoko became known to fans as "lesbian Jesus" following the release of Girls Like Girls in 2015, a song whose refrain, "Girls like girls like boys do, nothing new," she said came from wanting to "manifest feeling confident" about her sexuality. She said that, at the time of the song's release, her sexuality was the topic she was "the most scared of writing about."

Confidence found after the fact

According to Kiyoko, the confidence she now associates with the song did not come easily or immediately; she said feeling comfortable in her sexuality only developed after the single's release, rather than before it.

The film version of Girls Like Girls is described in the interview as a love letter to Kiyoko's 17-year-old self, revisiting the emotions and experiences that shaped the original song a decade after its release.