She joined the writing team with no idea she was queer. By the time KPop Demon Hunters hit screens, Hannah McMechan had come out as bisexual to everyone who mattered.
The screenwriter recently revealed that the pandemic years she spent crafting the animated phenomenon became an unexpected mirror for her own life. KPop Demon Hunters follows Rumi, a young singer forced to hide her half-demon identity to avoid rejection. McMechan was living the same story in silence.
When she started the project, McMechan had no idea she was queer. Then the pandemic hit, and like millions of others, she found herself soul-searching in isolation. Over the next two years, she quietly came out to friends before finally telling her parents in 2023.
Growing up in a religious household made the fear feel enormous. She was so afraid of telling anyone in her life, which ironically became very accurate to the movie she was helping write. She wasn’t discussing her sexuality with directors or colleagues, but somehow it kept bleeding onto the page anyway.
One moment in the film now hits differently. Near the end, Rumi confronts her adoptive mother, begging for acceptance. When her mother offers to “fix” and “hide” her demon side, Rumi asks why she can’t be loved completely.
By the fourth or fifth screening, McMechan was tearing up every time. The scene literally felt like how she feels with her own mother. Coming out to her parents wasn’t a single conversation, it remains an ongoing struggle. They still ask if being queer is “just a phase.”
Seeing LGBTQIA+ audiences embrace the film has been deeply moving. There is no group of people happier than a bunch of queer people dressed up as these characters, McMechan says with a laugh.
Now working on Tim Burton’s Attack of the 50 Foot Woman for Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap, McMechan is proof that the best stories come from telling the truth—even when it takes years to admit it to yourself first.
