The first trailer for Good Grief, a new gay drama starring Schitt’s Creek’s Dan Levy and Beauty and the Beast’s Luke Evans dropped yesterday, December 6, to widespread acclaim from the actors’ long-time fans. 

The film, which is set to start streaming on Netflix on January 5, 2024, was written and directed by Levy, marking the actor’s directorial debut. Good Grief follows the story of the character of Marc Dreyfus, played by Levy, a children’s book illustrator who is struggling in the wake of the death of his mother and the subsequent unexpected passing of his husband, Oliver, portrayed by Luke Evans. 

To honour the one-year anniversary of his husband’s passing, Marc takes off on a trip to Paris with his closest friends, Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel). 

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Levy discussed how the upcoming film has already been mislabeled by fans, saying: “In the early days when that idea was coming to fruition, it was originally conceived potentially as a romantic comedy, and then whatever press got out set what is not a very strange description of the movie. I see the movie as a drama or a dramedy.

“I lost my grandmother toward the tail end of the pandemic, and I was in a very strange headspace in terms of feeling the weight and the profound sense of tragedy of what the COVID pandemic had done for all of us, while at the same time trying to honour the passing of someone who meant so much to me.

“It was hard for me to feel the specificity of loss when all I was feeling was grief for so long. It was that conversation that really expedited the concept of the movie,” Levy added.  

Following the release of the film’s first trailer, it is clear that Good Grief is a film that will tug on the heartstrings. The trailer opens with Levy’s character Marc saying: “I’ve been reading that the brain is like a muscle. It’s why getting over death is so hard. Because your brain has been trained to feel things for a person. When they go away, your head is still operating under the impression that it should still feel those things. Like muscle memory.” 

The already emotional trailer becomes a real tear-jerker when Phoebe Bridgers’ 2018 cover of ‘The Gold’ by Manchester Orchestra starts to play. 

When discussing how Good Grief altered his perspective on loss, Levy told Entertainment Weekly: “When I went into it, I was still processing a lot. 

“Not that we ever fully process grief, but that question of, am I grieving properly? Have I done enough? I do feel like, in making this movie, I have honoured the grief that I felt at the time. 

“Sometimes if you have the ability to write, it’s the greatest outlet for pain and catharsis.” 

Levy continued, speaking on Good Grief’s themes of the importance of found family: “I feel like the older we get, the more profound our relationships are with our friends and the more complicated they get. Sometimes the people closest to us, we excuse the most in terms of having those hard conversations about life and bad habits and patterns of behaviour that could be slightly course corrected. It’s an uncomfortable conversation to have, and yet that intimacy exists within these friendships.”

Watch the first trailer for Good Grief , streaming exclusively on Netflix on January 5, 2024, below!