Patricia Arquette Joins Cann For Pride Campaign, Talks About Growing Up And Cannabis Influence

Patricia Arquette is joining Sarah Michelle Gellar, RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Willow Pillow, Kornbread and musicians Kesha and Hayley Kiyoko in a new media campaign for Cann, a cannabis beverage company. The campaign is being co-sponsored by Weedmaps MAPS.

“I’ve grown up in California since 1976—cannabis has always been a big part of the California culture. I remember buying weed when I was little and it was oregano one time. I got ripped off back in the day, back when I was a sucker,” Arquette told Vanity Fair.

The music video features a new track by Leland that was cosigned for Pride Month.

“I was joking on the set that I was representing The Golden Girls, the sort of middle-aged woman,” Arquette said, who participates in a girl-group choreography dressed up in a lipstick-pink playsuit.

Arquette talked about her relationship with marijuana, which goes back to her childhood. “I have an interesting history with cannabis, I guess, in that my dad was a real stoner growing up,” Arquette said. “Oddly enough, later on, when my mom had cancer, she was so nauseous from her chemotherapy that my sister had to buy weed on the street. My mom was like, ‘Oh, my god. I’ve fought with your dad so much about weed, and now here I am having to smoke weed again. And it’s medicine!’”

The Cockettes

Referring to the avant-garde Cockettes, Arquette said, “The idea that cannabis has been an element of cultures, throughout time, is some of the feelings that we’re bringing into this.”

The Cockettes was a psychedelic hippie theater group founded by Hibiscus (George Edgerly Harris III) in 1969. The troupe, formed out of a diverse group of artists living in Haight-Ashbury, pioneered an eclectic style of dress and costume that had not been seen before.

Arquette described the project as “the fusion of psychedelic culture with LGBTQ culture, and the celebration of life and joy and art and costume and music and activism."

Photo by Cecilie Johnsen on Unsplash.