[Python] Emoji in Django admin form turns into question marks

In my Django app, I have a setup roughly like so: there is a Model class with a template field

@python_2_unicode_compatible
class Message(models.Model):
template = models.TextField(default=u'', help_text='Template string for message')


Then inside my view code I have something like

def view(request, message_id):
message = get_object_or_404(Message, message_id__iexact=message_id)
context = {...}
return HttpResponse(Template(message.template).render(RequestContext(request, context)))


Then I create Message objects and modify their template field through the Django admin site.

I want to add emojis or other Unicode characters to one of my messages. I try copy-pasting an emoji into the text field, and save it, but on a refresh it's saved as a string of question marks instead of as the emojis.

I've double-checked that I haven't touched DEFAULT_CHARSET (should be UTF-8), and I have <meta charset="utf-8"> in the source of both the admin site and the public site. Is there something I'm missing?

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