How the Pulse Shooting Inspired Peacock’s ‘Queer as Folk’ Reimagining

Creator Stephen Dunn doesn’t consider his Peacock take on Queer as Folk a “reboot.”

Instead, the filmmaker behind 2015’s Closet Monster sees the third version of the groundbreaking drama as a “reimagining” that has homages to Russell T Davies’ British original that also inspired the Showtime update.

“We’re acknowledging the past while fully paving our own way because that was the only way I could approach this,” Dunn tells The Hollywood Reporter in his first interview about the series. “We had to break new ground in order to tell the story and to make it relevant because we have our own generation’s things to say. We have a new story.”

The first-time TV creator from Newfoundland behind Pop-Up Porno met Little America exec producer Lee Eisenberg at Sundance a few years ago and, after hitting it off, the subject of Queer as Folk came up after many of the themes Dunn wanted to explore came back to the groundbreaking series about a group of queer friends. Only one thing stood in the way: the rights to the series had reverted from Showtime back to original series creator Davies.

Knowing that many before him had pursued the rights to Queer as Folk, Dunn flew himself to London to meet with the It’s a Sin creator and walked away with the rights to the property based on the strength of a pitch that centered around a Pulse-like nightclub shooting in a New Orleans gay bar and the story of how the city’s LGBTQ community rebuilt itself.

The Queer as Folk update was on its way. A bidding war for the project followed, with Showtime — which aired five seasons and more than 80 episodes of the series from Ron Cowan and Daniel Lipman — among the bidders. Ultimately, the series landed at NBCUniversal-backed Bravo before transitioning to the company’s streamer with a series order. The process, Dunn recalls in the exclusive interview below, didn’t come easy as the pandemic-related delay almost cost NBCUniversal rights to the property. That’s when Dunn got personal and created a short video featuring his friends, family, execs, agents and scores of LGBTQ celebrities speaking about what it means to be queer today.

The result was a series order for the drama, which by that point had recruited Davies as an exec producer whose notes helped Dunn push the beloved franchise into new arenas that that TV had yet to explore with the British original (1999-2000) and Showtime update (2000-2005).

Dunn assembled an all-queer writers’ room and met with a number of Pulse survivors (some of whom served as consultants on the series) and cast LGBTQ talent in LGBTQ roles. The cast, like its two predecessors, is populated largely with unknowns: Devin Way (Grey’s Anatomy), Fin Argus (Agents of SHIELD), Jesse James Keitel (Big Sky), CG, Johnny Sibilly (Hacks) and Ryan O’Connell (Special), with the latter also attached as a writer and co-exec producer. Guest stars include Kim Cattrall and Juliette Lewis, who take a page out of the British original and Showtime update and play parents to LGBTQ kids.

Below, Dunn opens up about his relationship with Queer as Folk, working with Pulse survivors and why it’s important to explore the messy part of the LGBTQ community.

What attracted you to doing Queer as Folk and what was your relationship with the British original and the Showtime update?

Queer as Folk was my awakening. It was the first time I saw myself reflected [on TV] but it was also something I used to watch in my basement with the volume turned down low with the remote programmed to “last channel” waiting for someone to come in. It was insular, private and something I could not share with anyone, but my life was never the same after I saw it. I was 12 years old. And I was watching the American version at the time with bated breath between the sex scenes and these queer storylines.

When I was in high school, I found the DVDs and rented the British version at a local video store and it took my breath away. It was so punk, so angry. So reverent, so messy. There were car explosions and queer people in the driver’s seat in a real, raw, honest kind of way. Making queer stories has always been important to me. I have always wanted to push stories outside of the coming of age and to dive into the nuances of being queer now.

I had three films at Sundance a few years ago now. It was the year I made Closet Monster and Lee Eisenberg and Emily Brecht found those films and talked about wanting to do a show with me. We floated the idea of Queer as Folk and I was just like, “That’s it. That’s what I wanted.” I want to take that title and reimagine it for a modern story line. The Showtime rights to Queer as Folk had expired and they reverted back to Russell. I was in the U.K. and hopped on a train, set up a meeting and pitched Russell my take.

I knew what it was going to be about. I knew the story. I knew the premise. I knew I wanted it to be about a community rebuilding after a Pulse night club-like tragedy. He loved the concept and the energy that I brought to it and felt like this had the potential to expand on the legacy of this series.

This originally landed at Bravo after you made a very moving short video that was part of the pitch process in which you and other queer people in the industry — celebrities, agents, etc. — all spoke about what it means to be queer today. I’ve interviewed so many people over the years who have said they go the extra mile like that because there aren’t executives who look like them that they’re pitching to. Why was the video something that you felt was necessary to do as part of the pitch process?

We were aiming to shoot in 2020 just as the pandemic hit. Then the rights that we had were getting ready to expire. I’ve been so passionate about this show needing to get made so I made this video that had friends, family, fans of the show and a ton of famous queer people. I wanted to show the network that we couldn’t let this slip through our fingers. We have an iconic title. We have some amazing scripts. We have these incredible characters. And Alex Sepiol [who co-heads drama/current programming] at Peacock has always championed this.

There was a bidding war for the show once we brought it out and Alex wanted it so badly. And Bravo understood it. They knew what this vision was. We always felt so supported, but we knew that the rights were expiring and if we were going to move, we had to move now. So, we made this video to show how much magnetism already exists for not just Queer as Folk but real, authentic, unapologetic, queer storytelling. We don’t get to see it. We need to see more queer characters, but we don’t often get to see an entire show. We had Pose, which was amazing, and so many others recently but it’s very rare to get a fully queer show. You can name them on one hand really.

Right, like Pose, The L Word, Queer as Folk and maybe Transparent…

Exactly. There’s an urgent need for these kinds of stories told by queer people.

Let’s go back to the bidding war. Who else was in on it before it originally sold to NBCUniversal?

Showtime. But Bravo ultimately knew what the show needed to be. And with Russell, we all aligned in this partnership with Alex. It was my first experience in a bidding war. I’m used to no one paying any attention to my little queer things, but this was so different; there was such a hunger for it from the get-go.

It’s surprising that it didn’t end up with Showtime, given their history with the title and having recently revisited The L Word with Generation Q. It would’ve been a natural to kind of pair those two as they used to air originally.

I don’t think they knew that the rights had expired. But I really love On Becoming a God in Central Florida and Yellowjackets and what the network is doing.

Showtime approached Queer as Folk as kind of a jumping off point from Russell’s original series and it far outlived the source material. How did you want to use the original series and maybe even the Showtime take to inspire your version?

I didn’t use the Showtime one at all. Using the original source material was a jumping off point. But because of the time that’s passed between these versions, I wasn’t looking to redo the stories that had already been done so well before. That’s why we’re not using the word “reboot” because this is really a re-imagining of the show and it’s set in New Orleans, as well as within a community that’s rebuilding after a tragedy. If you squint, you can see the character archetypes that exist that are a slight reference [to the original] but I’m not heading toward the same trajectory as any of the other versions of the show before.

I’ve seen the first few episodes and there’s the name of the club, Babylon, the lead driving a Jeep, the openly gay high school kid with a crush, the pregnant lesbians …

And a car explosion, which is a reference to the British series that comes up in episode three. There are references to characters and viewers should keep an eye on Grindr profiles. There are a lot of references and homages and love for the original. But that’s the extent that we took with it. It’s a lot of meta-acknowledgements of the series, but even just the opening credit sequence, we start the show with an homage to ’90s queer culture and club videos. And we pull out from that into a sex scene that is pulling us out of the old and into the present storyline. We’re acknowledging the past while fully paving our own way because that was the only way I could approach this. We had to break new ground in order to tell the story and to make it relevant because we have our own generation’s things to say. We have a new story.

When you talk about making this your own, one of the first things that jumped out at me is that there wasn’t much diversity in either of the previous Queer as Folk series but there is here. What are the distinctions from the previous versions that you wanted to make?

The inclusion of diversity — racial diversity and abilities — has been a huge part of the show. I have a lot of queer disabled friends. My uncle, who had just come out at 60 years old, his jaw dropped when I told him I got the rights to the show. He has CP and said he used to watch the show in his basement with the volume on low making sure his mom, who he lived with, didn’t know. We were 35 years apart and he had the exact same experience I did — and as so many other people did. But he had never seen himself reflected in that way. The representation, not just on TV, but literally going to gay bars — or even Pride — a lot of these queer spaces are not accessible. That was important to bring attention to with the show: we can’t be inclusive if we’re not accessible.

I went to school in Toronto and lived there for 10 years, which is where [Showtime’s] Queer as Folk was filmed [though it was set in Pittsburgh]. I would go to Woody’s — which was the exterior of Babylon — and it wasn’t a representation of the diversity that reflected the community that I came from. In reimagining it, a lot of these characters are named after my friends. They’re not based on them, but in a way, this friend group is a reflection of my community but set in New Orleans. And New Orleans is a key part of that approach because it has the most unique, vibrant queer community I’ve ever been to. The city itself, despite the fact that it has the Bourbon Street reputation, it is inherently queer, resilient and defiant. It’s the queer and liberal oasis in the deep South so it attracts the queerdos from all over but in this way that, because of what’s surrounding them, you have to be so much stronger. The community there is vibrant, and it felt like the only place that a modern Queer as Folk could be set because it has the intersection of class, race and privilege. And that had to be a part of the show. There’s just no question.

Russell told me on the podcast that he read the scripts and gave you a few notes. What were some of the things that he wanted to see?

He wanted to let us figure out how to crack it open. He read the scripts and watched the episodes and pushed me in a way that gave me permission to not be afraid to make big character decisions. One of the things he said really moved me. I felt nervous; this show has a big legacy. And after seeing the pilot, he just was like, “It’s yours. It’s a new show.” He just gave me this beautiful gift of permission to breathe new life into it. I’m so grateful for that because it’s a daunting task.

Russell also mentioned that his shows — Queer as Folk, Cucumber, Banana and It’s a Sin — basically tell a story in reverse. When his Queer as Folk was made, nobody was talking about HIV/AIDS on TV and the original doesn’t explore it at all, which paved the way for It’s a Sin. The Showtime series goes there in later seasons but knowing what Russell’s regrets were with QAF, was there a particular story that you wanted to explore that the two incarnations ahead of you didn’t get to? Jesse James Keitel’s transgender character, Ruthie, is front here, for example.

Absolutely. I mean Jaclyn Moore is a huge part of the show as one of the executive producers and writers. The character of Ruthie was always an integral part of the story. Unfortunately, it’s only in the past few decades that we have started to even see any semblance of authentic trans storytelling. Thank God for Pose having paved the way in terms of depicting trans joy while still balancing the complexities of it. One of the things we wanted to focus on is what about the messy side? Not just for Ruthie, but for all of our characters. They’re flawed, selfish, beautiful, vibrant and good people. But the burden of representation can be stifling for a lot of shows and movies, especially when there’s one queer character in the ensemble.

And those characters have to represent everything to everyone, which is impossible.

They’re not allowed to be flawed when they’re like that. Everyone in our writers’ room — it’s an all-queer room except for our writers’ assistant who hilariously came out as straight — we’ve all come from being the only queer person in our previous rooms where you can’t have as much of an impact. You’re servicing someone else’s vision or story, which it is a great thing and it’s what we’re hired to do. But to be in a room with all queer people, it allows you to be able to go deeper and do things that only a room like that could possibly be able to do. That’s why none of our characters are perfect and they’re constantly shifting and making difficult, selfish decisions or mistakes. We want to let them do that because that’s what we let Don Draper and Tony Soprano do. We’ve had so many antiheroes, but we rarely get to see the kind of diversity that we have in this show. We rarely get to see those people depicted in a way that includes their flaws.

Russell has been a big advocate of gay actors playing gay roles. How did you approach casting?

It was a no-brainer. Not because I feel conflicted about that statement in some ways only because I have cast actors who were not out at the time when I worked with them and now they’re out. There is a weird pressure in Hollywood that keeps a lot of people that we all know are queer closeted. That said, it is not hard to find incredible queer talent. Johnny Sibilly and Ryan O’Connell are maybe more well known, but Fin Argus, Devin Way, Jesse James Keitel, CG — people are going to know their names.

Kim Cattrall and Juliette Lewis have recurring roles as parents to LGBTQ kids, a role that Sharon Gless played on the Showtime series. Do you see those characters — with the familiar faces playing them — as a way in to this story for straight viewers? One of the things that Ron and Dan said about their Showtime take is, “People came for the queer, but they stayed for the folk,” and the casting reminds me of that.

I wrote the role for Kim. And I’ve been a huge fan of Juliette’s. Queer as Folk never had stars. They became stars. The world is starting to understand and support and see that queer narratives are not just for queer audiences. It is a new world now where these stories are accessible in a mainstream way. Kim and Juliette both know that a massive part of their fan base exists within the queer community. Those characters do function as a way for other people to see that there are other ways into the show. I made this show for the people who need it. That’s what Queer as Folk has always been and that’s who it’s made for.

Much of the season is built around the Pulse-inspired shooting at Babylon, which was part of your original pitch for the rights to Russell. Why did you want to start there?

I knew from the beginning there was only one way and one reason to reimagine the show. I didn’t want the title just for the sake of the title. I wanted to re-envision it through the lens of what happened post-Pulse. Pulse is a specific event that targeted the Latinx community in Orlando. Our show is completely fictional, but the trajectory of our story is inspired by the realities of what that was like — not just that night, but the aftermath and the way that the community of Orlando rebuilt in the wake of that tragedy.

The queer community is as diverse as the entire world because we are everywhere in every culture. And there’s a lot of segregation within the queer community. After Pulse, it felt the first time that the community had really felt united. It happened in Orlando, but the ripple effect was felt across the world. I remember being in Toronto at Pride and not feeling safe going out to a bar. It was terrifying and I’m sure I’m not the only person who felt that way.

I went very early on in the process to Orlando and started meeting with the survivors. This was organized by the Orlando United Assistance Center, which organized roundtables and individual meetings with me to meet with whoever was interested from the survivors community, as well as the community leaders that rose up in response to what happened. I am so grateful that they trusted me to come into this world and try to understand and make any kind of sense of what happened. We got to see a public image of these people who were regular people going to a bar, but then became political. They became media figures. But only one side of that story really gets told.

What you’ll see in Queer as Folk is the honest truth of what it is like to go through something like that and how it’s not this saintly victim tragedy story. These are real people and they’re not victims. They survived a tragedy, and they are human beings whose lives were completely turned upside down after this. And this community all responded in completely different ways.

Of the people we talked to, anyone who was interested was invited to be involved as a consultant on the show and read scripts and gave feedback to make sure that we were telling the story authentically because it became clear that that was something that we had to do.

LGBTQ rights continue to be under attack, with Don’t Say Gay bills in multiple states, anti-trans laws and more. How political will your show get? The final season of the Showtime series was very political, for example.

The show is inherently political. We didn’t want to let our politics define our story because then you get into a territory where our characters are representing a cause in a community. That inherently happens as a part of our show. We dive into the nuances of what it is like to go through this [with the shooting]. The trial of the shooter is a part of the show. The rebuilding of Babylon becomes a part of the season.

Our show will never be an issue piece. It will deal with issues, but it will be dealt with through a character-motivated way. And it may not always be dealt with right. That’s what we want the freedom to be able to do.

Ron and Dan were open about feeling nervous and unsafe making their QAF and wanting security for their writers’ room. Given the way that LGBTQ rights have been under attack of late, what has your experience been like?

Knowing where the season goes, the show is going to be divisive — and it has to be. I did not know that they had security in the writers’ room. I’m going to bring that up in our production meeting because it is something that is a reality in this world. But ultimately, I’m not making this show with that in mind because then it’ll become a different show. This show is made for our community. And it always has been made that way. And it needs to remain that way.

The Showtime series ran for five seasons and 80-plus episodes; the British went for two seasons and 10 episodes. What kind of longevity do you foresee here, considering this isn’t exactly a family-friendly show for an audience that watched the Saved by the Bell reboot, for example?

Knowing how we end this season, I think this show has the longevity to go a long time. We have a lot of stories to tell and have so much more to explore with these characters that I’m ready to go all the way.

You can’t make a show called Queer as Folk and have it not be racy, which the first few episodes definitely are. Was there anything that Peacock execs said, “That’s maybe too far?”

We have some full-frontal nudity in the show in a sex scene that very rarely, if ever, gets to be seen and in a way that is loving, consensual and empowering. There were a lot of conversations around this scene to make sure that this was something Peacock supported and was ready to break some ground with this show and make a statement.

This is also the first time that Queer as Folk has been made for the streaming era (with all episodes dropping at once). Did that help with how far you could push the envelope and explore some of the things that you do explore, including nudity?

Maybe. Peacock was a new entity. There was a lot of unknown at the time [we were picked up] and we were wondering the exact same thing as you about if the show would still be able to be as honest and explicit. I’m grateful that it was because sex is such a huge part of culture in general. I’m proud of the sex scenes in our show because they’re all pushing boundaries and emotionally motivated in a way that it doesn’t feel exploitative.

We have cheeky references to the original with the ass eating in the pilot. But this time, the characters talk. We have homages to make it ours but sexuality has always been a part of Queer as Folk and Peacock understood that. They knew what they were doing when they greenlit the show.

What do you hope viewers come away with after watching the first season?

A lot of people were nervous about a show that starts with a shooting. Although that is the inciting incident of the season, we never show it. That’s not what the story is. The story is about the characters and rebuilding. And the show goes so much further to explore who these characters are and find humor, joy, sexiness and a reverence through that. This isn’t a tragedy-born kind of show. We barrel through the darkness with humor in our hearts because it’s such an important survival tool for queer people. If I can say one thing I’m most proud of, it’s the humor and reverence of the show because it creates a fearless energy that propels every character forward.

The first season of Queer as Folk premieres June 9 on Peacock.

Interview edited and condensed for clarity.