Johnny Sibilly isn’t interested in giving the “ABCs of what it means to be queer.”
Sibilly and fellow “Queer as Folk” cast members agree: If you don’t know what something means, Google it.
Russell T. Davies’ original series, which premiered in 1999, followed three gay men in Manchester, England. A year later, Showtime premiered its own version, set in Pittsburgh and expanding its umbrella to cover more versions of queer. On Thursday, the latest iteration premiered on Peacock, pegged as a “reimagining” of the 1999 series, this time in New Orleans and an even bigger world: a pregnant lesbian couple, a trans woman, drag queens and more gorgeous gay men than you can count.
This version of “Queer as Folk” takes no time to explain who it is or why it’s here. This is just its world.
“It’s important to make queer things for queer people. Sometimes the first draft of queer stuff is like, ‘OK we’re going to explain our existence to you, it’s OK, Baby, come on in, the water’s warm,’ ” Ryan O’Connell, who stars as Julian, a nerd with cerebral palsy who still lives at home with his mother, (Kim Cattrall), and also serves as a writer and co-executive producer, told the Daily News.
“This is like, ‘Well, we don’t care if you’re comfortable or not; this is our lives.’ ”
“Queer as Folk” isn’t shy about its sexuality. In fact, it revels in it. Every position, version and style. One person, two people, more. Straight, gay. Abled and not.
“In so much queer TV and film, queer characters are sanctified and made to be these really palatable versions of what queerness is,” Fin Argus, who plays Mingus, a high school student trying to find his place, told The News.
“It’s important to see characters that can be messy and are human and maybe don’t like each other but can still be part of the same community,” Argus said. “Not everyone is going to get along, but there’s still this thread that keeps people connected.”
Showrunner Stephen Dunn described his show as “real, raw, authentic queer stories.” Sometimes that’s a queer couple [CG and Jesse James Keitel] expecting twins and figuring out how to be parents. Sometimes that’s Mingus, experimenting as a drag queen and with his own sexuality. Sometimes that’s Brodie [Devin Way], who has dropped out of medical school and come home with no plans. Sometimes that’s a fatal shooting at Babylon, a gay nightclub. Sometimes that’s a montage of sex scenes.
“There are people who are like, ‘Oh, this is very woke,’ and I’m like, ‘Our existence is woke?’ That’s very weird to me,” Sibilly, who plays Noah, a successful lawyer with less success in his personal life, told The News.
“Especially if you go out in New Orleans, there’s such a great, diverse group of people littering the streets, the restaurants. It doesn’t feel like we’re checking boxes. We’re just showing the world how it is and how it exists.”
Keitel, the trans actress playing semi-reformed party girl and high school teacher Ruthie, whose partner, Shar, is pregnant, stressed the messiness of it all. These characters aren’t perfect, nor should they pretend to be.
“We get to see queer people living their lives authentically and unapologetically and surrounded by their peers in a community who love and embrace them,” she told The News.
“I think people forget that queer people are normal. We’re normal people, real people with hopes and dreams and layers and strife and conflict. They mess up.”
Through the tragedy of the nightclub shooting, “Queer as Folk” finds its light. There are no explanations of Grindr. There are no straight characters to guide you into their world. It just exists.
“As queer people, we go through things in our lives that you would consider traumatic and it is in spite of all of those things what makes us special: our humor that we get out of the dark moments, our friendships, our chosen family,” Sibilly told The News.
“It’s about not what happens to you, but what you do with it that matters. It’s a very relatable queer thing to rise from the ashes.”
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