Was it important for you to showcase a realistic same-sex dating scenario on screen? Yeah, the show is very surreal but that relationship between Avan and Tyler’s characters is actually very cute. It’s not an assault on your senses, because the characters are so lovable. Also, the show has a really weird sweetness to it – and this is a testament to the actors and how fantastic they are – because it’s very punk rock and unapologetic in its queer sex and female sexuality, but it’s also very accessible and very sweet, and for me it has a sweet heart to it, and that’s why it’s not off-putting. The poster’s slogan is just, ‘What the fuck?’ and that’s what I wanna see, I just wanna see people who are totally unsuspecting going, ‘What is this thing that’s showed up on my TV?’ and that’s what’s so cool about it. I think it’s going to reach people who have never heard of me or indie cinema, and that’s so exciting. I’m so excited for the idea that this is gonna screen in some West Virginia dude’s living room, you know what I mean? It’s going to be everywhere.
#NOW APOCALYPSE GAY SEX SCENE TV#
You have to be in a certain socio-economic level and a certain cultural level to access independent cinema, but TV is beamed out to everybody. But that’s what’s so cool about TV, it’s such a democratic medium, it gets beamed out all over the world and it’s in everybody’s house, it’s not rarified the way independent cinema is. When we were doing the sound editing, there was this old straight guy in his 60s, and he was literally obsessed with the show. I hope so! The show is definitely for the queers, and also for a female audience, because it’s very feminist and there’s a lot about female sexuality in there, and a lot of that comes from Karley Sciortino’s experiences – she has a vagina, and I don’t, so she knows a lot about those female-specific issues – but at the same time some of the people who are responding strongly to the show are very much outside of what we thought was the demographic. The show is literally everything a queer audience would want. That’s always been the first scene of the pilot in my head. When I sat down to write the show, that was the first thing that came out! I’ve always been interested in that surreal element, exploring that fine line between reality and fantasy, so there’s that ominous dream element, and then there’s this sexuality which leads into the next scene which is basically a Grindr hookup. One thing that really stuck in my head is that there’s a gay sex scene two minutes into the first episode, which feels pretty ballsy. I’m so excited about it, because creatively it’s the most ideal experience I’ve ever had.
It was literally like my imagination unleashed and everything I’ve ever wanted to do in a TV show, we got to do. They never said no to us, and these 10 episodes really became everything I’ve ever wanted. We went in and pitched that we wanted to make a show that was totally not like any other show on TV, it was just gonna be this queer Sex and the City but with aliens and a weird Twin Peaks vibe to it, and they loved it. Starz have been amazing in the sense that they gave us total control over it. Were you given a limit on how far you could push things?
To celebrate the incredible levels of queerness in the show – and of course Tyler Posey playing gay – we spoke to creator and director Gregg Araki about why Now Apocalypse is the “queer Sex and the City” we never knew we needed. That, or Ulysses is smoking too much weed (it’s likely).
#NOW APOCALYPSE GAY SEX SCENE SERIES#
Hailing from the minds of New Queer Cinema legend Gregg Araki and Vogue sex columnist Karley Sciortino, the new Starz series follows bisexual protagonist Ulysses (Avan Jogia) and his friends as they pursue love, sex and fame in Los Angeles.īut this isn’t your typical coming-of-age comedy drama, as the cast’s queer and feminist-friendly sex and copious millennial pop culture references are threatened by the appearance of reptilian aliens and the promise of a dark and monstrous conspiracy theory. Now Apocalypse might be the queerest show we’ve ever seen on TV.