The special relationship between gay men and their straight, female BFFs has been explored a few times in various TV shows and movies, but it's not often that those friendships are the focal point of a whole series. And it's even more rare when they work togther in the sex industry. Netflix's explores that unique friendship dynamic in their newest dark comedy BONDiNG, the story of an aspiring gay comedian named Pete who, to make ends meet, also works as an assistant for his best friend Tiff, a psychiatry student who just moonlights as a dominatrix.
PRIDE got the chance to sit down with BONDiNG's creator and executive producer Rightor Doyle to talk about how the series came to be (hint: it was based off real life experiences!), the special relationship gay men have with their women best friends, creating a show about sex work, and the rise of queer-centric comedy.
PRIDE: BONDiNG is based off of your real life experiences when you moved to New York City. Can you take me through the genesis of the show and how that part of your life became inspiration for the series?
Rightor Doyle: Yeah, it happened to me and then I think for years I didn't really talk about it. And then I guess I just started telling it as a funny, weird, complex story to some of my friends, and everyone thought it was very interesting. And from there, with years of perspective, I started to see that maybe there was more than just a story about me, that there could be a larger story there. So I then went and took the genesis of that and fictionalized a lot of it and turned it into what we see today.
So Zoe Levin and Brendan Scannell are hilarious together.
Aren't they so great? Oh my god, I felt so lucky that we found them and that they connected like that.
Did you have a hand in casting them?
Yeah, I cast everyone on the show. So that's the job, but they both came to us different ways. I had had multiple people talk to me when I was telling them about the show. Multiple people talked to me about Brendan as an actor and as a comedian. And I had met him before, but then he sent in a tape and he was just so perfect and so individual and so himself. And I was very specific about not wanting to make a show about myself and I wanted to find someone who would just be wholly Pete. And he absolutely is that and I couldn't be more thrilled.
And Zoe was the last tape we saw of people who came in for the role of Tiff. And a minute into the tape I put my head in my sweater and cried because I thought we would never find her. It's a very difficult part. It has to be someone who is at once cold and also at the same time is extremely loving and warm and she was just perfect. And the two of them didn't meet until the third day of filming because Brendan was on another project. So I was very nervous about how they would connect and how that would connect on screen. And they shot their first scene together and it was just the most magical experience and we've all become such close friends through this and I'm just so happy to have had them.
What was it like seeing them bring your characters to life?
Well you know the funny thing is that I don't really know any 22 year olds? And neither one of them are exactly 22, but they are younger than me and so oftentimes I write for people I know, but I just didn't know who could play these parts. So seeing them step into these roles, they became those parts to me, I can't imagine them any other way. And so it was thrilling because they made the good thing that I made, or wrote, they made that great. And that's all I'm looking for from artists I'm collaborating with is; take this good idea and make it better. And they did that.
So with BONDiNG and other shows like The Other Two and Schitt's Creek, gay-centered comedy is really becoming more and more accepted and part of mainstream culture. What's it like being a part of this new emergence of hilarious, authentic queer comedy?
It's thrilling because I think that we're often given one shot, one opportunity. Either like this show or sorry we're not going to give you anything else. So to have so many voices in the conversation, to have so many people getting the opportunity to tell their stories, it only allows for not only a wider audience for gay content but more gay people to, more queer people, to enjoy different stories. I think there is often a heavy weight that comes with the one particular show that is on air that is for queer people. Let's say Looking or Queer As Folk or The L Word, you know? If there's only one show, then many people will say, "I don't connect to that." And they will reject it, but now we're given the opportunity for many people to have a voice in the conversation, which I think allows for not only different perspectives, but allows for the queer community to not be so hard on itself.
In real life sex work is still very much stigmatized and villainized, especially in this day and age, but I feel like BONDiNG helps humanize that work a little. Was it important for you to shine a light on sex work and remove some of that stigma associated with it through your hilarious characters?
Yes, that was definitely a part of the idea. I wanted to, through the colors and the comedy in the show, open up this conversation to a wider audience that never thought they could. We were trying to give people a new understanding and perspective on this type of work and on their own sexual identity and start a conversation there and that was always the hope. Pete and Tiff are flawed people who are not always making the right choice, they're not always saying the right thing and there's a real story at the center of this that has very little to do with the BDSM/dom world, and my hope is that not only are we opening people up to this conversation, but are also engaging people on an emotional level.
And it's great that you shine a light on women in particular in the sex industry. Can you speak on that as well?
Well, women in general are my biggest inspiration. They've been my best friends and my loudest supporters throughout my entire life and as a gay man who was not even out at the time, but as a sensitive high school boy, they were the reason I could make it through a school day. So I think that in many ways I know and understand and appreciate them and love to write about women in general and so that's sort of where I'm coming from. The complexities of gay male and straight female relationships are so interesting to me because I've spent a lot of my life dealing with it. But we're two different groups of people that have particular sets of problems with the way that the world works and I think we're often much stronger together than we are apart.
The show, at its core, is about friendship and the special bond between a gay man and his female bestie, which I found so relatable because, like a lot of gay men before coming out, I had more women friends than before I ever even had another gay friend. Why was that friendship dynamic important to be at the core of BONDiNG?
I too have similar experiences and I think also speaking to a particular part of the show where they get in an argument about if it's harder to be a gay man or a woman. Neither one of them are wrong and I think that the point is that we all have different experiences because of who we are and where we come from. But that the similarity of what we're working towards is bigger than our differences and I think it's so interesting in terms of gay men and women.
How empowering was it to tell Tiff's story? At her essence, she's a woman taking control of her own body and her own sexuality and her work.
Well personally, I always say that Pete is me when I was 20 and Tiff is me in my 30s. And they are sort of two sides of the same coin. She is a dominant person in her life and he is a subordinate person in his life. And that metaphor rings true to the job they do as well. But I think it was especially important to tell her story because beyond me or my similarities to Tiff, we're also in a world that is shifting and changing in perspectives and I wanted to speak to her. I wanted to speak to a person who is trying to get through that alone and ultimately realizes that we would all do better if we did it together.
Throughout the season, Pete learns more about Tiff's work and then more about BDSM and more about what she does as a dom, and in turn he starts to open up more and become more confident in his sexuality and actually becomes a more all-around liberated person. Can you speak to his journey and what it was like to create a show based on becoming more confident in who you are?
I think we all deal with that. Rollercoasters look scary until you're on them and then you realize that you're having a good time. But sometimes you get on a rollercoaster and you're like, "I'm having a good time." And then you throw up all over the place. But one can never tell what any experience will be like, the issue is whether you're going to be afraid of, to keep the metaphor going, every rollercoaster or you're just going to get on. And I think that with Pete, what he's really dealing with is being afraid of everything and thinking of the consequences of every action and something that he finds in the BDSM world that allows him to be the bolder, better person that he becomes throughout the season is people who are asking for what they want and are not ashamed or embarrassed about their need for that. And so his journey is centered around just being a person who would be more willing to get on the rollercoaster than not.
Sex is explored in a lot of media, obviously, but not necessarily in very sex-positive ways. Do you hope that changes as time goes on and as more shows, like BONDiNG, get created?
That's the hope. I'm ultimately very interested in telling the story of these characters and allowing that story to unfold in such a way that connects the audience to the two of them and to the show that we have created. Obviously sex positivity is a huge part of the show and hopefully if given the opportunity to do more, we further deepen and enrich that conversation. I hope people make more of it.
And just as a fun question to end things off, in BONDiNG, Tiff goes by Mistress May and Pete goes by Master Carter. If you had to pick an alias for yourself, what would it be?
Well the one thing on the show that is really, really true to life is that I picked the name Carter for myself.
Oh, really? That's cute!
I don't know why, I don't have any affinity to that name, I don't. It just popped into my head, I said, "Carter." So who knows?
Season 1 of BONDiNG is streaming now on Netflix!
