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- Star Miles Heizer says his gay character’s emotional struggles were much tougher than the physical demands.
- Several military veterans were advisors on the show, sharing their personal experiences that helped the actors.
- The series is set in 1990, before “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and Max Parker’s character faces serious interrogation over a past relationship that could end his military career.
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In the opening moments of “Boots,” Netflix’s new comedy-drama series, we meet Cameron “Cam” Cope, an 18-year old high school graduate who is gay, loves Wilson Phillips, talks to his sassier inner self and is tired of being bullied at school and at home, where his flighty mother, Barbara (Vera Farmiga), actually tells him he should be more masculine.
“My life needs a change, sir. I wanna be somebody else,” says Cam (Miles Heizer; “Parenthood,” “13 Reasons Why” ) when a recruiter asks why he wants to join the Marines.
But it’s also 1990, a time when being gay in the military was considered a criminal offense. It’s three years before the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is issued by the Department of Defense to halt harassment and discrimination of closeted gay and bisexual service men and women. Cam enrolls anyway, persuaded by his best friend Ray McAffey (Liam Oh), desperate for change. And change he gets.
“As a queer person, I think we have these preconceived notions about hypermasculine worlds and what I viewed the military to be, especially the Marines,” says Heizer, sitting on the rooftop of Netflix’s New York offices last week with co-star Max Parker, who plays stern drill instructor Sgt. Robert Sullivan.
In “Boots,” Cameron Cope (Miles Heizer) is a closeted gay teenager who joins the Marines after some encouragement from his best friend, Ray (Liam Oh), and a desire to become “somebody else.”
(Netflix)
That sense of what masculinity is weighs not only on Cam but also on the mixed bag of recruits and the officers whose job it is to shape them into “The few, the proud, the Marines,” to quote the iconic ad campaign.
“While it was really important that we enter this world through Cameron’s point of view and come into this military story through the unique lens of a queer character, it was equally important that we get to experience the struggle and transformation of the rest of our platoon as well,” says Andy Parker, who serves as co-showrunner with Jennifer Cecil. “Cameron is not the only one hiding something, and boot camp is the place that forces everyone to confront who they are and who they want to become.”
Starring Miles Heizer as a closeted gay teenager who joins the Marines alongside his best friend, this Netflix miniseries shows military life in a pre-Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell world.
The eight-episode series, now streaming, is based on Greg Cope White’s 2016 memoir, “The Pink Marine,” which producer Rachel Davidson brought to the late Norman Lear and his partner Brent Miller to develop. Lear, who served in the Air Force during World War II as a radio operator and gunner, responded to the core friendship in the book between a gay and straight man (Greg and Dale in the book) in Marine training. “It was a very special and important relationship that Norman felt we hadn’t really seen on television before,” says Miller. “And as we all know, Norman loved to champion stories he felt important for a television audience.”
To create an authentic portrayal of the Marines and military life in the ’90s, the series enlisted the help of several advisors with past military experience, who worked closely with Andy Parker (who’s also an executive producer), Heizer and Max Parker. Some of their personal stories about their time in the service were even woven into the series. Here, the actors, showrunner and advisors share how their experiences came together like a platoon of new recruits.
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Training never stopped
The actors who played recruits in “Boots” were required to undergo boot camp training in preparation for their roles.
(Alfonso “Pompo” Bresciani / Netflix)
Before production could even begin, the cast had to dive into basic training drills that mirrored what their characters would experience. For Heizer, his training began with one self-appointed task — watching a classic television comedy. “I had the luxury of Cameron going into the whole experience blind, so my preparation was watching ‘The Golden Girls’ because that’s what Cameron watches,” says a grinning Heizer. But, his grin fading, going through boot camp in New Orleans in the “dead brutal summer,” he says, was anything but a sitcom.
“I’m going to be honest,” Heizer says. “I was surprised at how bad I was at things where I was like, ‘This is going to be easy.’”
One of those challenges was inspection arms, a drill where the recruit prepares his or her rifle for visual inspection by an officer.
“I’m going to be honest,” says Miles Heizer about undergoing boot camp training like a Marine. “I was surprised at how bad I was at things where I was like, ‘This is going to be easy.’”
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
“I’m gay and I’ve used a baton before, so I thought it’ll probably be similar to that. But it was so hard. I had to practice over and over and over,” he says.
As polished drill instructor Sullivan, Parker (“Vampire Academy,” “Emmerdale”) wasn’t expected to go through the same training as the actors playing the recruits, but he chose to anyway. “I didn’t necessarily come up in a military background, but I wanted to know what a recruit would go through,” explains the British actor. “I was learning how to take the guns apart and drilling with them.”
Training didn’t only happen at the start of production because, for several reasons, the actors needed to repolish their newly learned skills throughout filming.
“It was a good two weeks at the very beginning that was really getting into the basics of how to stand, how to face and getting into basic marching,” says Travis Neuman, a decorated 24-year veteran of the Marine Corps, who was a military advisor on the series.
But nobody planned for filming to be interrupted by the lengthy dual Hollywood strikes in 2023. “It was a continuous evolution to ensure that we were staying abreast of everything that was going on and everybody was maintaining a basic skill set,” says Neuman.
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Military advisors shared memories and mementos
“We touched everything from shining boots to putting uniforms together to helping props,” says military advisor Sammy “Gunny” Wray.
(Netflix)
Learning to load a rifle, master the obstacle course and shoot targets was all par for the course in preparing for the series, but the advisors’ guidance and training was invaluable not just to the actors but to the entire production.
“We touched everything from shining boots to putting uniforms together to helping props,” says military advisor Sammy “Gunny” Wray. “We taught them how to make racks [beds]. We literally had a finger in everything that took place on the set.”
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Aside from the basics, the advisors also shared personal memories of their early military days with the actors, who they said often grilled them for details. “I’d try to help them find motivations within their own past that they could pull from so in that moment they could provide something authentic,” says Neuman. “I couldn’t get them to relate to my experience in boot camp, but what I could do is [give them] understanding how that felt.”
But memories and tales were not all the advisors brought to the production. Wray, for example, had multiple items like his laundry bag with his service number and his military notebook, which he offered up to the show. “I brought [prop master] Jonathan [Hodges] over my green monster with all of my pages of notes and he made replicas of all these things,” Wray says. Also, challenge coins — given to show achievements, events or membership in a unit — belonging to Neuman and his wife, who is also a retired Marine, were used on set to add more touches of authenticity.
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Secrets revealed and building community
Sgt. Sullivan (Max Parker) is hiding a secret.
(Alfonso “Pompo” Bresciani / Netflix)
As the first season unfolds, it’s revealed that Heizer’s character isn’t the sole closeted gay man in the platoon. In the fourth episode, viewers see that a shaken Sullivan is being investigated for his relationship with another serviceman who is suspected of being gay. The drill sergeant endures intrusive questioning by superiors, choosing to lie about it, but flashbacks reveal a romantic relationship with another serviceman, Maj. Wilkinson (Sachin Bhatt), who is also under investigation.
“You could lose your whole job and your career and everything, but also just the isolation of it all is truly sad, which really helped in all of his scenes following that moment,” says Parker.
“You could lose your whole job and your career and everything, but also just the isolation of it all is truly sad, which really helped in all of his scenes following that moment,” says Max Parker about his character in “Boots.”
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
Real-life experience in that regard came from military advisor Leon Ingleright, who had been discharged just shy of his five-year obligation serving in the Marines when an email he’d written to a male partner a year earlier was uncovered. “I was there through all the script discussions, as [the writers] were asking, ‘How would this actually sound or how would this actually look?’” says Ingleright. “I did also get a chance to talk in depth with Miles and also with Max about being gay and being in the closet and then, ultimately, being outed.”
Though seemingly so different, Cam and Sullivan form a bond as the officer takes steps to help the young recruit through some of the tougher moments in training. “There’s an inner battle where Cam sees Sullivan and, as the show goes on, realizes that he’s more like him than he thought,” says Heizer. “Their relationship ends up being super complicated, where Sullivan’s a mentor to him while Cam is simultaneously seeing, ‘This could be how I end up.’”
But, in the end, the sense of community that develops among the recruits in the series was something the actors didn’t have to fake.
“That was part of Cameron’s journey that I actually experienced simultaneously,” says Heizer. “What I love about Cameron is that I don’t think his story is about his sexuality. By the end, he has this brotherhood and this respect from people that he never dreamt would ever want anything to do with him.”
“Boots” is streaming now on Netflix.
