How Scout Productions Remains a Pioneer of Authentic, Queer Reality Television

Around the time that I was in high school, queer television started to boom. In 1998, Will & Grace debuted on NBC. In December 2000, the American version of Queer as Folk dropped on Showtime, and, in the summer of 2003, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy came out on Bravo. All three of these shows garnered their own respective buzz as it rode a wave of gay visibility in entertainment. While Will and Folk have their adoring fans, Queer Eye stuck out because it was a reality show. Putting queer characters on television was a fantastic milestone for the early 2000s, but seeing authentic gay men on our screens was a game-changer. Scout Productions was behind the original version of Queer Eye, and the team, including David Collins, Michael Williams, and Rob Eric, has no plans on stopping any time soon.

We are living through a golden age of queer entertainment whether it’s a documentary series about Andy Warhol or a drama series revolving around Harlem ball culture in 1980’s New York City. During my chat with Collins, Williams, and Eric, I could tell all three men were revelling in how much queer culture we are steeped in.

“What’s exciting is seeing ourselves,” Eric began. “When the first Queer Eye came out in 2003, there were no queer people on television. This show comes along, and there’s not just one or two lead guys that are gay–there are five. There was no getting around the fact that they were queer since it was in the title. It’s not like with Paul Lynde, and maybe there’s a chance that he’s not gay. We always talk about making omni-cultural entertainment, and now we are seeing ourselves. If we did see ourselves on screen before that, we were the punchline. I remember when I was growing up in Rhode Island, and two guys wanted to go to the prom together. They were traipsed across the media like a sideshow. That’s what I saw for myself before I came out, and that’s what I thought was in store for me.”

“It is a Golden Age,” echoed Collins. He pointed to a recent Netflix sensation as an indication of how much the needle has changed. “I created Queer Eye twenty years ago, and this weekend I sat down with my twin daughters to watch Heartstopper. It is a young love story, but if I was teenager watching that, I would feel so good to see myself. It’s beautiful, because the stories are authentic. They are the same stories when we were closeted in the 80s.”

“That visibility is in full force now, because we know each other exists,” Eric added.

Part of the reason why the new version of Queer Eye is so successful is because we go beyond just the transformations (Collins refers to them as superheroes in the original iteration: “They flew in, flew out, they saved the day, but we didn’t know who they were.”). Pulling back the curtain on the Fab Five’s lives in the reboot is another example of how the team wanted to make a different show from the original. Now that audiences are eager to see the lives of queer people, Netflix’s Queer Eye can thrive even more.

“We are reaching a new audience. The younger audience didn’t even know there was an older version,” Williams said. “It’s telling these heartfelt stories and transformations that are ageless. People want to see these emotional, connective transformations that people have. Whether it’s about fixing your house or your clothes to how you deal with your emotions and mental health. Confidence breeds success.”

“Seeing their marriages, kids, and lives gives us an opportunity to grow with them. That makes it relevant today, I think,” Collins said.

One of my favorite pieces of last year’s Emmy season was HBO Max’s Equal, a documentary series that highlights the struggle of queer people before the bricks were thrown at Stonewall. It gave us out actors and performers (like Heather Matarazzo, Hailie Sahar, Jai Rodriguez, and Isis King) as queer pioneers like Del Martin, Lucy Hicks Anderson, and Dale Jennings. It hits home that queer people need to be the ones to tell their own stories.

“Someone recommended that we donated some Queer Eye memorabilia, and they suggested ONE Archive at USC which is the largest LGBT archive in the world,” Williams revealed. “It has ten times the amount of queer items than the Smithsonian. I toured around the facility, and in the back room they would pull out these drawers with items and start talking to me about people in the community. I was amazed, and I knew that every drawer was an episode of a show. Our development team would go there to do research to look for the untold stories that most people don’t know enough about.”

“We all know about Stonewall. If Stonewall was the explosion, what was the wick?” Eric asked. “These are the people that gave us the chance to have a pathway to get to that point. A lot of gay and LGBTQIA people don’t know what happened prior to the events in 1969.”

One of Scout’s most recent successes comes in the fabulous force of HBO Max’s Legendary, the ballroom reality competition series. The show debuted in the summer of 2020, and the finale was heartbreaking to see because the performers didn’t have an audience. These houses feed on the energy they get from the spectators. Legendary has entered its third season, and it’s getting bigger and bigger.

“When the audience first cheered this season, it was so overwhelming to hear them back again,” Eric admitted. “They are the heartbeat of our show. Ballroom has been around for almost 100 years. It’s not just Paris is Burning and Madonna’s “Vogue.” It started in Harlem, and it’s never made it to the main stage. We were so lucky that HBO Max allowed us to put this on such a huge platform and put the spotlight there. The essence if pop culture comes from ballroom. The question was how do we put people who are supposed in front of a microphone up there. To see that trajectory over three years and to hear the vastness of this audience is incredible. Whether you knew the five elements of vogue or not, you are watching this and saying, ‘I’ve seen Ariana Grande do that’ or ‘Oh, that was in a Nike commercial.’ We have found the house of Scout, and the heart of ballroom is community. HBO Max was willing to put it out there and stand behind it one million percent.”

Legendary is all about love. Yes, it’s a competition with real money on the line, but Collins was quick to point out that the show doesn’t solely exist to speak about tragedy and pain.

“Of course, there are heart wrenching stories about trans kids who were thrown out onto the streets and brought into a home,” he said. “Now there are stories about kids who come out as trans and they can be celebrating themselves within the ballroom community. Legendary wants to celebrate all the different iterations and different stories that come from ballroom. Ballroom culture is the most loving culture in the world, and some people don’t have a clue about it. What I love about our show is that these groups will battle head to head, shade each other, tear each other apart, but then they will come together and hug and love each other. They can compete, but they can come together to celebrate each other.”

“Seeing these kids come to Los Angeles and we are shooting on stage, it’s so amazing,” Collins continued. “They are like kids in a candy factory, and they get to dress up in the wardrobe department and get their makeup done. As the creators and executive producers, it’s like being a parent.”

The performers in Legendary are making history, and Williams pointed out that they shot on the Paramount lot of one of the most iconic and celebrated

“This year, we shot on the Paramount lot. It was Stage 18 where they shot Sunset Boulevard, he said, excitedly. “The history of it all. I just re-watched the movie recently, and Gloria Swanson goes to the studio, and she tells the guard that she’s going to Stage 18. Lo and behold, I go to set, and it’s the same place.”

The most unique property that Scout produced so far might be Disney+’s The Quest. Just watch the trailer, and tell me you’re not amazed. By fusing together a fantasy show with reality, The Quest is like being able to step into your favorite role playing game.

“At Scout, we look at reality television and think about how we can make it grow and become unique and keep up with the times,” Eric said. “When we first started, we were working next door to Mark Ordesky and Jane Fleming, who were producers on Lord of the Rings, and they would come over all the time. What if we could put people into this world but make it authentic. We didn’t want to say to somebody, ‘This is going to be a fireball in post, but we need you to react to it now.’ We wanted to just throw a fireball at them. The question was how to bring in practical effects and monsters in and then live out this fantasy world. We brought in Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri, who worked on The Amazing Race, because we knew it was going to be a big venture. With AI, you can put on an Oculus and fight a monster, but you couldn’t touch it. We wanted to change that. We brought in people who did monsters from Stranger Things and Guillermo del Toro films. Johnny Wujek, who worked on Legendary, came to do the costumes. Disney+ stood behind us on this show and it was done at the height of the pandemic.”

“That should not be undersold. It was the height of the pandemic,” Collins said.

“Pre-vaccine,” Williams clarified.

One of the biggest risks with a show like The Quest isn’t the visual effects or the budget, but the kids. Kids can smell bullshit from a mile away, and they will tell you if they believe you or not.

“If I was a kid now, I would kill to be in Harry Potter or to be an Avenger for a day. We wanted to put them there,” Eric said.

“The kids weren’t directed, and we threw them into scenes with actors who were good at improv,” Williams said. “Kids can ask you some crazy things off the cuff. The big part was that the audience knows that these are real kids and not actors. It melded pretty well together, and the kids had a lot of fun. The castle is actually a winery in Napa Valley. I spent months researching for a place to shoot, and I could only find mansions that had some castle-like elements. We said confidence breeds success, and you can see that on The Quest. We had one girl who was very quiet at the start, but, by the end, she was taking charge and really talking back to the bad guys. That growth was great to see.”

There is excitement at Scout because of the variety of the projects, and we came back to one of the biggest changes Legendary faced this third season. Since Megan Thee Stallion is one of the busiest musical artists on the planet, actress Keke Palmer has stepped in.

“I fell in love with her immediately, and she is so authentic,” Collins said with enthusiasm. “She brings her heart to the table, and she had a blast with us.”

“Keke came in swinging within the first minute,” Eric said.

Season three of Legendary is streaming on HBO Max with the finale dropping on June 9. Queer Eye is streaming on Netflix, and you can find The Quest on Disney+.