As a closeted gay teen growing up in Glendale, Arizona, in the 1990s, Andy Parker once invited a Marine Corps recruiter to his house to convince his conservative, evangelical parents to let him join the military.
“Looking back now, I can see that that was definitely me trying to find a way to prove something, to run away from something, to test my masculinity or prove it somehow,” Parker told NBC News.
While he ultimately decided against enlisting, the television writer and producer said reading “The Pink Marine” — Greg Cope White’s 2016 memoir about joining the Marines as a closeted 18-year-old in 1979 — was like exploring “the road not taken” as an adult. Five years after selling his take on an adaptation of the memoir, Parker’s biggest, and arguably most personal, project has arrived on Netflix.
Executive produced by the late Norman Lear, who had been a long-time writing mentor to Cope White, “Boots” follows Cameron Cope (Miles Heizer), a young, gay recruit who impulsively joins Marine boot camp in 1990 alongside his straight best friend, Ray McAffey (Liam Oh). As he struggles to meet both the physical and emotional demands of boot camp, Cameron must also hide his sexuality at a time when being gay in the military was still a criminal offense. (The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which allowed gay, lesbian and bisexual people to serve as long as they kept their sexual orientation a secret, went into effect in 1994 and lasted until 2011.)
“Boot camp is a factory of transformation. That’s what this place is designed to do, to test each and every recruit and to turn them into something else,” said Parker, who serves as co-showrunner with Jennifer Cecil. “So, yes, at its heart, there’s this gay kid who’s going into this intense context, but every other recruit — gay, straight — is also on a similar journey of transformation, and that is what felt exciting and universal to me.”
Angus O’Brien, who plays fellow recruit Hicks, said “Boots” manages to blend “the lightness and transformation” of a classic coming-of-age story with the “transformational drama” of a typical military show. From the outset, Parker said, he pitched the show as Stanley Kubrick’s classic war film “Full Metal Jacket” as told by humorist David Sedaris.
“I didn’t want to do something that was relentlessly dour or harrowing. There had to be this variety and this humor, but a lot of that does come from the actual reality. Boot camp is not just misery; it’s also moments of connection, of friendship, of humor, and even these moments of grace,” Parker said, adding that there were three Marines, including Cope White, in the writers’ room and three military advisers on set to ensure the show’s authenticity. “So there was always going to be this irreverence — not in any way to belittle the experience, but to just show that sometimes this experience is absurd. Sometimes, it is crazy what these young men are being asked to do.”
For Heizer, who is best known for playing supporting roles on NBC’s “Parenthood” and Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why,” “Boots” represented an opportunity to draw from his own experiences of being a gay teenager.
“That feeling of needing to hide, or that fear of not belonging, is so true to a lot of queer people. I definitely connected with that, but I also found it really exciting that Cameron’s arc is really not about his sexuality at all,” he said. “You start the show, and he’s comfortable with who he is. His arc’s really about self-discovery and growing in this environment that he never dreamt would provide that for him.”
During his time in boot camp, Cameron finds himself inexplicably drawn to Sgt. Robert Sullivan (Max Parker), a drill instructor whose tough exterior belies the inner turmoil he feels over his sexuality. Cameron and Sullivan are ultimately mirrors of each other; the older Marine sees himself in the young recruit and tries to prepare him for the same personal war he’ll be fighting in the military, while “Cameron sees Sullivan as this archetype of what he wishes that he could be,” Heizer said.
“Throughout the show, their relationship crosses paths, and they start to form this connection, and he starts to see more of the reality of what Sullivan is actually going through,” Heizer said. “I think that it allows the relationship to develop in a very interesting way where by the end there’s this almost shift in dynamic between the two of them.”
Heizer said Cameron transforms from feeling “so hidden and othered” to finding a genuine sense of connection with his comrades “who genuinely do love him and would accept him” if he came out. But Parker noted that there is a “bittersweet irony” in his protagonist’s journey.
“One of the themes that I saw in Greg’s book that I wanted to draw out was a really interesting tension, a sort of contradiction,” Parker explained. “Here were the Marines offering all of these amazing things to these young men — and specifically, this young gay man who hadn’t found his voice yet, who didn’t know who he was. They were offering him courage, honor, dignity, brotherhood and a sense of belonging — all of these things that we all want. And in exchange, he was asked to deny this fundamental part of himself.”
“By the end of the season,” the creator added, “we wanted audiences as they went along to have this sense of triumph for Cameron on the one hand, and also concern for him on the other.”
Through the characters of Cameron and Sullivan, the series offers a subtle exploration of the queer community’s difficult relationship with the military.
“In talking with Norman about the show, I said to him, ‘I think one of the things that this show is about is, who gets to be counted as an American? And who gets to be included in that story?’ I think that spoke to Norman, because that’s the legacy of his work,” Parker said of Lear, who was able to watch an early cut of the pilot episode before he died in 2023.
“When we think about the groundbreaking shows that he made throughout those decades, it was always about expanding the definition of who gets to be included in this story,” Parker added. “The show is making a case for that — that there is a strong case for expanding the story, not contracting it. I think that’s the debate that our country finds itself in right now.”
“Boots,” which is now streaming on Netflix, is debuting in a very different social and political climate than the one in which it was conceived. When he returned to the Oval Office in January, for example, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban transgender people from serving in the military — a policy that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in May.
“What I hope the show is doing is shedding some light on the personal cost of what these policies do to people psychologically, emotionally, spiritually,” Parker said. “What we can do is not so much speak politically or make some sort of polemical statement about it as much as just shine a light that says, ‘This is what it feels like,’ and make people understand. Hopefully, they take away a sense of empathy for the people who are choosing to make this commitment to a country — only to have that be rejected or shunned.”
