DESIGN BY YOSEF PHELAN
SPECIAL THANKS TO ELLIOT BERRY AT NETFLIX

The camp electro-house beats of Lady Gaga’s Chromatica lead Stupid Love inaugurating a series titled ‘Glamorous’ in the midst of Pride Month is as limp-wrist as! it! gets! Netflix’s new LGBTQ+ dramedy, led by Kim Cattrall and Miss Benny, is even gayer than the title, premise and promotional materials would have you believe (insert inevitable gif of Benny/Marco’s homage to Nicole Kidman’s seal clap here). With a soundtrack stacked with fierce pop smashers and an ensemble queer cast, as well as the aforementioned Sex and the City icon as the makeup mogul-equivalent of Wilhelmina Slater, Glamorous is the feel-good queer comedy the television landscape is in dire – dire! – need of right now.

Created by Jordon Nardino (Desperate Housewives), the 10-episode series sees Cattrall embrace her inner corporate diva as Madolyn Addison, a former “supermodel of the world” with a renowned cosmetics company brimming with queers who decides, on a whim, to hire Marco Mejia (Benny), a 20-something gay with a face-beating fancy as her new assistant. “Marco uses flamboyance, characters and fashion to hide and protect himself,” Benny tells GAY TIMES three weeks ahead of Glamorous’ release and a couple hours before their (this is important) “laser hair removal” appointment (we are scene-setting). “This is a young queer kid that’s lost and trying to figure out how to take the next steps in life. Then, all of a sudden, his queer icon shows up and completely changes his life.” Best known for guest appearances in American Horror Stories, Love, Victor and Fuller House, in addition to their musical career (stream their debut EP Swelter now!), Benny initially signed on as the lead of Glamorous in 2018. At the time, it was a pilot for The CW with Brooke Shields and Pierson Fodé attached to star. A stressful bout of development hell soon followed and the series was shopped around, before Netflix snatched it up with a new cast.

“I was 19 when I first auditioned for the role, and now I’m 24,” they laugh. “So, it feels like I’ve been doing the show for five years!” As a “guarded queer kid” learning his place as a gender non-conforming queer person, Benny can relate to Marco’s arc. So much so, it “frightens” them. “With Marco, people will see that when you’re a feminine queer person who is assigned male-at-birth, you have to navigate the world in a very specific way. I would’ve loved to see that I’m not the only queer person who wears lipstick and is struggling with the fact that not everyone wants me to wear lipstick. So, I really identified with Marco’s struggles with identity.”

As Madolyn’s new assistant, Marco encounters various new-job-related challenges; squeaky-clean glass doors, unwieldy water-coolers and inadvertently abandoning classified intel in an Uber because of the charms of a Muscle Mary. Etc, etc. His main snag, however, is Chad, Madolyn’s himbo son and the Director of Sales for her beauty empire who claims he is – upon checking out Marco’s splashy femme first day attire – “gay, but not… gay“. Played by Fire Island and Legacies alum Zane Phillips, the character is the quasi-villain of Glamorous who frequently flaunts his washboard abs with sweaty, shirtless workouts in his office (we expect an influx of complaints to Netflix about this offensive narrative decision). “Chad fulfils that classic teen movie villain; the quaffed hair and constant sneers,” Zane says (more scene-setting incoming) over a bowl of oatmeal. “Over the course of the season, you get to understand why he is that away. He’s not all sneers.” Desperate for his mother’s approval, Chad will do just about anything to oust Marco from Glamorous. “Chad is the king of the country club and then suddenly this surfboarder comes onto the mountain and he’s changing up the status quo. It’s like, ‘Hey, this is my room, these are my toys, what are you doing here?’”