Eastsiders Creator Kit Williamson On Bachelor Parties and Baby Yoda
Photo by Jono.
Kit Williamson, the wildly imaginative creator of Netflix’s latest queer dark comedy series Eastsiders, is carrying the show to the finish line with its fourth and final season. As a cast alum of Mad Men and star of Broadway’s Talk Radio, his knack for drama propelled the show from a crowdfunding campaign into an Emmy-nominated emblem of queer storytelling. As producer, writer, director, and lead actor, Williamson took on the “Herculean” task of representing queer intimacy onscreen; according to him, “this season is the queerest show on TV.” And the rest is drag, with Willam Belli returning to his role of Douglas/Gomorrah Ray/Amber Alert, joined by fellow drag stars Katya Zomolova, Manila Luzon, and Biqtch Puddin’ playing Belli’s bridesmaids. As Williamson finds closure for his characters, we ask him if there’s anyway we can find closure on this decade. Now that Williamson has some time to ruminate, he sits down with us to reflect on some highs and lows of the current zeitgeist, from bachelor parties to Baby Yoda.
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BACHELOR PARTIES
“Bachelor parties are cute. I don’t understand them because my husband and I kind of share a friend group, so it would be a little weird for us. We would have the same people at either one probably. Bachelorette parties are lovely as long as they stay respectful and recognize that they’re in queer spaces. Ma’am, this is not your bar.”
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BABY YODA
“I would call it bait. And everyone’s taking it. Enjoy your baby Yoda merchandise for the next hundred fucking years. Congratulations, Disney.”
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RUMOR OF KYLIE JENNER AND DRAKE DATING
“Boring. I’ll leave it at that.”
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NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
“Useful. I really make a habit of taking stock at the beginning of the year and making resolutions that I feel I can actually achieve. I’m a big list person. I’m a little type A and I like to make a plan. I usually have a five-year plan, three-year plan, a one-year plan, and a one-month plan.”
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
“An inevitability. I think that science fiction has adequately prepared us for the horror show that is to come. We’re really dooming our children in this and all things. Thankfully, I don’t think my cat is going to outlive me.”
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MONOGAMY
“I think monogamy is a choose-your-own-adventure. We shouldn’t get wrapped up in prescribing exactly one way to be. I have friends who are monogamous who it works for. I have friends who are monogamous who are miserable and I think that the most important thing that I’m trying to get across in the show, not just in the final season, but in all seasons of the show, is that there’s no one right path for anybody.”
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DRAGULA
“We’ve got Biqtch mother-fucking Puddin’ on the show. I love what the Boulet Brothers have created. I think it’s absolutely fantastic and such a necessary kind of cultural force. I’m so glad that it’s kind of risen to prominence in the culture because I think that as drag gets more and more mainstream, we need to remember its origins and we need to remember that drag can and should be challenging the mainstream norms. Drag should be dangerous. Drag should be political and rebellious and drag should not always be family-friendly.”
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THE 2010s
“Exhilarating and exhausting. We have seen unprecedented strides in LGBTQ equality. We’re having a national conversation about gender that is exhilarating, that I don’t think would have been possible five years ago. And certainly wouldn’t have been possible before the internet. But with that comes the dark side of knowing what everybody is thinking at all fucking times because of the internet. It makes hate feel ubiquitous. Eastsiders couldn’t exist prior to this decade. Gay marriage didn’t exist prior to this decade. We’ve made such incredible strides and we have to focus on the positives.”
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TIKTOK
“TikTok makes me feel like a dinosaur. I’m hoping it goes the way of Snapchat because I really dug my heels in on Snapchat even though the kids were all embracing it. I’m certain at some point someone will be saying, “ok, millennial” to me the way we say, “Ok, boomer.”
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THE REAL HOUSEWIVES CAT MEME
“It’s just amazing that everybody is sharing it without any context and that’s the most reality television thing that could possibly happen to a person’s emotions. I think it is internet at its finest and also the internet at its most dark.”
