First broadcast on the Logo Network in 2005, Noah’s Arc turns 20 this year. To mark the 20th anniversary of creator Patrik-Ian Polk’s iconic series, Paramount+ with SHOWTIME will premiere Noah’s Arc: The Movie on Friday, June 20th. Original stars Darryl Stephens, Rodney Chester, Doug Spearman, Christian Vincent, Jensen Atwood and WIlson Cruz reprise their roles in the film with special appearances by Jasmine Guy, TC Carson, Ts Madison, Kennedy Davenport, and Dynisty St. James.
Following the events of the original series, the theatrically released Noah’s Arc: Jumping The Broom in 2008 and 2020’s Noah’s Arc: The ‘Rona Chronicles special, Noah (Stephens) and Wade (Atwood) are expecting twins. The husbands must shift gears when each is offered their dream job, forcing one of them to assume the traditional stay-at-home parental role… only which one? What gift can life give the man who has everything? The answer is drama, and tons of it … along with shocking plot-twists, laugh-out-loud comedy and thrilling displays of intoxicating and uplifting romance.
Hollywood pioneer Patrik-Ian Polk, the “Father of Black Gay Cinema”, made his filmmaking debut in 2000 with Punks which premiered at Sundance and earned two Independent Spirit Award nominations among other accolades. Polk’s other film credits include The Skinny, starring Jussie Smollett, about the reunion of five Black LGBTQ+ classmates and the gay coming-of-age drama Blackbird starring Julian Walker and Oscar-winner Mo’Nique. Following the initial TV run of Noah’s Arc, Polk wrote and directed the feature film spin-off, Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom, which won the GLAAD Award for Best Film and received three NAACP Image Award nominations. Polk’s other TV credits include the two-hour series finale of Being Mary Jane, Lena Waithe’s The Chi and Katori Hall’s P-Valley, for which he won his first NAACP Image Award. Polk received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award at Outfest’s Fusion Film Festival and the Founder’s Award at the Pan-African Film Festival.
Ahead of the premiere, Patrik-Ian Polk who returns as executive producer, director and writer of Noah’s Arc: The Movie speaks exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about revisiting the characters at this stage in their lives, the continued importance of creating stories that centre Black gay men on screen, his approach to the sex scenes, fashion and musical numbers in the movie, and why John R Gordon’s book Drapetomania had a profound effect on him.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: So many people have told me that the first time they saw themselves on screen was in Noah’s Arc, including one of my best friends, who happens to be called Noah. Going back to when you conceived the series, to what extent was the impetus to create something where you could see yourself on screen in a way that you weren’t seeing elsewhere in entertainment at that time?
Patrik-Ian Polk: “That was my whole mission. I’d moved to LA after film school and I was working at MTV Films when I said to a freind, ‘I’m trying to decide what to write’. It was actually Rikki Beadle-Blair, the British filmmaker and theatre writer, and he said, ‘Write the story that only you can tell.’ That really struck me and I wrote the script for my first feature Punks really quickly. Then Punks was at Sundance in 2000 and came out in 2001, but it didn’t really open doors for me and I developed a couple of things that didn’t get made.”
“A couple of years later, I was at the opening night party for LA Black Pride when I was struck by the idea that no one was doing programming about our community. That’s when the idea came to me that I was going to do a Black gay Sex and the City. That was a Friday night and by that Sunday I’d already put casting notices in on Backstage. I hadn’t even written script yet, but I started the process immediately. Then I cast it, we shot the first short film and then I began raising money. It was very grassroots and very much born out of a desire to see myself and people like me on screen.”
Here we are 20 years on, what has been like to see these characters, and the actors who play them, age and evolve over all that time?
“We had a ball going back to Noah’s Arc! I’ve done a lot of other work in recent years, so it was really nice to return to it. It was like a family reunion because we’ve been through this whole process together. It’s great to be able to continue telling these characters’ stories now that they’re in a different age bracket. It’s cool to be telling stories about grown, middle-aged gay men who are raising kids and having families. Again, it’s about the idea that seeing ourselves reflected helps people in their own lives because it shows them what’s possible for themselves. I think it’s really important. It’s also about honouring Black gay culture, so there’s a lot of stuff in the film that really honours the culture. There are a lot of little touches that I think people will enjoy.”
Talking about things that we don’t see often enough on screen, watching the movie made me realize that it’s all too rare that we see Black queer couples and Black queer men having sex on screen even in 2025. How far would you agree with that and what was your approach to the sex scenes in the movie and Noah’s Arc more generally?
“It’s an interesting conundrum because we have a lot of gay programming now. Even in this moment, there’s Overcompensated and English Teacher and all of these other shows, but rarely do we see Black gay characters and when we do see them they never have Black partners. 99.9999% of the time they don’t have Black partners. I could rattle off two dozen shows or movies where every time there’s a Black gay character they never have a Black partner. So it’s hugely important to me to show that.”
“When I started doing this, gay sex scenes were still a big deal. I remember getting pushback on the first episode of Noah’s Arc with some of the shots in the love scene between Noah and Wade. I remember us fighting about it and them finally seeing it my way. Since then we’ve seen so much explored in terms of gay sex on screen so now it’s really just about what story are we telling? if we’re telling a story about a married couple that’s experimenting then that’s going to be a different love scene to one with Noah and Wade, a monogamous couple who have been married for all these years.”
“It’s not so much about titillating anymore, like in the early days of some of my work, when I was really trying to push the envelope because I felt like it needed to be pushed. Now, I still think it needs to be pushed, but it needs to be pushed in ways that are not appropriate for Noah’s Arc! I’ll save that for some of my other work. But it’s just nice to have some regular, grown-up gay love scenes and not have any flack about it because we’ve evolved so much over the last 20 years.”
It’s also rare that we see two expectant Black gay dads on screen. What did you want to explore with that storyline with Noah and Wade in the movie?
“It’s just the reality for a lot of people that I know in my age range who have kids now or who are about to have kids. Actually, three of the five main cast members are fathers now. It felt like the natural progression for this married couple. It felt like the next step. When we were in the midst of the Coronavirus shutdown in 2020, we produced a special called Noah’s Arc: the ‘Rona Chronicles that’s on YouTube. In that special, Noah and Wade revealed to their friends that they were expecting a baby, so I started playing around with the idea then and it just felt like the natural progression to have them becoming fathers and experiencing daddy issues for the first time in this movie.”
As well as bringing the Noah’s Arc family back together with the original cast, you’ve also got some new cast members joining you for the movie, including powerhouse Ts Madison who always brings such incredible energy to everything that she does. Would you like to mention some of the new folks you’ve brought on?
“It was important to bring in some new blood and to see some new faces and we have some wonderful new characters. There’s a lovely young trans actress out of New York, Mariyea Jackson, who plays Alex and Trey’s daughter Olivia. There’s a wonderful comedian who goes by Key Hood who does these amazing restaurant reviews on her social media that are hilarious and all go viral. It was actually Darryl Stephens, who plays Noah, who suggested her when I was looking for an actress to play the Noah and Wade’s surrogate. I checked out her Instagram and I absolutely loved it. I’m excited to see her start a new chapter in her career.”
“Then of course we have the wonderful, inimitable Ts Madison. In the movie, Alex has opened up a gay drag bar and Ts Madison is one of the performers there and she hosts the shows. Ts is a force of nature, so it was a no-brainer to ask her and I was thrilled that she wanted to do it. Then we’ve got some some legendary faces like Jasmine Guy of A Different World fame and TC Carson of Living Single fame. It’s really cool to be able to include some of my TV heroes in the movie and the excitement that everyone on set felt when those two were around was really great to see.”
I love the drag performances and dance sequences at the bar and also the singalong at the slumber party. What were those music-driven ensemble scenes like to shoot?
“They were a lot of fun to do. My very first film, Punks, has a lot of drag performances in it and I’ve always wanted to elevate drag. The drag that I enjoyed seeing the most wasn’t just about camp and comedy. They took it seriously and if they were playing a diva they were doing full choreography and costumes. It was everything. So that’s the drag that I know and love and the drag that I wanted to show and continue to show while at the same time paying tribute to one of my favorite artists, Whitney Houston. It’s song not one of her big hit singles, but it’s still an amazing song. Christian Vincent who plays Ricky is a renowned dancer and choreographer and he choreographed those numbers wonderfully. We had all these amazing dancers on set for it. I love an entertainment spectacle and I think it’s one of the things that we do best, so I wanted to highlight that.”
“With the slumber party scene, it was inspired by Waiting to Exhale. In fact, everything about it from the costumes to the set design, is a tribute to the famous scene in Waiting to Exhale when the ladies are having a sleepover and they sing and dance. So it was about paying tribute to that classic film, while at the same time continuing to show how our characters show up for each other in times of need.”
You don’t disappoint us with the fashion. How much do you enjoy that aspect of putting together Noah’s Arc and serving us these looks?
“Fashion has always been an important part of Noah’s Arc. I go to London a lot and back in the early days I would shop for Noah there. I’d go to Portobello market and Brick Lane and find really cool stuff that you couldn’t get anywhere else. It was always really nice to push the envelope with the fashion on the show and there were a lot of opinions—good and bad—about Noah’s fashion sense. The point was to have fun with it. The recent Met Gala brought back this fashion term—the dandy—and Noah was always a dandy.”
“The interesting thing that’s happened over the last two decades is that men’s fashion has evolved. Starting with Billy Porter’s insane run of fashion moments, all the way to Colman Domingo right now and everyone in between. Red carpet fashion came out of the closet in a big way. So now it’s nothing to see a guy in a skirt or makeup and that makes it a little difficult because you’re not going to be able to shock people because there’s no shocking anymore, we’ve seen it all. So now it’s all about how to take this really cool fashion sense that Noah had as a young man and apply it as an older man, closer to middle age. I think we did a good job with that and it was fun to play around with him still being fancy free with his fashion but a bit more mature.”
There’s a scene where the guys are getting their mpox shots. It’s very casual, but it’s a nice reminder to look after ourselves and our sexual health.
“That’s always been another important part of Noah’s Arc, HIV and sexual health. It’s absolutely important to talk about those things.”
At the end of the film, there’s scope to revisit these characters again. Is that something you would like to do either in series form or with another movie?
“Absolutely, I definitely want a series reboot. I think it’s time. I think the show deserves it. I see a lot of gay programming now, but none of it’s very Black and I think the response that we’re getting from the fans and the viewers is evidence that there’s still a hunger for this show and to see these characters. So my hope is that when the movie premieres and it does well—because we know it’s going to do well—that Paramount+ and Showtime will do the smart thing and bring us back! We know that we have the viewership, people love the show, and we’ve got a lot of new fans as people, including the younger gays, continue to discover the show. I think it’s the right time to bring it back.”
Lastly, what’s your favourite piece of LGBTQ+ culture or a person who identifies as LGBTQ+; someone or something that’s had an impact on you and resonated with you over the years?
“A book that I’ve read in recent years that has had an incredibly profound effect on me is Drapetomania: or, the narrative of Cyrus Tyler and Abednego Tyler, lovers by John R Gordon. It’s a slave narrative about two gay slaves who get separated when one of them is sold off to another plantation and his partner decides to escape to try to reunite with his lover. It’s an epic novel and it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. We certainly know there must have been gay people in slavery times, but there’s not a lot of information about it. This book is so historically rich and it’s a riveting action adventure tale of this journey to find and rescue his lover. It’s really wonderful.”
By James Kleinmann
Noah’s Arc: The Movie premieres Friday, June 20th on streaming and on demand for Paramount+ subscribers with the Paramount+ with SHOWTIME plan before its on-air debut on the same day at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
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