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Stepping into Boots

Stepping into Boots

By Michael Pickard
October 24, 2025

SHOWRUNNER

Boots creator and co-showrunner Andy Parker tells DQ how he was inspired by a memoir and his own experiences to tell the comedic and dramatic coming-of-age story of a Marine recruit confronting his sexuality when it was illegal to be gay in the US military.

Even for people who have never completed military service, the shaved heads, bunk-bed-filled dorm rooms and expletive-laden insults from a posse of drill instructors are familiar thanks to US films and TV series including Band of Brothers, Private Benjamin and Full Metal Jacket.

The latter – Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1987 feature that follows soldiers from the training field to the front line of the Vietnam War – particularly comes to mind, and is even name-checked, during Boots. Yet this eight-part Netflix series offers a fresh and engaging take on the military boot camp experience through its central character and its setting, which lends the story a historical yet timely significance.

Part coming-of-age drama, part irreverent comedy, it stars Miles Heizer as Cameron Cope, a bullied high-school student who follows his best friend Ray McAffey (Liam Oh)’s decision to join the US Marines. The story takes place in the 1990s, a tough, unpredictable time when being gay in the military was still illegal – and Cameron is a directionless, closeted young man still coming to terms with his own sexuality in a place where he is forbidden to explore it.

Joining a bunch of diverse fellow recruits, the story follows Cameron and Ray as they tackle long runs, obstacle courses, hand-to-hand combat and the shooting range together under the leadership of some strict, foul-mouthed instructors, with Cameron not the only person confronting their true self while they are mentally and physically pushed to their limits.

Boots is based on the experiences of former US Marine Greg Cope White, who charted his journey in memoir The Pink Marine. The book was then optioned by producer Sony Pictures Television, which invited series creator Andy Parker to lead the adaptation.

“The memoir is set in the early 80s and I moved the show to 1990, but that was still the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ era,” Parker tells DQ. “I thought we were going to be making a period piece that was highlighting that period of American history, but I didn’t anticipate the resonance it would have in 2025 and its poignance and relevance.”

That relevance is evident in the US military’s recent ban on transgender people serving in any role, “so there’s obviously echoes of what has happened in the past,” Parker continues. “The show was never meant to be a political show or a polemic in any way, but my intention was to be able to shine a light on the personal cost to people who have volunteered to serve their country and put their own freedom and their own safety at risk in order to do that. They should be allowed to serve with dignity, and the fact that that’s being re-litigated now is heartbreaking, frankly.”

Pitching the series as “Full Metal Jacket as told by [US comedian and author] David Sedaris,” Parker’s journey to bringing Boots to the screen has taken approximately five years, as he worked to develop the project through the Covid-19 pandemic and then saw production disrupted by the US actors and writers strikes in 2023.

In order to adapt any material, Parker (Tales of the City, Imposters) finds he needs a personal connection to keep him motivated through the long process of making television. Here, he was able to draw on his own experiences as a “closeted gay kid in a pretty conservative household.” He even considered joining the Marines himself at one point and had a recruiter visit his house to speak with his parents.

Greg Cope White, who wrote the memoir on which Boots is based, with star Miles Heizer

Though he ultimately didn’t enlist, “I realise now that was very much me trying to run from something, to prove some sort of masculinity,” he explains. “For me, at that time anyway, the US Marine Corps was the quintessential poster of American masculinity, so why not go there?”

Reading Cope’s memoir then became an exploration of the road not travelled, and he could resonate with what it might have been like for a gay teenager to undergo that experience. “I could see myself in this,” he says. But during one of the first conversations he had with Cope, Parker explained that he wasn’t going to make a story of Cope’s life as laid out in the pages of The Pink Marine, in order to have the freedom to tell a new story and build new characters.

One of the key points from the memoir that did make it to screen was the central relationship between Cameron and his straight best friend Ray. “It was very important that we keep that in the show,” Parker says. “For one thing, that’s not a relationship you see a lot on screen, and if you do, it’s usually the gay kid pining for the straight one, secretly longing [for him], and there was just none of that.

“I was tired of that trope and I didn’t want to see any of that, so it’s so refreshing to see this just platonic love, this brotherly love between these two, which has its own power dynamic at the start, and that has to undergo its own transformation.”

Parker also found that the chance to tell a story through the context of a Marine boot camp was “an incredible gift” to a dramatist, as it lends the show natural story and character arcs.

Heizer plays Cameron Cope, a closeted young man who joins the Marines in the 1990s

“Usually you’re hunting, you’re searching and you’re contriving stakes, or [wondering] what are the ways in which people can be challenged and thrown into situations that will transform them. Well, boot camp is the machine that is designed to do that,” he says. “That is what they are there for. It is a transformation factory, so that’s an incredible gift because the characters who come into this situation are not going to be the same people at the end. They are going to be confronted with who they are, with their weaknesses, with the things they’ve been hiding and trying to conceal from everybody else.”

Cameron is undoubtedly the main character, with viewers following his journey to boot camp and exploring his often chaotic and strained relationships with his fellow recruits and his mother (Vera Farmiga). The conflict he faces within himself is also portrayed during numerous conversations between Cameron and ‘inner Cameron,’ as his conscience questions his decisions and how he can stay true to who he really is.

“It was very important to me that Cameron always be the heart of the show, and to make sure that his journey was primary,” Parker says. “If you’re going to show a gay kid coming into a place where it’s illegal for him to disclose that, and he has to hide who he is, then we have to see that part of himself that must be concealed. They have to have different points of view on this experience, and we have to watch as those two points of view continue to be in conflict throughout this journey, and actually to watch them continue to diverge.”

In particular, Parker wanted to create a point of tension between the fact that while the Marine Corps is offering Cameron “everything he’s ever wanted” – confidence, courage, brotherhood, acceptance and dignity – to have it all, he must deny who he really is. “That trade off, there’s so much in that,” he notes. “What I want for our audience is that by the end of the season, we want to feel triumphant for Cameron, who has learned so much about what he’s capable of, and what he is; and yet at the same time, we should feel that lump in our throats about ‘but at what cost? What will this do to him?’ That relationship between him and his inner self was the way for me to make sure we were making that clear.”

Sergeant Sullivan (Max Parker) puts new recruits through their paces

Among the ensemble of characters who populate Cameron’s Marine unit, it’s notable that many are fighting secret wars of their own. While not gay, they too have issues to confront and resolve as they go through their own transformations.

“It was very important that there were other young men; other stories that we were really, authentically living out, that they had their own struggles, their own lives, their own back stories and histories, their own aspirations,” Parker says. “The military is not a monolith. Everybody’s coming here from different points of view, with different motivations. Some are patriotic, some are financial. Some are just like, ‘because this is the only thing I could do.’ There’s a million reasons why these people are all coming, and it was important to showcase that.”

Three Marines in the show’s diverse writers room helped to give Boots authenticity in both story and setting. Co-showrunning the series with Jennifer Cecil, Parker was in the room and also on set in New Orleans for the entirety of the shoot, which took place over two summers either side of the strikes that shut down the US screen industry.

The fragmented filming schedule is also somewhat responsible for why, partway through the series, the actors suddenly stand bigger and taller. A reflection on the characters’ increasing cohesiveness as a Marine unit and the punishing regime they have been part of since they arrived at camp, it’s also due to the fact many of the actors had spent their downtime in the gym.

“When they came back for the rest of the season, it worked for the story we were telling that they were really transforming,” Parker says. The cast also bonded working together in the NoLa heat, as they all spent the majority of the film schedule on set.

Nicholas Logan brought his own insult ideas to the table to play drill instructor Sergeant Howitt

“Our actors have talked about how in other shows, you usually have smaller scenes where it’s two or three people, so it’s only those people working on the day,” he says. “In our show, everybody works every day because they’re in the background almost all the time.

“We were very fortunate to have actors who were gifted in their craft. I’m just so excited for people to see what Miles can do, and then to for the world to see what Max Parker [as elite Recon Marine Sergeant Sullivan] can do. I just think he’s gonna be a star and blow up. They were genuinely good people, and they were genuinely committed to showing up for each other, and so there was a sense of brotherhood that was reflected on and off screen.”

Parker also praises Nicholas Logan, who as drill instructor Sergeant Howitt would often improvise creative ways for his character to greet or insult the recruits. “He came every day with new material, a lot of which made it into the show,” Parker adds. “A lot of that is him.”

With Boots now streaming on Netflix, the showrunner hopes viewers embark on an emotional journey with the series. “I hope they’ll find at least one guy they’ll connect with, and then I hope they’ll fall in love with all of them,” he says. “What I hope is that ultimately it does lead to some greater sense of empathy and the idea, in the current climate, that there actually is some common ground with the person you thought was your enemy.”

Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ

We Are Who We Are: HBO’s American-Italian drama about two teens exploring gender and identity while living on a US military base in Italy.

Young Royals: Set in an exclusive Swedish boarding school, this Netflix drama follows Prince Wilhelm as he falls in love with a fellow male student, challenging the traditions of royalty and sexuality.

Heartstopper: Netflix’s British coming-of-age romance about two schoolboys discovering love and acceptance.