Adam Goldman On New Audible Original ‘Hot White Heist’

Comedic writer Adam Goldman and award-winning actor Alan Cumming are about to pull off a very queer heist with their new original podcast, Hot White Heist, premiering June 17 through Audible.

Executive produced by Broadway Video’s Britta von Schoeler and produced by Mark Valdez, this hilarious scripted podcast stars Bowen Yang with an ensemble of openly queer performers including Cynthia Nixon, Abbi Jacobson, Jane Lynch, Margaret Cho, Bianca Del Rio, Shannon Woodward, Cheyenne Jackson, Peppermint, Brian McCook as Katya Zamolodchikova, and Tony Kushner. In addition to the cast, the creative team and crew is also composed of predominately queer talent.

Hot White Heist follows a crew of misfits from across the LGBTQ spectrum as they attempt the stickiest heist in history: stealing a hidden supply of sperm samples from the U.S. government. Why? To help a scrappy lesbian cult in Montana finance a top-secret project, of course. More simply, it’s a sperm bank heist.

Goldman, who gained wide recognition for his work on the hit digital series The Outs and Whatever This Is, says Hot White Heist was born out of a tweet. He took some time to talk more about the six-episode production with OFM.

Can you begin by telling us more about your new podcast, Hot White Heist, and what listeners can expect?
Hot White Heist is essentially a sperm bank heist. We decided to take these tropes of heist stories, which are usually heist movies, and put a fun, weird, action-comedy twist to them. Because it is me, and I love writing about queer people and telling LGBTQ stories, the whole cast is 100 percent LGBTQ, and pretty much every character on the show is also a queer person.

How did the idea and origin of Hot White Heist come about?
It sort of started as a joke on Twitter. I am always tweeting things like, ‘I wish we had a queer action movie; I wished we had a queer this or that,’ because I want to see more of them in the world. I think I said something like, I would do anything for a queer heist movie, and no, they are not going to be stealing sperm. Then the more I thought about it, I was like, ‘That is actually just silly enough to work.’

I started putting some ideas down, and eventually, Alan Cumming, who is a friend of mine and collaborator, was starting up a production company. I ran the idea by him, and he thought it was hilarious. It just sort of took off from there, but it started as a real, genuine feeling about how I wish I could see more LGBTQ representation in action movies. It was a joke that then became something serious. It is almost like art imitating life imitating art, back and forth forever.

What has it been like working alongside Alan Cumming and this all-star LGBTQ cast that includes Bowen Yang, Jane Lynch, and Bianca Del Rio?
Alan was sort of my partner from the very beginning on this, and we have worked together on a few things before. We have very similar sensibilities and a similar sense of humor, so it was a pleasure. We recorded in 2020 and early 2021, so it was really cool and fun to have something that was this fun and empowering. Obviously, 2020 was a very hard year for a lot of people, myself included, so it was fun, but it was also a challenge to focus on something where the goal is to make people smile, to make people happy and laugh. It was hard to get in that headspace over the course of the pandemic.

In terms of the casting, it was like, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this thing with all these queer characters and have a 100 percent queer cast? We didn’t know if it would work out, but then slowly, as we started doing the casting with Broadway Video Partners, we started sending the script around. At some point, it was like, great, we’ve got Cynthia Nixon; we’ve got Jane Lynch; we have Bowne Yang. As we were getting these people, I thought, ‘We can really do this. We can really have a cast of just queer performers,’ and it just snowballed and worked out that way. We are so lucky to be able to highlight all these incredible people who everybody loves in one place.

What do you hope listeners take away from the podcast?
The primary goal is to make people laugh, and we are taking these tropes and concepts that people know from the action-comedy genre, like Charlie’s Angels or Clue. Also, there is some stuff going on under the hood about queer representation and what it means to be LGBTQ in 2020 and 2021. A little bit of conflict between an older vision of what being queer meant and a newer, younger vision that is sort of woven in there. I hope people have fun watching it, but I think as you listen to the whole thing, it gets a little complicated and twisty, as heist movies always do. I think there is some cool stuff to think about in there because, for me, that is what makes a story interesting. It is operating on a couple of levels at the same time.

Did you want to release Hot White Heist in June in honor of Pride Month?
That was always sort of part of the idea with Audible. We started pitching the show right before the pandemic happened, and we thought, ‘Maybe we could have this thing done in time for Pride, whatever Pride was going to look like.’ Nobody knew where we were going to be in terms of the pandemic, but thank God the light at the end of the tunnel is almost here. That was always part of the plan, and I think it will be a really fun thing. It does not have to be June for you to appreciate being queer and all the amazing queer talent in the community, but it happens to be a convenient moment when people are like, ‘Yeah, fuck it; let’s celebrate.’ It’s going to be a lot of fun to help contribute to that.

What do #DragRace legend @TheBiancaDelRio, actor-club owner @Alancumming, and @nbcsnl culturista @BowenYang have in common? They’re all involved in #HotWhiteHeist, a wild ride of a scripted comedy podcast from @audible_com. https://t.co/xIYYz3e3us

— Logo 🏳️‍🌈 (@LogoTV) June 15, 2021

What have you personally enjoyed the most about working on this podcast?
There were a couple things. We were doing this all by Zoom with all these great performers from all over the world. We would be on a Zoom call with Alan directing, and I would be giving them notes, and it was very cool to be able to interact with everyone that way. On a more personal level, we did a couple little writers’ rooms for the show.

We brought in a bunch of incredibly talented comedians, largely queer, but not exclusively. When we were doing that, which was around early summer of last year, it was an intense time, but it was amazing to be able to put my head together with these other writers and comedians who I respect a lot to come up with this sort of life-affirming thing. That was probably my favorite. Just being with all these funny people, even if it was just online for eight hours a day for a couple weeks.

You are well-known for your digital series like The Outs and Whatever This Is. Has entertainment always been your passion?
I have always been interested in telling stories, and that is partly because I wanted to see myself reflected. I grew up with some, but not enough, of that in my life. I have done a bunch of stuff that usually ends up centering around the LGBTQ community. You can put someone in someone else’s shoes, whether they like it or not, with storytelling. That is an incredibly powerful tool. I am really into that.

What more do you hope to accomplish with your platform?
I just want to keep telling stories. It’s a cliche and it almost doesn’t mean anything at this point to say that representation matters, but it has been hammered into us and it is so deeply ingrained in our psychology. I think beyond that, I think that LGBTQ people have not been put on screen or in these stories enough, and I am interested in our lives and putting us in fun, new situations where we might not have appeared in pop culture before. That is definitely a focus for me. Saying, ‘Where haven’t we been yet?’ Like, let’s put queer people in space, or whatever [laughs].

Before we wrap up, are there any other upcoming projects or anything else you would like to mention or plug?
Right now, I am totally focused on Hot White Heist and seeing where this story goes. Heist stories have a long history in sort of more visual media, so we would be very curious about what this would look like as a movie, TV show, or limited series. Something like that, but hopefully, Alan and I have a couple things that we are cooking. So, stay tuned!

For the latest news, projects, and “stupid bullshit nobody should care about,” follow Goldman on Twitter, or visit his official website. Click here to start listening to Hot White Heist.

Photos Courtesy of Nicolas Maloof and Social Media