I stumbled upon the new Netflix series Boots and was utterly charmed by it. Based on Greg Cope White’s memoir The Pink Marine, the show follows teenager Cameron Cope as he follows his best friend in signing up for Marine Corps boot camp the summer after high school. And it’s set in the early 90s, pre Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, when you could be discharged for being gay, which Cameron is and knows he is when he enlists. The series is funny, at times quite touching, and moves at a brisk pace. (Or maybe everything just felt fast as I was watching men work out from the comfort of lounging on my sofa.) Miles Heizer, of 13 Reasons Why and Parenthood fame, plays Cameron, and he just had a nice interview in Teen Vogue where he digs into the places where he and his character intersected. Note: No spoilers are excerpted below, but the original full article has several.

Fear of failing can be a fear of being seen: The way that I connect these dots is, a lot of queer people hide ourselves, especially when we’re younger. We are afraid of people knowing this thing about us because we think that we’ll be treated differently or not accepted, so we don’t really put ourselves in positions to stand out. Often, that also includes this fear of failure, because all eyes will be on you, especially in a masculine field, whether it be sports or something like the military. So I think that Cameron has held himself back from trying and succeeding at things, because he’s afraid of failing and sticking out. I was very aware I was gay from a young age, and I was sort of scared to have male friends because I had this fear that they were going to find this thing out about me and suddenly not want to be around me, or I was going to make them uncomfortable, or they were going to think that I was into them. Cameron goes into this having done that his whole life, and he is suddenly put in a position where he has to fail and he has to stand out.

They had a real serviceman on set who was discharged in the 90s for being gay: What this show did for me — having it be set in this different time period; getting to spend time with Greg and Leon, one of our military advisors who’s gay and was discharged when he was caught being gay — is it definitely gives me a lot of reverence for the queer people that came before us, all of these LGBT people that were fighting for gay rights at a time where it was legitimately dangerous, illegal, extremely difficult. Them taking on that fight for us … gives me even more respect for those people than I already had.

Moving backward: Obviously, politically, it does feel like we’re moving backward in a lot of ways, but my deep feeling and hope is that the vast majority of our country doesn’t necessarily agree with these policies that a specific administration holds. I believe that for military service as well. I think a lot of service members have so much mutual respect for each other and do not care about your sexuality or your gender. I think that that’s probably the overarching feeling. And even with these policies, I’m hoping that someone else can come in and hopefully get things back on track. I think that especially the more that gay and trans people are represented in media and shown as just normal people who want to watch TV at their house and have a nice night, the more people will hopefully start to see there’s no use in telling people what they can and can’t do if we’re not harming anybody.

[From Teen Vogue]

That’s such an insightful, nuanced point Miles makes about failing also being a way to stick out, and thus something to be avoided if you’re trying to hide. Miles was raised in a very conservative Christian household in Kentucky, so I don’t doubt he felt the need to hide as a young queer kid. And yet he had the self-possession (not to mention confidence!) to persuade his family to let him go to LA and start acting from a young age. Obviously, it can be viewed as a way to get away. But putting it in the context of his comments, Miles was also risking “exposure,” so to speak, by daring to be seen and succeed at something, and something that’s widely visible at that. This was actually my first time seeing Miles on screen and he was a revelation. He carries the series so well, buoyed by a great supporting cast at boot camp, plus a sublime performance from Vera Farmiga playing his mother. And if I haven’t sold you, maybe the fact that the Pentagon has already denounced the show as “woke garbage” will.

Photos credit: Alfonso “Pompo” Bresciani/Netflix, Patti Perret/Netflix. Miles Heizer is shown above with the author of The Pink Marine, Greg Cope White.