by chris carpenter
Sometimes, we can use a hot young bad boy in our lives. Actor-filmmaker Artie O’Daly realized this in 2018 and subsequently created Bad Boy. This consistently hilarious, occasionally sexy web series has garnered over 13 million views to date.
When viewers first meet the mild-mannered writer Scott (played by O’Daly), he is living a quiet, boyfriend-less life in L.A. That is until an awkward meeting with a sexy bad boy named Jim (the adorable Drew Canan) leads to him getting entangled with Jim’s whole family, complete with simmering sibling rivalries, a mysterious murder, and the FBI on their tail. As the boys adopt him as their “Daddy Scott,” he gets further involved in their crazy lives, where things never go as he expects and people are often not who they seem.
“The show grew from a couple of sketches into a sitcom simply because those initial shorts were so popular,” O’Daly says on his website. “In writing the show, I wanted queerness to be prevalent in the various characters but never be the point of conflict. The bad boys and their families come from a conservative area of America yet they completely accept — and are accepted for — all elements of their sexualities. In that, I’m writing a version of the world as I think it should be. This allows the story to be about LGBTQ+ characters while the plot is a semi-absurd, Odd Couple-esque, Will & Grace-meets-Clue ensemble comedy. My goal is to tie sexy and funny together, to walk a line between reality and absurdity. That’s the goal and, hopefully, that’s the show.”
O’Daly just released Episode 34, Bad Jail Boy, on YouTube last month. FBI agent Calista Flockhart (yes, that’s the character’s name) returns. The plot entails vampire fangs, donut licking, BDSM, prophetic whittling, and even Hunchback of Notre Dame cosplay!
The RAGE Monthly spoke with O’Daly recently about his long-running, crowd-funded series. Some questions and responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Hi, Daddy Scott! Do you get that a lot, knowing there are 13 million-plus viewers that Bad Boy has? Are you getting recognized more? Do you get a lot of “Hi, Daddy Scott” on the street?
When people recognize me, because they don’t often know my actual name but they know the character, they don’t come up and call me Scott. It’s more like “Oh, I watch your show” or “I know Bad Boy” or something like that. People will call me Daddy Scott in comments online. They’re a little braver there, I suppose.
Ah, all right. I love Bad Boy and have been watching it, if not from the beginning, for at least the last three years. What was the genesis? How did you come up with this storyline or this idea?
Well, there was no storyline when it started. (laughs) It was literally just a one-off, five-minute short that I offered to write for a guy (Tony Harth) I met in a play. He was an understudy, he was new in town. He played Mack (in the first four episodes) and wanted footage for a demo reel. So I said: “Well, if you don’t have anything, just shoot it yourself” and he was like “Help me.”
I was kind of a mentor, in a way, and I was like “I can write you something, but do you want something comedic or dramatic?” He said comedic, so I asked: “What kind of character do you want to play?” He said “a bad boy.” So we called it Bad Boy and it was literally just for his demo reel. When we put it out, I told him not to expect anyone to watch this and he was like, “No, it’s gonna get a million views.” I was like, “It will get 400 views, keep your expectations low.” But he was right! It’s had over a million views now. (laughs) This does not happen! So, because it took off, it provoked us to do another one and after that (was similarly successful) I said “I’m going to keep tapping this well until its dry!” So here we are, seven years later.
That’s great! I know it was a process of evolution, but how did the primary storyline today fall into place?
I knew if he (Mack) was going to be more of a character, I would have to be more of the quote unquote straight man — and I don’t mean that sexually but politically — and me, being a gay content creator, I wanted to make sure there were gay characters and gay themes woven throughout. So, when we made the second one I asked him — because he was straight — “Do you mind if this is gay-themed?” Especially since a bunch of gay guys had found the first short on YouTube. He was like, “Oh, that’s cool.” So I decided “OK, I’m going to be the straight man in a world of crazy people, and this guy is so wacky and he keeps talking about his family, and so I’m just going to keep letting that family grow and grow.” So that’s what happened. He has brothers and aunts, and who knows what, but I’m the one who says “This doesn’t make sense; this is crazy!”
That is very clear in the series. (laughs) One of the things I most enjoy about it is that it feels like “we are just a bunch of friends getting together on, like, a weekend to shoot this.” Talk to me about that. Is it a group of friends or is something more professional going on?
Not necessarily friends but people have come in all different ways. It’s either that I met them in a play or I met them in an acting class or I saw them in a web series, or they reached out and said they wanted to be in it. It’s been so many different ways. But we don’t have a big crew. I do the writing and I direct it with Jamie Hobert, who is also the cameraman since Episode 9, and I edit it. It’s amazing what we can do thanks to good actors, Jamie being very skilled at what he does, and me being decent at editing and writing. And everyone does it because, I think, they have a good time and because they know the end product turns out pretty good.
Since Bad Boy has caught on, have you had more or other opportunities to act or to write?
I don’t know if it has affected booking actual, professional jobs in Hollywood. Perhaps casting directors have seen my face in a submission from my agent and go “Oh, that’s the guy from Bad Boy; I’ll bring him in for an audition.” I actually don’t know. All I know is that’s it’s been very fulfilling to constantly have this thing to work on, especially during the pandemic when everything shut down. I was able to just write and work on this constantly. It’s been a really big gift for me personally and creatively.
That’s awesome. When it comes to coming up with recognizable character names, like Calista Flockhart and Suzanne Pleshette, is that something that just pops in your head, or do you have particular celebrities you want to play off of?
With Flockhart specifically, I met Alina Bock (who plays her) in an acting class and when she walked in I thought “Oh my God, you look like Ally McBeal.” That always stuck, so when I was writing this character I thought “I’ll just have to call her Calista Flockhart because I think she looks like Calista Flockhart.” (laugh) And then it became a great running joke. With Suzanne Pleshette, I had just watched The Birds and thought “That’s a great name!” (laugh) And I haven’t decided whether or not her name actually is Suzanne Pleshette or if she is in disguise. The theme of the show or tagline is “Somebody’s not who they seem to be,” so it would stand to reason that her name isn’t actually Suzanne Pleshette.
Maybe a little more seriously, what do you think Bad Boy has to offer gay men of a certain age who might or might not see themselves as “daddy” material? Are you trying to say something serious to older gay viewers?
I’m never trying to say something serious, but I am trying to be honest with some of my own personal experiences. I’m single, I’m of a certain age, I did have younger guys calling me daddy and me being like “Why are you putting that label on me? No, not yet!” (laugh) You can resist it as much as you want but that doesn’t make it not true. You know what I’m saying? When I write the show, I try to make it generational. My character Scott has more references to the ‘70s and ‘80s — he loves ABBA — and I want the younger guys to have a lot of references to what they would have grown up with, whether its Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana or Lizzie McGuire, things like that. So I don’t try to make it exclusively a show for my demographic or their demographic. I want to appeal to gays of all ages, or people of all ages.
But on a serious note, when I was first writing the show, I was doing a play where it was me and a bunch of 20-year-olds. There were five 20-somethings in the play and they asked me, “So, in your community are you a daddy?” No one had asked me that before. No straight guy had asked me “So, what’s your tribe?” That would make me pause and think about it, and I’ve been writing about it ever since. In Bad Boy, the only one who resists it is Scott. Nobody ever judges him for it. James (another character) is always throwing barbs at Scott but it’s because that’s James; it’s not because Scott did anything to be ridiculed. No one actually cares what Scott would be labeled as, in the same way I don’t want anyone’s sexuality to ever be something that someone is like “Oh, you can’t be that.” I try to present a very accepting view.
Do you have an end point in mind for Bad Boy or is it currently totally open?
It’s kind of both. It can’t go on forever and it’s gotten harder to do because Drew and various actors have moved away or they get busy or whatever. There will be at least six more in this season, because I did a season fundraiser a couple years back. I fundraised for 8 to 10 episodes and I want to go to at least 12, because then I’ll have 40 episodes total. But, if you were to actually look at my notes, I’ve broken down maybe 25 additional episodes I’d like to do. (laughs)
I’ve already decided at this moment of my life making this show, for the rest of my life I can look back at this and be like “Look at this thing I made with my friends and people enjoyed it.” Make as many as you can now until you are really depleted because you’ll be glad you had them. So if I have to start paying out of pocket again, that’s ok. It will be worth it in the end.
Bad Boy episodes can be found on YouTube and via artieodaly.com.
Chris Carpenter has been writing about entertainment since 1996 and a member of Team Rage since 2012. He is a founding member and vice president emeritus of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics.