Sometimes it takes a pandemic.
Last year, Brazilian writer/director/actor Thales Corrêa (The Queer hit BATHROOM STALLS & PARKING LOTS—now streaming on Peacock; Cannes shorts MILVIO and PARENTS) was a member of the Second City Writing Program, where he co-developed the series concept POLY PEOPLE with classmate lesbian writer Melissa Girard. Thales, in turn, engaged HIS fellow Brazilian production partner Anthony Moore, who, in the throes of a pandemic and unemployment-induced depression, saw the job as therapy and agreed to work on it right away.
That was in August 2020. Two-and-a-half SAG-AFTRA safety protocol-following, coffee-fueled production days later, the team wrapped principal photography on POLY PEOPLE, a seven-episode mockumentary about the daily life of four people in a polyamorous relationship. POLY PEOPLE employed 85% queer, female and POC identified people in front of and behind the camera. While each of the four main characters: non-binary-identifying Cuddelz (Corrêa); bisexual Abigail (Andrea Flowers); lesbian Lez (Ilona Kulinska): and hetero but curious Tucker (Moore) have different sexual identities, they fall in love and take one another as lovers and partners, and form a domestic unit.
What could possibly go wrong?
In this gently humorous show, gender roles are fluid and the warp and woof and trials and tribulations of daily life are just that: daily life. Along the way, the show tackles several principal themes: the four lovers have mastered their everyday polygamic relationship, but still have their guards up for any misunderstandings regarding their shared nest of love. The series demystifies gender identification paradigms by humanizing gender-fluid characters at an intimate level. Finally, any domestic partnership requires compassion, understanding and a reconciliation of numerous, diverging lifestyles and habits. Tensions are bound to rise to the surface. Gladly POLY PEOPLE'S characters have a very unique, funny, and bright way of dealing with it.
POLY PEOPLE debuted in January on YouTube to overwhelmingly positive responses. Imagine the team’s surprise when in May the series qualified for the 2021 Primetime Emmy® Awards, eligible in Outstanding Short Form Comedy Series and Best Actor in a Short Form Comedy Series.
