Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Hot White Heist’s Adam Goldman

Audible has dropped a new original podcast, and it’s one you definitely can’t miss. Featuring voice performances by Bowen Yang, Cynthia Nixon, Abbi Jacobson, Jane Lynch, Margaret Cho, Bianca Del Rio, Shannon Woodward, Stephanie Beatriz, Cheyenne Jackson, Peppermint, Brian McCook, and Tony Kushner, Hot White Heist is a comedic podcast that follows a ragtag bunch of queer people trying to carry out a heist inside of a sperm bank. Directed by Alan Cumming, Hot White Heist is the brainchild of acclaimed writer, Adam Goldman.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Adam about all things Hot White Heist.

PC: How did you discover your passion for the arts and storytelling?
Adam: I studied theater in college. I started off as an acting major, and I was like, “No. This is horrible,” so I decided to become a directing major, which is almost like writing. Then when I graduated, I did a bunch of shorter-term jobs in advertising and that sort of thing. That made me want to make my own stories. I really studied it—I was looking at the stories that I loved and the stories that I found compelling and tried to recreate those. It just happened. It’s really incredible watching people experience something that you’ve written and taking audiences through that story and seeing all your intentions come to fruition.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Adam: I feel like what’s had the biggest influence on my career was the first thing that I made, which was a show called The Outs. It was a web series. It was the fact that I was making something that was very personal that people found to be universal. In a weird way, it sounds kind of cheesy, but the community that was attracted to my work, which was largely but not exclusively the LGBT community seeing their lives reflected in my work, was very comforting. The fact that I could make the stories that I wanted to make, whether they’re fun, dramatic, or silly and there would be an audience for them because we need these kinds of stories that has been a huge influence on me more than any one person I would say.

PC: Speaking of your work, you’ve got a new podcast out now. Tell us about Hot White Heist and the inspiration behind it.
Adam: Hot White Heist is a sperm bank heist. It started off with a joke where I was like, “I wish we had a queer bank heist. It would be so stupid if it was about them stealing sperm.” The more that I thought about it, I was like it’s pretty ridiculous, but maybe we could actually make that work. The podcast is taking the heist trope that people know from the Ocean‘s movies and The Thomas Crown Affair, and all of these classic heist movies and turning them on their heads, making them a little bit queer and a little bit funny.

The whole cast is made of LGBTQ+ actors and performers, and that’s something we’re really excited about. Basically, every character on the show is queer. It’s a fun twist on stuff that people already know.

PC: Like you were saying, the podcast features a star-studded cast. When you were writing these characters, did you have these actors in mind? How did you get everyone on board?
Adam: I always dreamed that we would get Bowen Yang to play Judy, who’s the central character. I’ve been friends with Bowen, and we’ve worked on stuff together before, but I didn’t know if he would have time. Once we got Bowen, it all started to fall into place. We started talking to people and they saw the script, and they liked it. It gathered a little momentum all on its own saying, “Bowen’s doing it. Jane Lynch is doing it. Cynthia Nixon is in it.” Everyone was like, “Oh yeah. That sounds fun and I like those people.” Of course, it also helped that we had Alan Cumming directing and producing.

I didn’t have anyone else in mind. There were a few people banging around in my head, but it’s always sort of fun when you write something, and then you cast someone, and you get to go back to the character and say, “How can I tweak this character so that it will sound better coming out of the mouth of this particular actor?”

PC: How early on did you know that you wanted to have it as a podcast as opposed to a web/television series?

Adam: Hot White Heist originally started as a feature film pitch. We talked about the logistics of that, and we were like, “Let’s start with it as a podcast.” We broke it up, but it’s still structured like a feature. When you listen to it, it’s six half-hour episodes. It’s about three hours total, so a very long movie. It’s a heist movie. You can’t really do it as a web series because of the logistics. Web series do not have the budget to do that sort of thing.

Podcasts have become a really cool way to do a proof of concept. You have this idea, and you see if it works. You see if people like it, and then you can take it somewhere else. But this project has grown. It’s not a proof of concept; it really is its own thing. We have a lot of fun with the podcast medium and playing with the idea that it’s an audio only thing. We can do big action sequences because you never have to shoot them, you just have to record them. It’s fun. It was initially a film idea, and then it became a podcast. Who knows in the future what it might become.

PC: You created, wrote, and produced it. How early on in the process did you realize you were going to wear all those different hats, and how challenging was that?
Adam: I’m a person who likes to be very hands-on, maybe because I’m a bit of a control freak. It goes back to your first question. I know what I like. I know what I like to see. I know what I love to hear. If I write something, I’m going to have opinions about the way it’s produced. Working with Alan, being a producer on it, it gives you a lot of creative control. Everybody was very collaborative.

Creating it just means it came out of my head. Producing it means I get to help make it as good as possible. Writing it just means that nobody else wanted to do it, so I had to do that, too. [laughs]

PC: How did the partnership with Alan form? What was that collaboration like?
Adam: Alan tweeted at me about the show The Outs that I made in 2021 way back when. I freaked out because I love him. Alan has this incredible filmography where he was in Josie and the Pussycats, X-Men 2, Eyes Wide Shut, Spice World, Golden Eye, so on and so on. I love all those movies. So, we became friends after that.

He started a production company recently and was like, “Do you have any ideas?” I said, “Yeah!” That came into place, and he’s great with actors. He knows what he’s doing. He was a natural fit to direct it. We had a lot of fun working together. We have similar sensibilities, so it was a good, good collaboration.

PC: Has anything surprised you about the process creating the podcast? What’s been the biggest takeaway so far?
Adam: We made it over the course of this last year. I was really grateful to have something to work on to put all of my energy into. What surprised me was that we were able to do it at all because it’s a really big effort internationally. We have people in studios in Brighton, LA, and in New York. We recorded our theme song with some people in Texas and all over. I was really amazed at the ability to make things come together with the right level of organization.

PC: What do you hope audiences take away after listening to the podcast?
Adam: That’s a good question. It’s a really fun show. That was one of the first conversations I had with Bowen about the show—I wanted it to be fun. We were having that conversation in mid-2020, and we wanted to give people something to smile about. Beyond that, once you have people laughing, it’s easy to talk about more serious stuff. There are some layers to the story, surprisingly enough, that are actually about things. We just wanted to make people smile, and I’m super confident that we’ve done that. I hope that people will listen in and get a taste of it, if you will. That’s the wrong thing to say about a sperm podcast. [laughs]

To keep up with Adam, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Listen to Hot White Heist today.

Photo Credit: Nicolas Maloof