Alan Cumming on Why ‘Tip Toe’ Needs a U.S. Audience for LGBTQ+ Cautionary Tale

Russell T Davies knows he’s known as “the Queer as Folk man,” he tells TV Insider. Because of the cultural impact of his work, which in recent years has included spearheading Doctor Who, Davies says that he doesn’t often struggle to get new shows made. However, he recognizes the recent decrease in queer storytelling being green-lit by American studios, a trend that Alan Cumming pointed out to us in our interview for Tip Toe, Davies’ latest drama. While Davies and Cumming have different outlooks on the state of queer media (the former is more hopeful, the latter is more concerned), both agree that Tip Toe is important for American audiences to see.

Tip Toe is a harrowing fictional story set in the present day that opens with the reveal of an LGBTQ+ hate crime and then flashes back to show how it happened. It was a discourse-generating hit when it premiered in the United Kingdom earlier this year, and both Davies and Cumming are eager to see how U.S. audiences respond after it premieres this Friday, October 2, at 9:05/8:05c on Starz (one episode comes out weekly every Friday in October).

Tip Toe‘s story was inspired by the surge in anti-LGBTQ+ violence and hateful rhetoric in recent years around the globe, Davies tells TV Insider, but particularly in America and the United Kingdom, where trans and queer rights are actively being stripped away by federal and state governments. On the same day as our interviews with Cumming and Davies took place, the Trump administration formally threw out the Title IX rule that protected LGBTQ+ students from sexual assault and harassment, effective the next day, and it denied public comment on the decision, saying, “Engaging in public notice and comment would be contrary to public interest.”

In the series, Cumming plays 59-year-old Leo Struthers in Tip Toe, a gay man who became HIV positive in the 1990s and survived. He stars opposite David Morrissey‘s Clive Goss, Leo’s small-minded, quick-to-anger straight neighbor whose bigotry makes him blind to reason, even when he enjoys the company of queer people or defends them against violence. He’s impressionable and seeking to blame an “other” for the problems in his life, and he’s stoked by a habit of watching violent videos online and a lack of community that holds him accountable.

Starz

Leo owns a popular bar in the heart of Manchester’s famous queer neighborhood, Gay Village on Canal Street. Leo’s longtime friend, Melba (Paul Rhys), points out that life is getting more dangerous for queer and trans folks when Leo finds himself in a conflict with Clive that spirals out of control in alarming ways.

Leo “tip toes” around Clive’s feelings in an attempt to mitigate further conflict. As things worsen, the show asks the confronting question of whether queer visibility wasn’t the antidote to queer hatred like it was believed to be.

Cumming tells TV Insider he’s thrilled this story is getting an American audience, but he points out the concerning decrease in queer stories on TV and film in the U.S. in recent years. Even with Heated Rivalry being the unmitigated hit that it is, more straight romances about athletes have been green-lit than queer love stories in the time since it came out. And, as Cumming points out, American production studios are licensing more foreign shows about queer and trans people than they are making them in-house.

Paul Rhys and Alan Cumming in Tip Toe Season 1 Episode 1 (Starz)

“A lot of companies with the whole DEI thing, people are scared to put their heads above the parapet and support anyone other than straight white men, so that’s why shows like this were not made in America,” Cumming says. “Thank goodness Starz have decided to have bought it and put it on. Heated Rivalry, not made in America, brought in. It seems like things are pretty good, but they’re not because we have much less queer content. But also people are terrified to [make more].”

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“They’re staying away from that type of narrative and that content because they’re worried the government’s going to punish them for making it,” Cumming continues. “And I think it’s easier to buy it in. It doesn’t seem like it’s that much of the same kind of investment, so it’s kind of slipping in the back door, as it were.”

“I’m really happy that Starz have taken this on because I think it is a really important show and it is really important for people to have this discussion the same way that people in Britain had this discussion when it came out,” Cumming notes. “And I’m just so excited that it’s happening in America actually at all.”

Davies comments on the political climate in which Tip Toe is being released to the world and praises Starz for “fully backing this show.”

Starz

“It’s all a lot of noise because we’re an easy target, and the last thing we’re talking about is your grocery bill and the price of fuel and the cost of living, which is in a parlous state,” Davies tells TV Insider of anti-queer and -trans rhetoric in politics. “And so somehow the arguments about us are somehow full of glitter and glamour and an allure that makes us very attractive to talk about. Fundamentally, of course, it’s much more serious than that. It’s much more serious than glitter.”

“These arguments, which I do always think are massive distractions,” Davies continues, “they have the ability and the mendacity to draw the argument of our existence down to children, to make us believe that we’re harming children. And at that point, every right-minded soul will sit up and pay attention because children must be defended. And so on that cheat, on that lie, on that falsehood, they automatically gain attention, and suddenly we become a cause of the preservation of children and the sanctity of children, which is such nonsense, which is such a wildfire. It’s such camouflage. As if children aren’t in danger from many straight men.”

Jackson Connor as George and Iz Hesketh as Z in Tip Toe Season 1 Episode 1 (Starz)

“But it’s very simply done,” Davies says. “I mean, these are not subtle arguments. This is not a subtle war. It’s very, very simple. It’s very overt, and their weapons are very powerful.”

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While Tip Toe is a cautionary tale about how queer people are being used as targets in global culture wars, he also sees plenty of hope and resilience in things such as the success of Heated Rivalry and the Oscar buzz surrounding the upcoming films about queer history, La Bola Negra and Elsinore.

“We’re telling the story of history here. Every time there’s a pushback, then we push back,” he says. “In wars, we have gathered in cellars and told each other stories. And if it has to become Fahrenheit 451 where we’re learning old text in order to repeat them to our children by the fire set, then we will. So I worry about [the decrease in queer stories in media] and yet I don’t worry because I haven’t actually met a queer writer or activist who’s given up. Never met that person.”

Tip Toe, Series Premiere, Friday, October 2, 9:05/8:05c, Starz, Streaming Fridays on the Starz App