Alphabet Soup’s Thrilling Queer Dating Chaos

“The New York dating scene is like a sea of piranhas,” declares Nova StClair in the first episode of Alphabet Soup, the boldly unpredictable queer dating reality show from filmmaker Shannon Alexander, streaming on Peacock and Prime.

“It’s a dating docuseries,” Nova clarifies, connecting over Zoom from the fairyland oasis of her bedroom in Brooklyn. The vivacious twentysomething, a delightful storyteller prone to switching up her look with Day-Glo hair or contacts, undeniably stands out as a screen presence, even among the cast of outrageous artists, club kids, and scenesters who populate the show.

Some might call Nova — who divulges in the show’s first episode that she started transitioning during her brief stint in the military — the face of Alphabet Soup, and she’d probably agree.

Credible networks who rejected the show before it aired still “cited that, ‘We love Nova. Nova’s so great,’ just praising me, and this got back to me,” she says innocently. “Even though it’s a denial for the overall, I felt that as a win.”

The series, which debuted during Pride month, wins by turning a daring look at New York’s hipster dating scene into a profoundly human glimpse into the lives of these young people. They fall everywhere along the LGBTQIA2S+ spectrum tipped ironically in the title, and many of them are just scraping by in this economy.

Alternately funny, dramatic, fabulous, and alarming, Alphabet Soup makes stars of an entire community, not just Nova. Although, as co-star Troy Weekes admits with a laugh, Nova is “very entertaining. Definitely can talk. You just never know if whatever she’s saying is the truth or not.”

Troy would know, as would viewers who see his date with Nova depicted in the first episode. We see the aftermath at least, as they both let us in on the protracted text exchange that preceded their date, and then offer a vivid play-by-play of the night in question.

But they differ wildly on pertinent details, like whether or not they skipped dessert and jumped straight to sex in the restaurant bathroom. Their engaging he-said/she-said almost perfectly fulfills series creator Alexander’s vision for the show.

“I had watched the original season of Sex in the City, like a lot of people, and I found the interesting part was the interstitials,” Alexander recalls.

“Remember back when they would speak to random people on the streets, and they would ask them how the dates went and they spoke to the guy, ‘How did your date go with her?’ and he would say, ‘Oh, it was the best date ever. It was amazing. I called her three days later,’ and it cut to the woman. She says, ‘Well, I went on the date, and it was the worst date ever, and he called me three days later.'”

Aiming for “that kind of funny juxtaposition and contrast” with the dates presented in each episode, Alexander, who also shot most of the series and edited, delves into what was going on in each person’s head, as much as what happened in which bathroom.

Noting that he also was inspired by Michael Apted’s groundbreaking Up documentary series, which followed up on its subjects every seven years, and Richard Linklater’s drama Boyhood, filmed over ten years, Alexander set out to capture his subjects’ lives well beyond dating.

“It’s about romantic connections predominantly, but that following of the evolution of people was what I really wanted to document,” he says. Indeed, within six episodes, months pass, and we see some on the show go from restlessly single to ecstatically coupled, or even tripled up, and others transition from comfortably housed to surfing couches, or from life of the party to incarcerated.

Troy and his partner Ray-Anthony Chin experience quite their own evolution during the course of the season, yet they manage throughout to exude an air of stability uncommon among this cast. “Most people say we are the only sane people on the whole show,” jokes Ray. Adds Troy, “It’s like you have Troy and Ray and you have all the craziness going on.”

The couple met four years ago on the queer dating app Jack’d and were together before the show, but at the season’s start, they’re separated. Troy is introduced on his own at first.

“I originally worked on another show Shannon had done before, Sex, Love, Misery: New New York, which is out on Amazon as well. That was the first show he ever did about dating,” Troy recalls. “Then he decided he wanted to make a change and do Alphabet Soup and do it a little different. I was the only one that wanted to continue on, I said, ‘Let’s do it.'”

A singer-musician, Troy also contributed the show’s soundtrack, and wanted Ray, whom he was seeing at the time, to join him on the show. “[But] we were going through some things, as you can see from the first episode this season,” Troy says, “and that’s how I ended up on a date with Nova.”

Troy goes on dates with other women on the show, too, even after he and Ray reunite. The couple broaden the horizons of what appears to be a gay male relationship by both identifying as pansexual and actively seeking a female third, no doubt challenging the preconceived notions of many viewers watching.

They find an eager candidate in Cam — a.k.a. CeCe — a voluptuous exotic dancer who brazenly asserts, “I like being a gay guy’s first time.”

As Troy describes it, “I was like, ‘I’m with my boyfriend, looking for a girlfriend. What’s up?’ She was like, ‘I’ll be your girlfriend.’ I was like, ‘Okay, girl.’ We just hung out the whole night, and then the night turned into another night, to the next day, and then things happened.”

Troy and Ray had long talked about wanting to incorporate a third at some point. “We didn’t know when or how, or what that would look like, but it just happened to happen organically with CeCe, it just happened,” Troy says.

“For me,” says Ray, “I’ve always wanted a poly relationship because I see myself in a big family, more than one wife, husband, kids. I see myself like Noah’s Ark, pretty much. I spoke to [Troy] about it. He had the same vision and dream.”

Balancing these tales of dates and disaster, hookups, breakups, parties, and feuds, Alexander had his work cut out for him editing countless hours of footage down to his vision and dream.

“It’s all about flow and instinct, I think, who deserves what at what time, how deep we go into the situations,” the filmmaker explains. “Originally, we had three 60-minute episodes, and it really wasn’t working that well. It was a bit much. We recut it to six 25-minute eps, and so naturally things will get cut to maintain that sense of flow.” Still, everyone depicted makes an indelible impression.

“I needed to find the right cast and subjects,” Alexander explains, “and my people turned out to be great and interesting, and came along on this journey with me, and put all their faith and trust in me.”

Alexander, who moved to the U.S. from Western Australia in 2020, was friends with much of the cast to begin with, and found others through word of mouth and mutual friends. “A lot of people said no, too,” he says. “We shot this completely independently, starting during COVID, and it’s been an ongoing thing. We’re still shooting. Just wrapped up the second season.”

It’s an intimate process, according to Alexander, often the only crew member on set. “They were talking to me the whole time via the camera,” he says. “They’re always looking down the lens. That was definitely a style I wanted to incorporate. I think it worked in the favor of this production.

“I love these people for putting themselves out there and being so candid. I wouldn’t do it. I’m way more private. I don’t think I’d be comfortable discussing all these things at length.” No kidding. Alexander was perhaps the toughest in this story to nail down for an interview, and was decidedly not forthcoming about his own dating life.

“Right now, all I do is work, for real — I don’t have time to date,” he demurs, brushing off an inquiry into how he identifies. “I was going to say asexual, but I don’t know about that. That might be a stretch.”

Yet he was utterly charming and excited to discuss his work, the show, and the second season (which as of yet has no official streaming home). “It goes darker, it’s different,” Alexander teases of footage he’s already shot with Troy, Ray, Nova, and many more returning from season one. “I haven’t cut it yet, but from what I’ve seen, it’s quite unexpected, especially the places they go down.”

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Ready to follow “wherever my curiosity takes me,” Alexander has ventured to dark places himself onscreen, with Alphabet Soup and, notably, in his previous documentary feature, It’s Coming.

A rare horror documentary, It’s Coming investigates the claims of a mother tormented by sleep paralysis incidents involving a malevolent presence, or presences, in her house. “First time I met Ashley, I went to the apartment, and the light started flickering on and off in the corner,” Alexander recalls.

“And it wasn’t the bulb. The bulb hadn’t blown. The lights had just cut out, and Ashley would unplug the lamp, and put it back in, and then it would come back on. I said, ‘What’s up with that? That’s weird.’ She’s like, ‘They just don’t want you here, these things.’ I was intrigued by that.”

Alexander’s curiosity about the minefield of dating in New York led him to create Sex, Love, Misery: New New York, a work that focuses on the psychology of dating. Alphabet Soup broadens that focus.

“It’s about all relationships and friendships in the community, and the love, and the hate, and animosity, and the great things that go along with the excitement of meeting new people, and the makeups and the breakups,” he says.

And, without making too much ado about it, the show features folks leading queer lives far outside the mainstream at a time when many might benefit from meeting someone as unique as Nova. Of course, Nova agrees.

“You have to be able to be inquisitive of some understanding, and see humanity in people that you maybe otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to have that opportunity,” she says.

“Because I’m a rare person and a lot of people don’t get to know somebody like me. Yeah, I’m fucking scary and I’m raunchy and I’m not [conforming]. I don’t want to be. There’s some people that don’t have the privilege to understand me, and that’s just the reality. That’s just the way it is.”

All six episodes of Alphabet Soup season one are available to stream on Peacock and Prime Video. Visit www.peacock.com or www.amazon.com.