#‘Minx’ EP Paul Feig on the Show’s HBO Max Cancellation and Why He’d Rather Release Shows on Linear TV

Last May, Ellen Rapoport’s workplace comedy Minx — which caused a bit of a stir thanks to its pilot episode’s parade of private parts — was met with a resounding show of support in the form of a season two renewal at the Warner Bros. Discovery streamer, then named HBO Max. But by December, amid a somewhat unprecedented money-saving effort led by WBD CEO David Zaslav, the platform (now dubbed simply Max) reversed course and canceled the show’s second season with just a single week left of filming.

Not only did Minx‘s axing send up alarm bells in the live-action scripted space, which found itself being written off — literally — for tax purposes, much like a number of titles in the animated space earlier that year. It also signaled a new, unsettling era in the streaming age for creators and their crews, who now were not just facing the standard renewal chopping block in the face of shortened seasons and lower residuals, but the possibility that their show might be pulled from a streamer with no place for it to be viewed elsewhere.

It’s an issue that’s at the heart of the ongoing Writers Guild strike, which kicked off on May 1, as well as the ongoing SAG-AFTRA negotiations, which were recently extended until July 12. Minx was seemingly part of this larger industry trend and has certainly been impacted by the ongoing work stoppage, as Rapoport remained on strike with her fellow writers amid the series’ season two press tour. But executive producer Paul Feig tells The Hollywood Reporter that the beloved series, about the staff of a low-budget porn publisher and the feminist who helps them launch a women’s erotic magazine, wasn’t quite the story fans think it is.

In fact, even as news broke of the cancellation, Minx producer Lionsgate and members of the show’s creative team, including Feig, were aware that a number of interested distributors were right outside their door — with the show’s current home Starz among them. This was also not the first time Minx had to defy the odds of the industry to make it to the screen.

Ahead of season two, Feig spoke to THR about the show’s initial battle to make it to the screen; what made its cancellation (and revival) typical and untypical for the industry; why he’s glad the show now exists on a linear channel; and why he not only loves the Minx‘s approach to inclusion but its portrayal of sex and sexuality.

Minx ended up canceled while you were in production on season two at HBO Max before it was announced as being picked up by Starz. Its near-death was part of a larger trend of networks and platforms cost-cutting this past year, but this isn’t your first go with cancellation. Did what happened with Minx feel like something new for you?

Yes and no. Every time you get a show canceled or pulled or whatever it is, there’s a hope it’s going to go somewhere else, so that kind of buoys you for a little bit. Then, it’s dealing with the unfairness of it, but then there’s the acceptance. If I go all the way back to Freaks and Geeks, it’s a critical show that had all these fans, but we were still the lowest-rated show on NBC. It’s very hard for me to go like, “How dare they!” You go, “OK I guess I see the business reasons,” and we are in a business, and the minute you don’t understand that show business is still a business, you’re really setting yourself up for a lot of heartbreak. It makes you think differently, too. At the same time, Minx was always a phoenix. We could not sell this show at all for the first season. We took it everywhere. I can’t tell you how many boardrooms we were in — streamers, networks, everywhere — with [showrunner and creator] Ellen [Rapoport] bringing giant stacks of Playgirl magazines, putting them out all over the table.

Everyone would laugh, we’d look at them. We’d leave them stuff. I would always go, “Well, who wouldn’t pick up the show?” and nobody would pick it up. They were just afraid of it for different reasons. Some, I think, because of the subject matter, others just because it was a ’70s show — a million different reasons we heard. So, we all walked away going, “It’s dead,” and it was dead for months. Then, HBO Max came up out of the blue and said, “We want to do the show.” So, I’ll always credit them for that, for having done that for us and then giving us a second season. Then, when the show did get pulled when we were just one week away from finishing production, that was a real kick in the head, but I credit them because they said, “But finish the season. Finish shooting the show, finish post.” They could have easily just pulled the plug if they were looking to save money, but they didn’t. And we did know that Starz were fans of the show, so it wasn’t a total rug-pull. But at the same time, I’ve had that before. That happened with Freaks and Geeks. MTV wants Freaks and Geeks, but they want to do it for like a quarter of the budget. It’s like, “Well, we can’t do that.”

You are now with Starz, where you’ll get a streaming and linear component to your release. While this isn’t the Cancel Bear days, you’re also no longer completely in the sort of Wild West where some showrunners have said performance data is less transparent, and now one’s show might not physically exist in a year. How important is having Minx on a linear channel for season two to you?

It’s everything. I mean, that’s all we kind of looked for. I’ve always said I would rather sell a show to QVC — be the first scripted show on QVC — than get some cool streamer that nobody’s ever heard of because we want people to see our stuff. Unless you’re a painter who burns his paintings when he’s done with them, that’s the only reason we do this. We want as many people to see it, as many people to enjoy and find it. I had a very frustrating thing happen when I did a show that I created called Other Space and did it for Yahoo Screen. Yahoo was starting this thing, which was going to be their online service, and they ordered three shows. We did it and put so much into it. But then they only ended up advertising it on Yahoo. When I went into it, it was like, “We’re going to do the traditional marketing campaign,” and then they didn’t do that. So, it’s just this frustration of we have this great show and nobody knows it’s there. So, it’s all about how can people access a show.

It’s even more visible in season two, but Ellen and the Minx writers get the nuances of characters’ experiences and there’s a lot of intentionality in telling their stories. Whereas some storytellers seemingly stumble into their great, incisive take on race or gender because they’ve hired more inclusively. Where do you think Hollywood is in terms of an active awareness of and commitment to inclusive storytelling?

I think the good storytellers are very aware of that, and I think people are becoming more aware of it. But it’s not done that much. Really, it’s either, “Oh, look at what we did. We filled this quota or that quota,” but there’s no understanding of why you’re doing it, or it’s not organic to it. These days, you have to be aware of all that stuff. I personally love the woke movement because it makes everybody aware of this. It puts the pressure on. The people who get mad about it are people who just don’t want to think about it. But you got to think about it because we’re representing everybody and you don’t want anybody to feel underrepresented or feel like they’re being portrayed in a way that is not necessarily exploitative, but even just pandering — like, “There you go. Here’s your crumbs, off you go.” I really credit Ellen for being so aware of that. It’s something at my company we try to do it with everything, but she’s the one that’s got to take it and make it work. I’m always just amazed every time these scripts come in at just how nuanced it is and how well she walks that line. It’s very self-aware, and it has to be because, again, if it’s not, then you have the situation you talked about where you stumble into doing the right thing, which is great, but it’d be better if you knew why you’re doing the right thing.

The show caught a lot of attention in its first season for its full-frontal male nudity but much more of what the show was doing was talking about sex and sexuality in a serious but open way. It’s a different approach to the sort of sexless or hyper-sexualized binary of certain film franchises and TV shows currently on. How does Minx exist outside of that binary for you?

I love how sex-positive our show is, but in an almost innocent way because at the end of the day, it’s a workplace comedy about people who are in the sex trade, but from a time when it was — I’m not going to say innocent by any stretch of imagination — but it wasn’t this kind of ugly thing that it sometimes can be these days. I’m talking about internet porn and that things are so extreme now. There are certain shows that are really trying to push that boundary, and I have total respect for that. But at the same time, it turns it into, I don’t know, like you’re almost trying to dare the audience to like it or shock people to watch. I don’t like shock, other than if I can shock you to make you laugh. So, I think that’s why fell in love with the idea for this show from the very beginning.

Having grown up in the ’70s, I remember Playboy magazine, Playgirl magazine. I remember the whole moral majority, and suddenly you’d go into 7-Eleven and there were things covering the magazines that used to be out in the open. It brings all the conversation and the, just, controversy about the portrayal of sex in our lives but does it in a way that’s not going to put our audience off how some shows that other people really like do, but that I’m just going, “I can’t deal with it. It’s too much about young people having sex. It’s not fun for me, just as an adult.” Our show makes sex fun. It’s a fun portrayal of sex and sexuality. Bambi (Jessica Lowe) is such a great character, and she is so open. She and Shelley are having this relationship, but she’s just kind of cool about it. I think that’s the kind of sex positivity I want to see because it’s fun and silly but meaningful.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Minx season two debuts on the Starz app, streaming and on-demand platforms and its linear channel July 21.