Culture | Series: ‘Welcome to Chippendales’, beyond the leopard thong

by time news

Image from the entertaining miniseries ‘Welcome to Chippendales’, with its entire cast of performers.

The story of Steve Banerjee, an Indian immigrant who, after several failed ventures, decides to bet everything on the innovative creation of ‘Chippendales’, a male strip-tease club in the 1970s.

Lorenzo Mejino

Sordid and tragic stories based on real events have a great attraction for writers and producers, especially if they have an important sexual component and to achieve the American dream, as it happens in the interesting miniseries ‘Welcome to Chippendales’.

The true story behind the creation and growth of ‘Chippendales’, the well-known franchise of men’s strip clubs, is gripping and full of surprising twists, especially if you don’t know all the details of a very dark and dirty history.

Welcome to Chippendales

  • Platform
    Disney+ (E)

  • Date
    Nov. 2022-Jan. 2023

  • Nationality
    USA

  • episodes
    8 de 45 min.

  • Creator
    Robert Seal

  • protagonists
    Kumail Nanjani, Murray Bartlett

The plot: ‘Welcome to Chippendales’ dedicates the pilot episode to introduce us to the protagonist, the Indian immigrant Somen ‘Steve’ Banerjee, beginning with his humble origins as a gas station attendant who after saving like an ant decides to become an entrepreneur.

His early entrepreneurial ventures are pathetic enough, seeing the crazy ideas that Banerjee tries to pull off, until he finds the male striptease ground as virgin ground to exploit.

In the first phase we see how he is forming his team, both assistants and collaborators, as well as dancers with the first signs of his excessive ambition, by firing all the people who he considers are no longer useful for his objectives.

Steve Banerjee’s personality is really complex and very contradictory since despite becoming a highly successful businessman, he cannot shake off a huge inferiority complex due to his status as an Indian immigrant, which leads to great racist and discriminatory behavior towards the blacks.

That personal insecurity and his obsessive need to control even the smallest detail of ‘Chippendales’ is going to cause him serious tensions with his right-hand man, the choreographer Nick DiNoia.

At the beginning of their relationship, the two agreed to split the tasks, leaving the management and administrative tasks to founder Banerjee, while Nick DeNoia was the creative director with complete freedom to cast the dancers and design the choreography.

The discrepancies in the management model only increased when Nick DiNoia became the popular face of ‘Chippendales’, going to all kinds of television programs and promotional shows, completely ignoring Steve Banerjee, who was seething with envy when he saw that he was not recognized as the creator of the franchise as he was obfuscated by the great charisma of his partner.

These tensions are going to end up exploding in the final stretch of ‘Welcome to Chippendales’, making it very clear that it is not a kind or complacent series that seeks mischievous smiles to see a group of men staying in leopard print thongs live in front of dozens of women, by focusing on the human miseries of the two partners and their escalation of tensions.

The creator: The film writer Robert Siegel (The Wrestler, Big Fan) has found an interesting television niche with true stories with a strong sexual component as he demonstrated with his first creation, ‘Pam and Tommy’.

That success allowed him to rescue a project that had been around for almost ten years about the tragic story of the founders of Chippendales, especially its creator, Steve Banerjee, focusing on the rise and fall of an Indian immigrant and inspired by a book published in 2014.

Starring: Born and raised in Karachi, Kumail Nanjani rose to prominence when he was cast as programmer Dinesh in ‘Silicon Valley’, a role that launched him to fame. He was always creator Robert Siegel’s first choice to play Steve Banerjee since the project’s inception ten years ago, but the actor wasn’t at all convinced that playing a bad, negative Indian was good for his image, until he finally agreed to finish. showing off big.

The Australian Murray Bartlett became known as the great Armond, the manager of the hotel of the 1T of ‘The White Lotus’, a great performance that earned him the Emmy for best supporting actor and a rise to a higher step that he has confirmed as ambitious choreographer Nick DiNoia.

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