The Family You Choose: Darryl Stephens Returns with 'Noah's Arc: The Movie'
Stephens on revisiting Noah, the power in playing a feminine man, and living up to expectations
July 1, 2025
Darryl Stephens is a goddamn star.
I’ve known this for a long time. One of the oldest posts still live on my site BoyCulture.com is an interview I did with Darryl 18 years ago to promote the original Boy Culture movie. I remember when I posted it, people were beyond excited that I had access to the star of Noah’s Arc, let alone that he was acting in a movie based on my novel.
Growing up, I was often asked, when giving my last name, if I were related to the Major Leaguer Merv Rettenmund. (I was.) The people asking me would be in awe. That’s how it is to this day when I bring up knowing Darryl, who gave such a winning performance in Boy Culture and who, more recently, revived that performance in the series Boy Culture: Generation X.
Darryl’s name conjures giddiness because he’s a major-league talent, is a heartthrob and, on top of all that, he is forever the Noah. His groundbreaking work as the bubbly fashion plate, an unapologetically effeminate, Black, gay man, back in 2005 on Logo bonded him deeply with viewers, who were seeing something new, and who, in many cases, were seeing themselves.
In his books, including Stars (1979) and Heavenly Bodies (1986), esteemed queer cultural critic Richard Dyer dissects the phenomenon of stardom. I’m being a bit reductive, but he puts forth the idea that the way viewers consume entertainment is intimately intertwined with how they perceive its stars, how they measure themselves against them. I think Darryl is a star whose fans feel they know, relate to and respect, and while Darryl has appeared in many other things — Another Gay Movie (2006), DTLA (2012), Pee-wee’s Big Holiday (2016) and B Positive (2020-2022), to name a few — it’s his Noah DNA that carries him from project to project, bringing fans along with.
Now, 20 years on, and after a previous movie reunion — 2008’s Jumping the Broom — and 2020’s short Noah’s Arc: The ‘Rona Chronicles, Darryl is reunited with his most potent character in Noah’s Arc: The Movie.
Streaming on Paramount+, Noah’s Arc: The Movie re-teams Stephens with Jensen Atwood as Noah’s love interest Wade and Rodney Chester (Alex), Christian Vincent (Ricky) and Doug Spearman (Chance) as his three best friends. This time, the story isn’t about plucky twenty-somethings finding their way and finding themselves, it’s about 50-year-old men navigating aging, long-term relationships, career identity and impending fatherhood.
Noah is now a confident TV creative; he and Wade are prepping for the arrival of twins by taking care of lifelike dolls; Alex is a hard-working drag artist raising a rebellious trans daughter (Mariyea); Ricky is dealing with a health scare; and Chance is grappling with his own mortality.
It’s shocking that as new as Noah’s Arc felt 20 years ago, a project anchored by Black gay men is just as rare today.
Not so shocking — considering the actors and the team behind it, headed by creator Patrik-Ian Polk — it still works beautifully, entertaining while informing, titillating, and pulling tears as effortlessly as belly-laughs.
It was my pleasure to interview Darryl about what has become such a vitally important component of his career, his life and the lives of so many others.
Did you ever dream — 20 years ago — you’d still be playing Noah?
DARRYL: We had so many false starts. Like, right after Jumping the Broom, which did so well, they were going to do a spin-off with Noah and Wade in New York, and that fell apart. Then, there was something else that was going to happen, and that fell apart. So, there's been all these false starts. When they started talking four years ago about another movie, I was rolling my eyes, going, “Yeah, sure. Yeah, let's see what happens.” And then we shot it in 2022, so it's been in the can, so to speak, for three years.
Sounds familiar!
DARRYL: I think they were actually very smart to launch it 20 years after the show launched. It's giving the whole project this very nostalgic, “Look at, 20 years later, what we were able to do.” And really, it was 17 years, but look at 20 years later what we're still able to do. But I do think it's looking good.