STEPPING INTO THEIR ‘BOOTS'

The series' leads explain how they trained to play Marines

- BY JIM HALTERMAN

JUSTIN JUN LEE For The Times

MAX PARKER, left, and Miles Heizer star as Marines in the Netflix comedy-drama series "Boots."

In the opening moments of “Boots,” Netflix’s new comedy-drama series, we meet Cameron “Cam” Cope, an 18-year old high school graduate who is gay, loves Wilson Phillips, talks to his sassier inner self and is tired of being bullied at school and at home, where his flighty mother, Barbara (Vera Farmiga), actually tells him he should be more masculine.

“My life needs a change, sir. I wanna be somebody else,” says Cam (Miles Heizer; “Parenthood,” “13 Reasons Why”) when a recruiter asks why he wants to join the Marines.

But it’s also 1990, a time when being gay in the military was considered a criminal offense. It’s three years before the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is issued by the Department of Defense to halt harassment and discrimination of closeted gay and bisexual service men and women. Cam enrolls anyway, persuaded by his best friend Ray McAffey (Liam Oh), desperate for change. And change he gets.

"As a queer person, I think we have these preconceived notions about hypermasculine worlds and what I viewed the military to be, especially the Marines," says Heizer, sitting on the rooftop of Netflix's New York offices last week with co-star Max Parker, who plays stern drill instructor Sgt. Robert Sullivan.

That sense of what masculinity is weighs not only on Cam but also on the mixed bag of recruits and the officers whose job it is to shape them into "The few, the proud, the Marines," to quote the iconic ad campaign.