“It was the Lady Gaga ‘bus, club, another club…’ and it was wild. I was young. A lot was happening around me that I wasn’t aware of.”
From the very moment my 15-year-old self laid eyes on a copy of Neon Nights CD at the now-defunct Spin Street record shop at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut on a family excursion in 2004, I knew that Dannii Minogue was a bit of me.
One immediate purchase, and a deep dive into the discography at home later that night, proved that Dannii was my kind of Queen of Clubs™: from her early ’90s arrival with Love & Kisses and Get Into You to the sexy and experimental Girl, with which she invented ASMR with “Everybody Changes Water” and altered the trajectory of pop culture (Cher has Dannii’s “All I Wanna Do” to thank for “Believe,” for the record.)
Neon Nights would become an integral part of my being (and a sparkly stiletto to the gut shoving me out of the closet); a start-to-finish flirty, filthy masterpiece of cheeky come-ons and moans and groans molded around big, throbbing European house beats and ’80s post-disco electronic pop.
At a time when we were still downloading torrents, uploading .mp3s to iPods and importing CD singles, feverishly followed her career moves from afar on fan forums as she racked up more consecutive No. 1s on the UK dance chart than any other female artist, onward through compilations like The Hits & Beyond, Unleashed, The 1995 Sessions and Club Disco (“Love Fight,” my ringtone of 2006 – just ask my high school ex!), through the anniversary releases, all the way up to her latest banger, 2024’s “Thinking ‘Bout Us.”
She’s also gone on to become a designer, author and frequent fixture on television, including judging and hosting gigs on various international editions of The Masked Singer, Got Talent, and The X Factor. (I wasn’t expecting that at all!)
As Australia’s two finest cultural contributions, the Sisters Minogue have both deservedly ascended to gay icon status, and the love is mutual: Dannii’s gone deep with the LGBTQ+ community for decades, performing multiple times at Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (even providing the official theme of 1999’s celebration, “Everlasting Night”), becoming the first-ever performer at G-A-Y at a time when artists were told it would be a career-killer, championing several charitable causes and, most recently, playing Cupid in the wildly successful BBC TV series I Kissed a Boy, the UK’s first-ever gay dating show.
Not only does she pop up around the masseria bearing good and bad news in a never-ending rainbow array of stunning, sparkly ensembles, as well as the show’s glittering theme – “We Could Be the One,” from which all profits go towards Switchboard, a long-running national LGBTQ+ helpline – but she was also hands-on from its inception (dirty hands, she demands!), making sure it hit all the right notes, and that the contestants could handle being suddenly thrust into fame. As she tells it, she cares deeply about getting this right.
The silly, sexy and surprisingly heartfelt show was not only a ratings hit that spawned a lesbian counterpart series (I Kissed a Girl, airing now), but it’s already been greenlit for a second season. And, lucky for us stateside, it’s just arrived on Hulu, right in time for Pride.
As the show premieres in America (and beyond), I had the opportunity to speak with Dannii from Australia over Zoom about her conquering of the clubs in America over a decade before the streaming era, her enduring impact on pop culture, catfights with her older sister Kylie (a rising star in the pop scene, you should check her out sometime), anxieties about continuing on in the music industry, and being So Under Pressure to make queer love stories happen on mainstream TV. (Viva L’Amour, if you will.)
To say it was a delight of a conversation would be an understatement, with so much more still needed to be discussed at a later date. (We still need to dig into that lost Heavy Disco era, after all…) But until then, at long last, please enjoy a (virtual) chat with Dannii Minogue.
Hi, Dannii.
Hi, finally.
Finally! How are you?
I’m good. It’s kind of face to face. I’m sure one day I will really be somewhere with you, dancing.
In person! I know. At long last. I am overjoyed to finally be speaking with you. I’ve been a card carrying Dannii Stannii for years now, to say the absolute least. I had the “Perfection” signed postcard framed above my bed that says “Yo Brad,” the whole nine yards.
Oh my goodness. That’s good. Happy pride! A lot of celebration. I’ve now found your podcast, which I’m loving.
Oh my God, you have?
Yes.
Oh, I love that. Yes. I’ve been preaching the gospel of Neon Nights and everything else for years on the podcast now.
Thank you.
I’m excited to talk to you about music past and present, Pride, and of course, I Kissed a Boy, which, spoiler alert I plowed through the entire series this weekend, loved it.
Good.
But before that, I’d love to dive in with something a little silly, yet extremely important to me. A few months ago, I was in Miami and I posted a shirt I had made of you and your sister in a cat fight from a 2007 variety show. I watched the clip constantly still. It’s never fails to delight me. Do you have any memories from that experience that you could talk about?
Yeah, I mean for me, my relationship with Kylie is mostly in private. There are very few moments where we are doing something on TV or stage together. All of them are so cherished, and they kind of come up at the last minute, like, ‘Hey, why don’t we do this?’ But also a lot of thought goes into it.
At that stage, she said, ‘Do you want to do this comedy sketch? I’ve got this team of writers, they’re really amazing.’ And I was like, yes. And then the panic of ‘oh my God, what are we going to do?’ I think I got the script the day before or something. My most cherished moments about that are Kylie and I going into a room and saying, ‘let’s just run it, let’s workshop it.’ We’d done that and then she said, ‘Oh, they’ve already filmed the stuntwomen doing the stunts, so leading in and out of those we cannot change. We have to be in this position so that it matches with the stuntwoman.’ I was like, ‘oh, okay.’ So it was just the bits in between we could really riff and flow and do our thing.
But, oh my God. There are looks that we do at each other where it’s like…oh, that’s our mom. That’s the look that she gives us. It will always make me laugh. My friends still do it with me. If I grab a glass of champagne, they’re like, ‘that’s the move you do in that comedy thing.’ So it’s a lot of fun. I’m glad that you like it. I love the T-shirt.
Thank you. I genuinely love it. I imagine you two have patched things up since then, or are you still tussling backstage?
Oh, yes. There’s still…’It’s my hairbrush’! Actually, there was a lot of that when we were little. We shared a bedroom, and at one point she got some tape and she drew a line down the middle of the bedroom, and she’s like, ‘do not come over my side of the bedroom.’ I’m three years younger, and that was a big age gap at that point when we were sharing a bedroom. There were lots of sisterly fights, and there’s a brother who’s in between our age group. We were always being told, ‘stop it, stop fighting with your brother or sister.’ There’s all those great, great memories growing up, so we definitely threw that into the scene.
Speaking of special memories, Neon Nights recently had its 20th anniversary, an extremely important album to me. Top 5 album of all time. It was actually the cover that stuck out to me first. I saw it and thought you looked so glamorous and fierce. I was wondering if you have any memories of the shoot for that album cover – and also why the “G” is tilted in the title?
Yeah, the tilted “G” was big for me, because I wanted everything to be a little bit off. So in the photo shoot, yes, I’m ready to party, I’ve got sparkly shoes on, but I’ve fallen over. My name is up there, but the letter’s tilted. There’s always something a little bit off, a little bit something that wasn’t meant to happen.
I feel like the album was really such a breakthrough for me, personally. It felt like I arrived at myself and I was putting that into the songs and the album. Every day when we went in the studio, I’m like, ‘I don’t want this to sound like anyone else.’ And it happens so much in the music industry, especially back then. Record companies saying, ‘well, we want it to be like…’ and they name something that’s in the charts right then and there. By the time this comes out, that is going to be the most stupid idea ever. So it was about trying to just be really creative. I was just lucky. I had an incredible A&R, and incredible writers and producers that were pumped to do that. Everything’s just a little bit of me. I think that’s the best way to arrive. Just come as you are. We’re all flawed. We’ve all got scars and war wounds, but we are dressed up, we’ve got heels on, and we are ready to party.
Fans like to debate single selections and things like that, but I think you got it spot on personally. Do you feel like there was a single there that should have been, or in a different order?
It’s definitely an album where I can listen to it back and I feel like everything’s there. There’s nothing I want to take away or add. There were other albums where I had to fight for stuff to go on, or the only way I could get it was to be a B-side, all of that back and forth. I did really have such a great rapport with Phil Faversham, who was A&R. We just had such a good relationship to be able to speak openly and honestly and push each other to get to where it is. I think sonically it’s a great album; something really nice to be proud of, and it was fantastic to celebrate it so many years later when you actually have the time to connect.
London Records who did it was just insane. You would love meeting those guys there. If you ever get to London, you have to go into London Records. There was a lot of love poured into that. So much work, back and forth, just the amount of hours we poured into it, but with so much joy and just like, ‘oh, it’s going to have its moment again.’ And this time, I’m not out on that crazy promo that I was back in the day. It was so many Top of the Pops, traveling lots all around Europe. It was great to just relive it.
One of my bragging points about you to the uninitiated is “Don’t Wanna Lose This Groove,” which of course was the mashup with Madonna’s “Into the Groove,” which was her first-ever seal of approval. It was just the most incredible mashup that became official and endorsed by her, and I believe there was an interview of her on the radio even saying that she loved it at the time that she had heard it.
Yeah, I haven’t seen that interview. I would love to get hold of that.
There’s a scrubbed interview, apparently during American Life era, they play it to her and she’s like, ‘yeah, of course I’ve heard it, I love it.’
Yeah, well, it would surprise me if the first time any of her music went out she hadn’t heard it, loved it and approved it. I cannot imagine that happening. We were both under the umbrella of Warner, and the guys that I was working with in Paris, they just did this mashup for fun and sent it to me and I was like, ‘oh my God, this is heaven. ‘Into the Groove.’ Are you kidding me? How does this just work straight on the top of this record? There was no tweaking it about, and we’re like, ‘this would be great to release.’ I mean, jokingly. Nobody’s ever got a release with Madonna. So we’re like, well, I’m with Warner, now’s the time. Let’s ask. We sent it not thinking we’d ever hear back and we wouldn’t have pushed it or anything. We heard back so quickly. I’m working on stuff now where we’re trying to approve samples. It takes so long. The two quickest ones were Madonna and Dead or Alive. It was like, bam. Yes, you got it. And it still blows my mind. So when Ariana released her song [“Yes, And?”] and everyone’s like, ‘she’s got this Madonna track,’ I was like…yep. [Laughs] Which I loved! I love that song. But yeah, it is amazing. I still have never met Madonna.
No, it’s the ultimate claim to fame. It’s brilliant. You’re the first ever official endorsement.
Well, it’s kind of like the Minogue thing. She went on stage wearing the Kylie, and there was all of that from back in the day. I remember sitting at Kylie’s show when Madonna was a few rows in front of me in the audience, and so many magical moments. But we idolized her from her first releases, and I just love it.
The mutual Minogue-Madonna love is just wonderful, and it continues on. I Kissed a Boy coming to Hulu is your latest American conquest, but you are actually an early pioneer. “I Begin to Wonder,” “Don’t Wanna Lose This Feeling,” they were charting here. “Put the Needle on It” was being played at the clubs. You performed on Last Call with Carson Daly. This was before streaming, before crossovers were necessarily so common. What was the experience like promoting in America at that time?
It was wildly different from anything that I’d done. Coming from Australia, there’s a couple of radio stations, a couple of TV shows that can go on and perform. Once you’ve done those, you’re done. You’ve covered the country. Then I go to the UK. At that point, there were so many TV shows. So many radio shows. No podcast, no social media, but a lot of magazines. Music magazines were huge, so you were always doing a photo shoot, then a TV show, then radio. It was nonstop, like a hamster in a wheel, but everything’s pretty close together in the UK.
Then when I went to America for the first time., it’s club music to get the radio stations firing. We’re going to get some club shows going. I sort of went from end to end of America and did the whole club tour. The dirty, late night…it was the Lady Gaga ‘bus, club, another club’ and it was wild. I was young, a lot was happening around me that I wasn’t aware of. It was crazy. To get into the music industry in America, you’ve got to pay dues. You’ve got to go across America. I remember back in the day, hearing how INXS broke. They did all the universities and really got out there and did the shows. So it was like, okay, I’m up for this. Doing a club show is nothing unusual for me. But it was just night after night, and going to every radio station across the country. There’s so many people to talk to and you’ve got to break it station by station to get a buzz and to get something happening.
These days are wildly different – social media, or a big TV show, and a music festival or a support act, and you can be flying a lot faster.
US performance of I Begin To Wonder on Last Call With Carson Daly, 2003 ✨ #DanniiMinogue pic.twitter.com/1r4oMhNbUy
— Kallen Fleming (@FlemingKallen) November 3, 2023
Speaking of, Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dance Floor” is having a huge moment, 20 years later. You couldn’t predict it, but just one movie sync did it. Do you think there’s any song or album from the back catalog that you think deserves a renaissance like “Murder”?
I think “Put the Needle on It” is really fun. I was thinking about it the other day – doing the mashup with “Into the Groove,” and then how we did the video for “Put the Needle on It,” which is really actually in the groove of the record. It’s coming back to me. So maybe something like that would be fun.
I will obviously campaign to make that happen. We’ll get that on a movie soundtrack immediately. And of course in the years since you had a long string of consecutive hits. Do you remember when you were first being dubbed “Queen of Clubs”?
Yeah, it was definitely after Neon Nights. We were just having number one after number one after number one, they were all consecutive. Before I started Neon Nights, I was the pop girl. And in the UK, dance music was a very different genre and they did not mix. That was rock and pop. No, no, no, no. There’s no collaborations. There’s no mixing there. It’s a different scene. And dance music is cool. It’s got all the DJs. Pop music is all your bubbly TV shows and radio.
When I got asked to do “Who Do You Love Now?” by Pete Tong, his label – he’s the godfather of DJs and he was the huge jock on Radio 1. They were making a live show from Ibiza, and he asked me to do the song. I just thought, does he know who he’s asked? Is this for real? Is this a prank? What is this? To get his stamp of approval, it changed the direction of everything. It changed my life.
So then going into that album, into clubs with this stamp of approval, with a connection to DJs, and a scene that was not on my radar. We just kept having these number one club records and it’s like, this is crazy. So all the DJs are playing every time, and we’re delivering. Then when we looked at the figures, it was like no other female artist has ever done that. A big part of my promo and my work is in clubs. We’re actually seeing it in those figures there, and it’s something to be proud of. The friends that I’ve worked with on that club promo in the UK back in the day, I still work with now, so it’s like it’s family. It’s something that we collectively proud of.
I love that. But your relationship with dance goes even further back. “All I Wanna Do” was such an incredible moment as well, and it was a collaboration with Brian Higgins, who would go on to do Cher’s “Believe,” and the Xenomania machine grew. I’m wondering about your experience with Brian and that song.
I think he’s very musically talented, very creative. It was his first big cut, and so we were in the studio. There’s always an energy when someone is so hungry to make it and they’re like, ‘I’ve got a known artist trapped in a studio with me. I’ve got to come out with a hit record.’ That was that hunger that he had. I heard the song, and because it was written guitar-based, and everything else I’d been doing was key-based, it was like, does this fit? It felt like putting on a different costume, and not wanting to step on anything that wasn’t feeling authentic to me.
I remember running into another room, I had my friend Terry Ronald there, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if this song is going to work. Do you think I can sing this? Is this okay?’ And the song exists because my friend Terry said, ‘yes, your voice sounds great on it. Let’s record it. If it’s the guitar that’s putting you off or whatever, production-wise, it can be changed, let’s do this.’ That was the one moment that changed everything for myself, and for Brian, because then that became my biggest chart hit. It was his first cut, and then he was flying after that. And yes, we would not have had ‘Believe’ had we not had “All I Wanna Do.”
Thank you. That’s what I keep saying to everyone. Pop history. The butterfly effect of that song.
I remember then being in a studio when they recorded “Believe,” and having conversations about that and I was like, ‘tell me everything. What was it like working with Cher?’ It was wild. All the conversations going on about the production of her voice and how that just, wow…that changed pop music.
It completely did. And thanks to you for allowing it to happen in the first place.
My pleasure.
You mentioned Terry Ronald, you also work with Ian Masterson. I had the pleasure of meeting him at Mighty Hoopla and also thanking him for Neon Nights and his contributions. How did your relationship with them start? They’re attached to so many of your projects at this point.
So when I first moved to London, I moved there with one suitcase thinking I was going on a three week trip and ended up living there for 22 years. The first six months I was there, I cried my eyes out every single night. I was so homesick. I’m like, what am I doing here? I feel lost. I feel out of place. I really don’t know anyone. The people at work are nice, but you work so hard and you go back to a hotel room and you sit there. I lived in a hotel for two years because I kept thinking, ‘I’m leaving next week. I’m going back home. Do I even bother making a friend?’ But I knew I needed friendship. And a girl Penny at the record company, who’s in our friend group, she said, ‘you should meet this artist who’s also your labelmate. His name’s Terry Ronald.’ We ended up in Spain doing a show together and just chatting. I think we bumped into each other in the lift and we were chatting and worked out our birthdays are on the same day, and the conversation started, and then Terry was my best mate, so he’s been there for everything in my world.
Ian came into our world at the time of Girl, and we were put in a studio with him. He was fresh out of Belfast. He’d just come to London. Had a very, very thick accent at that time and was wanting to get into pop music. And Terry and I just adored him, took him under our wing. He just kept coming back to London, ended up living there. We call ourselves the Three Musketeers. We are tight and we love working together in different capacities. I know Terry and Ian are writing a musical together, and Ian and I came back together to record. “We Could Be the One” for I Kissed a Boy, which he had written in mind for me to sing it, but had to talk me around to do it.
I’d said ‘I’m not doing music anymore, I’m done. I’m good. I’m stepping away.’ And he was like, ‘No, you are not.’ He gets very angry at me still to this day. That’s the only reason I’m back in the studio now is because of that song. And I got back in, I’m like, ‘this is kind of fun.’ And so I’ve done a little bit of recording since then.
I feel like you’ve said before that you were going to hang it up after certain albums…
Well, there was a time after Girl, I was like, ‘I’m done.’ Back then, women weren’t making music and albums at the age that I am now. There was no one to look up to. There wasn’t a culture of that. So what am I thinking? You’re dropped from your label. Okay, I’m done.
I think it’s my mindset of when I got my first record deal in Australia with Mushroom Records. I made the album with Love and Kisses on it. I was 16. I was at school. I was like, ‘I’m never going to get this chance again. Nobody’s going to want to make an album with me, so I’m going to do this.’ I had to convince my parents. I’m just going to defer from school for a year. I just want this opportunity to make an album. Then I’ll go back to school and then we’ll all get back to everything normal. I’ll try and find a job, like a normal job, but just let me have this experience. So that mindset. That initial ‘oh my God, I’ve got this opportunity, don’t let it go’ has followed me. After Girl, there was no music industry opportunity for women over 50 making music. No way.
And then I went off and had my son. I really struggled with being a mom and the feeling of getting back up on stage. They felt like two very different people. I still struggle with it now. That was my second moment of, ‘okay, I’m good. I’m stepping away. I have a son.’ I love being a mom. I love it so much. I’m really happy for it to dominate my time. Hence the conversations with Ian Masterson. ‘I’m good, I’m done.’ And he’s like, ‘no, you are not.’
So there’s mentally been a lot going on inside. A lot of anxiety about stuff that people don’t see on the outside. When it’s like, ‘oh, I just popped back up!’ And it’s like, ‘Did she really mean that?’ I really did at the time for very different reasons.
Well, I’m very happy to hear that you were reinvigorated. You said you were still working on things.
There’s another track I’ve recorded in Sydney. We’re waiting for some sample clearance. There’s another one I’m trying to get hold of, a song that I heard that’s written that I love.
And then when I saw Ian in London, we got very drunk one night and we started scribbling down lyric ideas, which have now been shredded, because the next morning we couldn’t even read them. It was like, the first line, good…second line, yes…third, and then it melts off the page. So we’ve been messaging each other a lot since then on a thread. Some things that jump out to us that could maybe one day end up as a lyric. He’s pushing for that to happen. How was Mighty? How did you enjoy it?
Oh my God, I loved it. It was the previous year. Lisa Scott-Lee, Kelis, Kelly Rowland. It was wonderful. I loved being over there. Can we possibly expect maybe a one-off, or even a tour? Is that something you’d entertain?
Definitely not a tour. It’s just not fitting in with family life, and my love of being able to create I Kissed a Boy, and then we’ve done I Kissed a Girl. It’s a long time away from home and it’s very, very far away from home, and I get unbelievably homesick. Again, it’s all what’s going on underneath that nobody else sees. It’s big for me. When I get home, I’m really happy to be home. Going back out on tour, it’s not my thing. Now is just a balance of home, and a bit of away.
Maybe we can negotiate a one time show, one night only.
Well, World Pride was kind of fitting into that bag. Kylie said, ‘do you want to jump up on stage?’ And I was like, ‘yeah, that would be amazing.’ It was really beautiful moment. Not only to be doing World Pride, not only to do it with her, but I live in Melbourne. We’d come out of the longest lockdown globally. And so to stand there on a stage with a sea of people in front of you, it was the first time I’d been in any crowd situation. I also get anxiety in crowd situations. There’s a whole lot going on to get me on that stage. It was wild. It was beautiful.
It was a moment. I mean obviously, it shut down the internet. The gays panic every time there’s a Sisters Minogue moment. As for I Kissed a Boy, I was nervous going into it. Being gay, I just didn’t even know what it would look like. I’ve seen versions of attempts at gay reality shows, but once I got through, I was so thoroughly entertained. It’s such a good blend of silly, horny, exploring gay issues. It’s a charming watch. How was it pitched to you? What were your initial thoughts about the concept?
The first conversation to do the first-ever gay dating show for the UK was wild. Why are we even having this conversation in 2023, really? It pisses you off right then. It was like, ‘yay, this is great.’ And then it’s the terror of ‘What if this is bad?’ Because these are my friends, this is my community, these are people I love. I do not want to mess this up. I think the combination of the production Twofour, and BBC, I felt confident that these people were going to steer it in the right direction. And it is wild when you see the original pitch. The show is exactly what was on paper. What I was nervous about is what do they want it to be? Once I liked what was on paper, oh my God, but this could change wildly between what I agree to and what gets made.
So it’s about who you work with and what their intentions are. So I grilled all of them about what are the intentions of what the show is going to be. Then there was another layer. How is everyone going to be looked after? Because for me, that’s a lot of pressure on your shoulders to be those first guys in the first-ever gay dating show. People in the community are going to be watching it. Am I going to like this? Am I going to see myself? Straight people will go, ‘This is on our TV. Why should this be here?’ I was going to come at it from every angle, but these boys who’d never been a part of the entertainment industry who are not versed, not thick skinned in all of that, there’s a lot on their shoulders. So I’m like, okay, how are we choosing them? They’ve got to be ready for this. How are we looking after them? So for me, it was wild for me to actually sign the line. It wasn’t just like. ‘I’ll show up in a frock and I’ll do it.’
I’m really happy that it felt like a really good representation of different gay people…there’s only so much we can do when there’s 10 guys into the masseria. Some leave, some will come. We try to not only represent everyone, but we are grilling them on who they are and who they’re looking for, so we try and have a match in there for them. The idea is we want some success. I thought that the production company did an incredible job. They did it again with the second series with the girls. Have you watched that?
I’m about to, yes.
It’s a different world. They are wildly different. I had to walk away from something that I was so proud of and feel that it was done right, because I knew that everybody, when you’re the first, we are standing there in 2023 going, ‘why hasn’t anyone made this before?’ You know why? Because all eyes are going to be on you. Everyone’s going to be like, ‘is it really going to be that good? What’s it going to be like? Do I see me? Is it too camp or not camp enough?’ But we thought, if the integrity of why everyone wants to make it is good, the boys are trying to find people that are really looking for love, and really let things just evolve. Don’t poke them in there. Let them just be together and see what comes out.
And we did that with the girls as well, and the conversations are wild. You get something, it is unscripted, it’s real, it’s natural. It just happens. So every day I would run into set. I’m like, oh, what’s happened? They’re like, you can’t believe it. This conversation took place. So it wasn’t just about ‘there was this snogging or that.’ And I definitely got questioned by a lot of people how much physical action was happening there because there was this idea that, oh, well if you just put a whole bunch of gay guys in a masseria, it’s going to turn wild. There were some guys that suffer from anxiety. Some guys are wild and loud. They’re so different and from different parts of the UK, even though it’s a tiny, tiny place compared to America. If you come from Belfast, if you come from London, there is a big difference in that community that you grew up in and what was said to you, what you heard, how you were treated, that then kind of informs how you are moving forward in the world. They all learn from each other. I feel like the audience learns a lot. You can tell I’m very passionate about it.
I mean, I also learned a lot of lingo. ‘He’s a bit of me.’
Yeah?
I didn’t know that’s someone who’s your type. I thought they were saying “he’s a better me,” and I was like…don’t be so hard on yourself.
Ohhhh! [Laughs] I dunno how much was subtitled…
Oh, it was, I’m learning. Apparently it was a thing on Love Island too. I’m learning the lingo. During the reunion, I think I was a little shocked about some of the results–
Don’t give anything away…
I won’t give anything away, but I’m wondering what you think for Season 2. If there’s something that can be done about how they handle going out into the world after. It felt like that was quite the challenge for some of them.
I think what’s going to happen is going to happen, but as long as we look after them, that’s what I was saying before. We really had to be careful that we were choosing the right guys and that they were ready for everything. Are you ready for love? Are you ready for TV? Are you ready to sit down and watch this with your friends and family? Are you ready for social media to explode about what you just said? And when you’re the first, there’s no guidebook for that. They just knew they had a team of welfare around them, production, they would DM me. We’re all part of this incredible moment that happened and we will always all be part of that first TV show, so they’ll be recognized forever. People will come up to them and say stuff.
We are casting now. Anybody who’s followed the show and social media knows that they’ve had a wild time since the show went out. They’re invited to every event and Pride party and this and that. They’ve definitely kept some friendships within the group, so they always have somebody that has been through that experience as well, which is really important. But the boys broke off into smaller groups, whereas what we’ve seen with the girls is that they all still talk. It’s just very different how it’s all worked out. We cast it the same, in the fact that they’re all spread out. They’re all from different ends of the country for the girls and the guys…we just check in on them, make sure they do still have that support there.
Unfortunately I do have to wrap it up, but I just want to say thank you so much again for doing this. Obviously it means a tremendous amount to me. I just love you so much. We’ll have to have a more proper conversation at some point.
Absolutely. I feel like we’ve got to meet face to face, and whether it’s at Mighty Hoopla or if it’s in America or whatever, we will meet up somewhere, but thank you. Thanks for spreading the word about this show. You can tell how much my heart is in it and just want people to be able to see it. Who knows? One day, hopefully they will make an American version.
I mean, this is what happens. These shows hit streamers and then they just explode in popularity. I was genuinely so excited when I saw I was coming to Hulu. You don’t know what will pop off once it hits streaming. These shows get new life. I’m very excited for you.
Thank you, thank you. I hope to see you soon.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for chatting with me, Dannii.
Okay, see you.
See you!
I Kissed a Boy is now streaming on Hulu.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Photo credit: Hulu / Central Station Records
