San Francisco will forever be one of my favourite cities in the world. The community, the history, the diversity and the love – it’s a unique mix, and one I cannot imagine finding anywhere else. One person who has captured this perfectly through his iconic Tales of the City series is author Armistead Maupin.
Starting out as a column in the local paper, Armistead’s ‘Tales…’ eventually became nine books and four miniseries, the most recent of which launches on Netflix today – a glorious visit back to Barbary Lane and all its characters, as well as some new ones, but all of whom now feel like family.
Armistead and I discuss filming the new miniseries, the importance of diversity, including a Mariah Carey reference ‘to look hip’ and he offers me some much-needed relationship advice.

Hello, Armistead Maupin!
And hello, Loverboy! I was looking forward to saying that!

I love hearing you say it! I recently read that when you began writing ‘Tales of the City’, the newspaper had certain ideas on how many LGBT characters you could include. Is that right?
Yes, that’s absolutely true. At the beginning they weren’t expecting any, so they had to adjust as soon as Mary Ann met Michael in Safeway and the door was opened to all of them. The newspaper only wanted thirty percent of the characters to be LGBT. They even had a chart!

Speaking of Mary Ann & Michael. Not that I truly know you, but I felt I could always see you more clearly in the characters of Michael and Mrs Madrigal than Mary Ann, especially in the later books. How has your relationship with her developed?
People ask me on the road, ‘Why does Mary Ann become such a bitch?’ and I take umbrage for several reasons. One is that Mary Ann is still sort of me too, and the other is that I think of Laura as Mary Ann now. Laura and I have an amazingly close relationship thanks to ‘Tales…’, she even named her son after me, his middle name anyway. But Mary Ann is a complicated girl….or woman. But I love her so it always feels very personal when I speak about her.

I can imagine. Laura, Olympia and Paul have all returned to play their parts from the original series. This time they are joined by such a wonderfully diverse group of characters and, of course, actors…
Yes, it was very important to us and that was the way everyone was operating. We have an ‘All Queer’ writers’ room where we strive for queerdom and represent it and racial diversity as well. The story has always been about acceptance and growth in that direction. I’ve had some of that to do myself, having been a limited little Southern boy when I started writing the column. The series was very white. One effort to correct that early on was to create D’orothea Wilson.

One of my favourite characters!
You like her story?

The fashion model who faked her ethnicity! I love her!
It predicted Rachel Dolezal by about forty years!

Yes, I find that spooky! I love all the pop culture references you include in your novels. How do keep up to date? It must be exhausting!
I have the internet and as Mrs Madrigal says, ‘You don’t have to keep up, dear. You just have to keep open.’

Besides Mrs Madrigal, Michael and Mary Ann, who are some of your favourite characters?
I have loved watching Shawna grow. She was actually born in my work, grew up there and has become a very complicated pan-sexual woman. I like her very much and the fact that Ellen Page was playing her was a dream come true.

I’m enjoying her in the role so much. She’s fantastic.
How much of the show have you seen?

I’ve seen the first three episodes. But I have one hundred pages left of The Days of Anna Madrigal, so I am trying to hold off and avoid any spoilers!
That’s going to be interesting. It’s all going to feel like a fever dream when you’re done.

Yes, they are on their way to Burning Man. I cannot wait! We’ve mentioned gender, race and of course, sexuality, but I always wanted to thank you for including diversity in age. As someone approaching forty, I have this need for more stories to be older of older LGBT folk.
Right from the beginning I identified age with wisdom because I was a disciple of Christopher Isherwood. Maybe ‘disciple’ is the wrong word. It makes him sound pompous. He was a friend of mine and it was one of the blessings of my life that I had this seventy-five year old man to talk to, who had lived a full life as a gay man. I’m the age that he was then so this is now my responsibility towards younger people who want to know.

What has been your proudest moment from creating the books and the subsequent television show?
Just the degree to which everything I’ve done has contributed to the self-awareness of other people. The way they have taken my own stories and applied them to their own lives. The stories have inspired them to be themselves. You can’t ask for anything better than that.

I first started reading your books in 2012 when I first went to San Francisco. I have been back two further times and still love the city. But I have to say the last time I went, I left behind an ex that I knew was no good for me, as much as it hurt me, I needed to get over him….and possibly San Francisco. Do you have any advice on how to do that?
You don’t need to get over San Francisco, you can visit it anytime. You just don’t need to marry it!

That’s sounds like the perfect advice. Thank you. How has your relationship with San Francisco changed over the years?
I still love it. I can still wander around it in my mind, I just can’t put the people in it that I want to have there. It pales in comparison to my memories of the Seventies and Eighties. My highlight of San Francisco? It was an evening at the Castro theatre that was a fundraiser to fight Anita Bryant. You are probably too young to know who she was, aren’t you?

Um….
She was the Mary Whitehouse of San Francisco.

Now her I do know.
Well, like so many people of my generation, we were all coming out to fight her, and I actually read Michael’s letter to his mother for the first time, in the Castro theatre, to 1500 queers. During it, many of them were weeping and it was a very emotional evening. I treasure the memory. The Castro theatre itself is sort of the living room of the city as far as I’m concerned. So many things have happened there that were important to me. Not least of which were movies!

I took my Mum to see To Wong Foo at the Castro theatre and Julie Newmar was in attendance. I have fond memories of that place too. Are you still based in San Francisco?
No, I’ve just moved to London. It’s great. It feels like vacation right now. It will start feeling serious pretty soon I guess.

Well, I have a confession to make. I actually heard that you’ve become a fan of a bar I used to work in – Comptons of Soho. Are there any characters that might inspire your next novel?
I wouldn’t tell you if there were! Haha…but to answer that question in a non-frivolous way, part of what is exciting about London is this endless parade of characters. Humanity itself in every possible configuration. It’s far more racially diverse than San Francisco for instance. Especially now, because only millionaires live in San Francisco now.

Now the final question, one we ask everyone. Loverboy is named after the infamous Mariah Carey song. I wanted to know your favourite Mariah Carey song.
I can barely tell you who she is! I did reference her in a book once but that was just to try and look hip!

Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City is available on Netflix 7^th June.
Armistead will also be touring the UK later this year. Find out more about An Evening with Armistead Maupin here.