Hulu's Welcome to Chippendales story likens itself to "Scarface or Goodfellas"
Kumail Nanjiani leads the miniseries alongside Murray Bartlett, Annaleigh Ashford, and Juliette Lewis
Hulu’s forthcoming miniseries Welcome To Chippendales promises scandal, sexy male dancers, and even a little bit (or a lot) of murder. Kumail Nanjiani stars in the series as the nerdy, reserved immigrant Somen “Steve” Banerjee, who founded the famed exotic dance club in the ‘80s.
“This is by far the most challenging job I’ve ever done, in terms of the length of the shoot, the content of the scenes, and emotional difficulty of those scenes,” says Nanjiani in a new interview with Vanity Fair. “It’s one of those things where I just jumped in, and trusted that it’d reveal itself as it goes—and it did.”
The exclusive first-look images shared by Vanity Fair present Nanjiani as the uptight Banerjee, and flashes the ensemble cast comprised of Annaleigh Ashford, Juliette Lewis, Nicola Peltz Beckham, Dan Stevens, Philip Shahbaz, and Murray Bartlett (The White Lotus), who plays the Emmy-winning choreographer Nick De Noia.
The series is written by Rob Siegel, who’s known for his previous work on projects such as The Wrestler, The Founder, and most recently, Hulu’s Pam & Tommy starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan. What started as a feature film project for Siegel back in the early 2000s would spend decades gathering dust, until Hulu picked up the salacious project for the limited series treatment.