Taxicab Confessions was initially more about heart than salaciousness

For a generation of teens, HBO’s Taxicab Confessions was a notoriously frustrating watch. Everything around the promotion of the show seemed to promise an abundance of scandalous sexual content, but inevitably you’d find yourself up well past your bedtime watching an alcoholic father confess his greatest regrets in the back of a New York City cab. The content was revealing, just not in the way you’d hoped. But, according to a recent oral history of the show featured in MEL, the initial idea behind Taxicab Confessions was more rooted in these rare, heartfelt moments than the more tawdry encounters the show would become synonymous with in later seasons.

“In the early 1990s, it seemed like everybody needed to get something off their chest due to a combination of the decline of religion and isolation, especially in places like New York,” co-creator Harry Ganz tells MEL, adding that, although they were being driven around by complete strangers, people seemed to see the inside of a cab as a safe space to unload their worries. The show also made a special point of shooting late at night in areas that were considered more seedy, not just because it would lead to the occasional drunk or drug addict but because they wanted to give a voice to the dispossessed and often unseen citizens of New York.

“The emotional rides were the ones that sunk in deep with me because it was humankind on display. Like a person on the way to the hospital or on their way to pick someone up from jail,” says production assistant Felicia Caplan.