“Kaboom” was initially envisioned as a TV show before it became a feature film. Why did you feel it was time to take another crack at a series?

I’ve been wanting to do a TV show like this for at least 20 years. I’m really excited about the idea of TV because you can tell this longer story, and you develop a different relationship with TV than you do with a movie. Because it comes into your house every week, these people become very much like your friends. My friends and I talk about “Sex and the City” like they’re friends of ours.

“Now Apocalypse” reminded me of that doomsday paranoia you were tapping into back in 2010 with “Kaboom.” It felt even more relevant today. Do you feel the world has become more like a Gregg Araki movie in the past nine years?

When Karley and I first wrote [“Now Apocalypse”], we started during the twilight years of the Obama administration. That’s why the show has that almost utopian quality of free love — these kids having sex and figuring themselves out. Then 2016 happened. There’s always been that darker, Lynchian aspect of the show, but that became more pronounced. The specific example I give is Episode 1, when Ulie and Gabriel are in front of the coffee shop after their date and they’re kissing good night, then the fag bashers drive by. That was actually added after 2016 because it was that feeling of the world being a little more dangerous than it used to be.