Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for the Hulu series, Welcome to Chippendales.

Murder, sex and intrigue are the pillars of the Hulu series Welcome to Chippendales that chronicles the shady events lurking behind the scenes of the early days of the world-renowned male strip show. The series captivates with its telling of the sordid history, but not everything shown on the screen is as true-crime as one might think. Here's everything Welcome to Chippendales gets right, leaves out and fabricates within its eight-episode run.

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The Unvarnished Truths Within the Series

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For a number of reasons, it is nearly impossible for any historical television series to fully recreate the events of its tale exactly. Television producers must deal with the unreliable memories of witnesses and secrets lost in time of those no longer living. There is also the impossible task of condensing a sprawling history into a limited number of episodes with completed character arcs. When all is shot, edited and released, the final cut can often be considered more of a revisionist history than true to fact. While Welcome to Chippendales certainly fits this bill, many of the central characters and events are indeed verifiable.

The Characterization of Steve Banerjee and Nick De Noia

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The central figures of the series, Somen (Steve) Banerjee and Nick De Noia, played by Kumail Nanjiani and Murray Bartlett respectively, are as real life as the show can possibly get them. While neither are still living, testimonies from those that ran within the same circles along with myriad recordings of them from the time period show that one of most compelling aspects of Welcome to Chippendales is its fealty to the development of these two characters.

Banerjee was indeed an Indian immigrant who worked his way from gas station manager to bombastic club owner. He was shy in front of a camera, skulked in the shadows of his own club, and avoided the limelight while resenting those who reveled in the stardom associated with the Chippendales name. Behind closed doors he was a cutthroat businessman who didn't mind getting his hands dirty and skirting the law in order to accumulate wealth and challenge his rivals. In operating Chippendales, Banerjee didn't like to have a chain of command. Every employee of the organization reported to him directly as a means for him to maintain control of each aspect. Former dancers and associates of the brand recall that no one ever knew all the goings-on of the company except for Banerjee himself. As rival dance troupes, copycat merchandise and internal conflicts began to arise, Banerjee's appetite for crime grew with arson, murder, and illegal business practices overwhelming the brand.

De Noia, as the show depicts, was an energetic, larger than life choreographer and producer. Before joining the Chippendales staff, he did win Emmys for the short-lived children's television show, Unicorn Tales, while residing in New York, and had just traveled to Los Angeles to show run when his life crossed paths with Banerjee. His arrogance and flamboyance were never hidden, and as his ideas propelled Chippendales onto the global stage with the opening of the New York club and a global tour, he also began receiving recognition as the creative force behind Chippendales. This, along with the fateful napkin lunch, in which Steve unwittingly signed away rights to the most lucrative asset in his empire, would serve as a catalyst to years of hostility between the two moguls.

The Corroding Decadence of Chippendales

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As the series depicts, before Nick De Noia entered the scene, Chippendales was something of a raunchy comedy show, in which average men fumbled around and haphazardly stripped for women. Even still, it was taking off and making a name for itself. Banerjee did indeed call local churches and television stations in order to maximize on free advertising, and the club was finally making money after a series of failed strategies. With De Noia's restructure of the show, focus on choreography and artful storytelling, it began to soar to new heights. However, sex remained at its core, with dancers engaging in orgies with the patrons in the back. Welcome to Chippendales also seems to accurately portray just how central drugs were in the nightlife scene that enveloped its characters.

The live show had a single Black dancer named Hodari Sababu, embodied by the character Otis (Quentin Plair), who struggled constantly with discriminatory practices. He was left out of the prolific calendar and treated with degrading exoticism by both fans and the show itself. He would eventually try to create an all-Black calendar titled Black Gold, which served as a key factor in his falling out with Banerjee.

The Perfect Man

The crowned jewel of Nick De Noia's choreography with The Chippendales is true to form in Welcome to Chippendales. The act was known as "The Perfect Man," not "Hunkenstein" as it is on the show, but it did center around a scientist attempting to create the perfect man with the best features of other men, and would be the final act of almost any Chippendales performance whether in Los Angeles, New York, or on tour.

Some Half-Truth Acknowledgments

There are also a series of minor plot points that come from true events. Many celebrities frequented both Chippendales in New York and the flagship club in Los Angeles, including Calvin Klein and Brooke Shields, who were shown on the Hulu series. There was indeed a lawsuit regarding discriminatory membership cards that only non-white patrons had to purchase. The calendar misprint in which hundreds of calendars with 31-day months had to be scrapped was a million dollar loss for the club. And, Banerjee did declare bankruptcy closer to the end of his control over the Chippendales empire. But the show tends to leave out many of the nuances of this twisted history.

The Idea for a Male Strip Show

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In the first episode of Welcome to Chippendales, Banerjee clandestinely meets Paul Snider and his playmate girlfriend Dorothy Stratten (Dan Stevens and Nicola Peltz). After hiring Snider as his club promoter, they try a series of failed ideas until one night Banerjee gets the idea for a male strip show after the glitzy couple take him to see gogo dancers at a gay club. This really couldn't be further from the truth. The show makes it seem like the idea was purely Banerjee's which sets up a series-long stake for Nanjiani's character in defending that the idea was his and not De Noia's. But, in fact, Paul Snider had the idea when attending a gay strip event in Canada before arriving in Los Angeles. He then directly approached Steve Banerjee with the idea upon first meeting. What is true is the murder/suicide of Snider and Stratten following the ruthless dissolution of his contract with Banerjee.

Prostitution at the Club

Mostly glossed over by the Hulu show, the male dancers and hosts of the Chippendales club operated a nefarious prostitution ring. They would charge over $1,000 for sex, which ended in at least one altercation with police, a gun being pulled on a dancer by an aggressive female customer, and a new meaning to the orgy dressing room in the back. What looked like mindless debauchery in the television version, was actually these dancers' primary income and led to countless altercations with neighbors. People living near the venue would recount later on the podcast Welcome to Your Fantasy, which faithfully chronicles the events of the Chippendales saga, that there were often used condoms and random people having sex on their front lawns.

Hefner and Banerjee

In the early days of Chippendales, before the death of Paul Snider and Dorothy Stratten, Hugh Hefner actually was a patron of the club. On many an occasion, Banerjee got to mingle with his longtime idol. Hefner even was allowed to skirt the ladies-only rule, as the singular man allowed to visit during the show. Through Stratten, Hefner legitimately signed off on the Chippendales men being allowed to wear the playmate collars and cuffs as part of their act.

Dreams of Disneyland

Along with Hugh Hefner, Walt Disney was another major idol of Steve Banerjee's. The series decides not to mess with the powerful mouse, but Banerjee had major goals of incorporating Chippendales right into the Disneyland Theme Park. At that time, Disneyland had a ride called the carousel of progress, in which the rider would experience the evolution of human technology while riding in a circle. Banerjee wanted his own carousel, one that displayed the evolution of man, from Caveman to present, with scantly clad Chippendales dancers playing roles like Neanderthals, gladiators and football players. This idea never took off, especially because Banerjee wanted it to happen within the Disney theme park, but Steve would often say that if Walt was alive he would've chomped at the bit.

Women's Lib

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Some of the most compelling nuances in Steve Banerjee's marketing strategy was to latch onto the women's liberation movement. While those close to Banerjee would tell later that he didn't care for the movement and just saw it as a way to make more money and advertise further, the idea of a strip club for women was bigger than even he bargained for. The club would even become the venue for events hosted by women's liberation advocate, Gloria Allred, the high profile attorney on many cases such as the landmark Roe v. Wade case with the U.S. Supreme Court.

A Tale of Two Arsons

During Banerjee's run, rival male dance shows began popping up not only all across the U.S. and abroad, but even right there in Los Angeles. Steve actually attempted two acts of arson, neither of which were successful. The two clubs he tried to have burned down were Moody's Disco and The Red Onion, not the Electric Tomato. This was only the beginning of Banerjee's transformation from immigrant success story to Scarface-esque crime boss. While the series shows one arson and the hit on Nick De Noia, Steve Banerjee was actually frequently turning to criminals for hire for a number of conflicts.

Nuances of the Membership Card Class Action Lawsuit

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While the lawsuit surrounding Banerjee trying to keep non-white patrons from entering his club was incorporated into Welcome to Chippendales, aspects of the events surrounding the trial were not as clearly portrayed. As reported by the Los Angeles Times in 1985, the case was filed by a 26-year-old Black law student named Don Gibson who discovered that some of his white friends in law school were allowed to enter while he was told he had to buy a membership card. They actually organized their own sting operation to catch Chippendales bouncers in the act. Once they had undeniable evidence they went to several agencies to file against Chippendales and have them shut down. This is where things began to get much scarier for the soon-to-be law graduate. A rental car company tracked him down and gave him a journal that had been left in one of their rented cars with all of his movements over the course of a 10-day period tracked. Then, later, Hodari Sababu, the only Black dancer at Chippendales came and warned him that Banerjee had taken a hit out on him. Eventually, the case was settled with Banerjee paying $10,000 to Gibson, $85,000 to the other plaintiffs and agreeing to change practices and have at least a fourth of the staff of Chippendales be non-white.

Other Murder Attempts

A series of other hired killers feature in the tale of Chippendales. These attempted murders took place against other people who crossed paths with Steve Banerjee, from former dancers who left the company to join rival dance troops to people that stood in Banerjee's way. One former employee said that if Steve had his way, there would have been at least 30 murders by the time he landed in jail. For instance, in the podcast Welcome to Your Fantasy, one former model, Dan Peterson, describes being on the beach taking photographs for a 1984 calendar when he and the photographer were met with bullets raining down on them. They both made it out alive.

Bankruptcy Pressure on the Series is an Exaggeration

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In the television series, it appears as though Banerjee's only option after the calendar misprint and lawsuit is to file bankruptcy; however, in real life it was a bit more shady than that. The overall $95,000 damages paid to the victims of the discrimination lawsuit and the million dollar mess up with the calendars was small compared to the nearly one billion dollar empire he had amassed. His lawyer at the time would later confirm that, in fact, Banerjee declared bankruptcy simply as a way to avoid future lawsuits and get out of paying some of his debts despite having the money to cover them. For instance, when Banerjee ran his own tour of Chippendales dancers violating the napkin contract, Nick De Noia filed a lawsuit against him. But since bankruptcy had been declared, technically the bankruptcy courts controlled Steve's money; he became untouchable.

In its penultimate episode, Welcome to Chippendales shows Steve greedily packing his club past its occupancy when he finds himself in a tight corner, then having to deal with the police and fire department. However, in the true history, Chippendales was frequently at least 100-200 heads over its 150-person occupancy. Steve himself would notify the police and orchestrate raids in at least two instances as a sure-fire way to be on primetime news the next day.

US Male

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Nick De Noia actually did begin to work on his idea to create a rival show called US Male and with the tagline, "We deliver..." He was even casting models for the US Male calendar by the time of his murder. While he was also still working at the New York office for Chippendales he had largely abandoned his role with the company. Dancers at the New York club and of the live tour, say now that Nick would randomly visit less than once a month just to check in on his investment. If Banerjee had gotten word of Nick's activities it could have truly been the motive behind the hired hitman.

What the Series Completely Invented...

There are just a few plot points that come completely out of left field. These were added to heighten the character development, or in place of information the show creators simply had no access to.

Nick's Love Triangle with Denise and Bradford

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Nick De Noia's story on the Hulu series is marked by a conflicting love triangle between the characters of Denise and Bradford. However, in real life, neither existed exactly as the show made them out to be. Bradford (Andrew Rannells) is a complete fabrication for the series in order to add conflict with Nick's connection to Denise. The New York club was in fact funded by a queer older couple that Nick approached with the idea. Denise, played by Juliette Lewis, on the other hand is based on a woman named Candance Mayeron. The similarities between Mayeron and Lewis' performance are commendable, but the love triangle aspect seems to be misplaced and added for some dramatic effect.

Tearaway Pants

While on the subject of Denise/Candace, as a short sidenote, the show credits her with the creation of tearaway pants. However the origin appears to have been in the NBA with sports apparel. Although, Chippendales is certainly responsible for a massive shift in the public conscience surrounding tearaway clothing.

Irene's Endearing Presence

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One of the show's most endearing characters is Steve Banerjee's wife, Irene, played by Annaleigh Ashford. The characterization by Ashford is so rich with intricacy, that you'd think she spent months learning about Mrs. Banerjee and mastering all of her mannerisms. However, very little is actually known about the real Irene. It is thought that she was indeed an accountant, but beyond that her involvement in Chippendales as a business and her relationship with Steve are very much up for interpretation. What is known is after Steve's suicide, Irene gained full control of Chippendales, which she sold for $2.5 million before her death from breast cancer in 2001. With such a void to fill, Annaleigh Ashford shines in the realist possible way.

The Adonis Hit

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After police gave up attempting to solve De Noia's murder, Steve would have actually gotten away with it. That is, until Banerjee hired another hitman for the next job on his seemingly endless hit list. Chippendales was going global with a tour in Europe, which had its own Chippendales-inspired show called Adonis which had hired a former Chippendales dancer named Read Scott. Steve had hired a hitman to travel to the UK and kill several of the dancers working with Adonis. In the television series this task fell to Steve's loyal assistant Ray Colon, played by Robin de Jesús, who then gets caught and used to entrap Steve in Switzerland. The real life story is a bit more unusual involving a smalltime hitman named Errol Lynn Bressler, also known as "Strawberry," who planned on using a brick and cyanide syringes to kill two Adonis dancers. At the last minute, Strawberry, who had chickened out and gone to the DEA, was detained by the FBI. The FBI caught up with Ray, who had hired Bressler. He pleads not guilty after they find enough cyanide in his house to murder over 200 people. Eventually, a deal was struck in which Ray Colon would turn on his own boss and get Banerjee to confess, which indeed took place in a hotel room in Switzerland.

Fact vs. Fiction, Some Final Thoughts

While the new Hulu series might stray a little too far from the real events to be legitimately called true-crime, what the series gets right is its construction of fascinating, complex characters, which result in a version of the story entirely worth watching.