Meet the Man Behind Stripped Down: A Q&A with Creator Matt Cullen
Published on: Mar 23, 2026
Written by: Joey Hodgson
Matt Cullen has spent four years traveling the world with a single backpack and a camera, building a YouTube channel around one simple idea: give people a safe space to tell the truth. That instinct brought him to Johnson’s, a gay strip club in Florida, and the cast of six who would become the heart of OUTtv’s bold new docuseries, Stripped Down.
The show follows six gay strippers living under one roof with cameras rolling — but if you’re expecting pure spectacle, think again. Matt’s fingerprints are all over this one, and his whole thing is vulnerability. We sat down with him to talk about how Stripped Down came to life, what it took to earn his cast’s trust, and the moment he knew he had something real.
Your YouTube channel is where this whole idea started. How did Stripped Down come to be?
Matt Cullen: I’ve been doing my YouTube channel for about four years at this point. Every week I’m meeting these different people from these different places of the world, living these very interesting dynamic lives. And I came across Crush organically and interviewed him and the episode did so well and moved so many people. As I was sitting thinking about how I can take the next step in my career, or bring a show to life, I just thought of Crush. He’s just this dynamic guy and the world that he works in was so dynamic. A gay strip club in Florida is kind of fascinating in itself — and that was really where the idea started from.
Six gay strippers, one house, cameras rolling. How did you get them to actually trust you enough to be that vulnerable on camera?
Matt: I think that’s something I’ve kind of acquired throughout my years on YouTube — how to make people feel comfortable enough to open up to me. I feel like that’s one of my gifts. When I have a conversation with someone, they feel safe enough that I’m not going to edit their story into some certain type of way that’s not accurate to them. Crush and I already had such a dynamic and a trust between the two of us. And I think the rest of the cast watched some of my series on YouTube and realized what my tone is, what my artistry is with how I put my stuff together. My YouTube channel — I think that was the proof of concept that made people trust me.
Was there a moment during filming where you thought: okay, this is it — this is exactly what I wanted the show to be?
Matt: I think surprisingly it was a conversation between Crush and Damien at the end of episode two, where Damien opens up about his struggles with sobriety. He had recently relapsed and was newly sober again. They had this conversation in the kitchen where they just talked for ten minutes or so. It felt so real. Almost like there were no cameras there at all. Almost like I was watching a TV show already made. I know that people want to watch to see them stripping and stuff, and we’re going to get all of that too. But to see these scenes of these honest vulnerabilities — what people are actually going through — that to me is where the power of the show lives.
Did anything not make the final cut that you wish people could see?
Matt: We had a week to shoot the entire thing, and so almost everything we shot made it into the series because we needed to fill six episodes. We just kept it running. There were scenes we didn’t intend to have that came in because we thought they were really great. But no — there were no scenes cut that I wish had made it in, honestly.
If there's a season two, do you follow this same cast or explore somewhere new?
Matt: The magic is really in the cast. These six guys — I have so much love for them and I feel like they all brought such different energy. They made the cast feel so dynamic. There wasn’t one type of personality. They were all so different and they all complemented each other so well. I can’t imagine not doing it with these six guys in particular.
You've always been a one-man operation on YouTube. How does making something for OUTtv feel different?
Matt: Very different and very the same at the same time. Very different because I shoot everything by myself. I have one backpack, and I stuff my cameras in there and I travel the world interviewing people and I edit it all by myself — it’s just a one-man situation. To be able to do Stripped Down with such a team was a blessing. I could just focus on directing, or focus on producing, and not be so focused on the technical aspects. But the storytelling of it — how I like to shape my stories, how I like to enter a world, how I like to flip it on its head — it’s the same kind of thing, just told in a much bigger format.