Visible: Out on Television (2020) s01e05 Episode Script

1
This is the CBS Evening News
with Walter Cronkite.
The days of the anchorman
who sits there on television
and who is the voice of God,
that's over.
Especially in this information
this technology age.
So, what makes people think that
an anchorperson should sit on television
and pretend not to have a life
or personality or a perspective?
What makes me a better vessel
to deliver you the news
is that I am, in many ways, like you.
I figured if I'm going to be a journalist
and I'm going to ask people
to tell me the truth
and I'm gonna try to expose truth,
then I need to be truthful about who I am.
It's great to live in an age
where we can cover
much more
than anybody has ever been able to cover.
But also you can be yourself.
While he has long felt
that journalists had the right
to keep their private lives private,
Cooper writes,
"The fact is, I'm gay,
always have been, always will be,
and I couldn't be any more happy,
comfortable with myself, and proud."
I just didn't want people thinking
there was something I was ashamed about
or I wasn't happy about.
And I didn't want
some kid somewhere thinking,
"That's the guy who I think he's gay,
but he's not happy about it
and he's hiding it."
And it couldn't be farther from the truth.
He is now the most visible gay journalist
on American television.
And there's also a sense
that it's a signpost.
It's a sense that
we're advancing in our acceptance
of homosexuality and gay people.
Something about being on television
makes people see you
as part of the country,
as part of our culture,
as part of who we are as a nation.
We are a country
that has a lesbian with short hair,
who's kinda mannish-looking,
on at 9:00 p.m. on MSNBC every night.
For someone who disrupted the news,
knowing that Rachel Maddow
and Anderson Cooper
are now presenting the news,
and they're trusted people
to be giving the news
is amazing to me.
In my struggle to come out publicly,
I realized
that at some point you need to say,
"No. Hell no. Right now is the time."
I did it, and I never looked back.
And I'm so glad I did it.
I had a childhood
where I just needed to escape a lot.
And that's where
Jim Henson came into my life.
From The Muppet Show to Sesame Street.
- Smile, Bert.
- Sesame Street on television, huh?
I think being able to escape
into that television was very helpful.
Oh, my God. I was raised by TV.
I don't mean that as a shady thing
to my parents,
'cause they were very loving
and very present,
but I was very much a TV kid.
I was obsessed.
The TV was always on.
And I always say I had two parents,
my mom and the TV.
Saturday morning cartoons,
my brother and I, that was our jam.
I remember Bugs Bunny
or Elmer Fudd speaking with a lisp
or seeming to act in a effeminate way.
Did I hurt you with my naughty gun?
Any character that was on television
that was written as an outsider,
like Doug, I definitely identified with.
They're laughing at me.
I don't think I could put words
to any of that stuff at the time.
But there was something sort of queer
about that show.
I remember watching Bert and Ernie.
And it was just two guys
that lived together
and nobody thought it was weird.
And It was something
that made me feel okay,
that I could be who I was
or I could live with who I wanted to.
And then later I would watch Arthur.
In 2005, an episode of the Arthur
spin-off, Postcards from Buster,
was pulled from airing
on most PBS stations
after the Bush administration
criticized its inclusion
of a family with lesbian moms.
Almost 15 years after the ban,
PBS aired an episode of Arthur in 2019
in which gay teacher, Mr. Ratburn,
marries his boyfriend.
As two gay parents in our household,
95% of the kids' books and kid shows
really don't have
any kind of representation of our family.
Even if it's a dad bear and a mom bear,
it's not two dad bears
or two dad monsters.
And so, that's an area
where there could be real progress.
And I say that more as a father now
than as a storyteller.
Denise.
Just point me in the direction
of that school, and I am out of here.
Let's go.
Working in the industry
since I was three years old,
it provided a glass box for me.
So I was always on display.
Who helps you with your lines?
My daddy keeps going over them.
Then I learn 'em.
You learn 'em?
And how long does it usually take you
to learn 'em?
About one time, about two times,
about three times,
about four times, about five times.
I was always molded
to be brandable in the family genre,
which I have no problem with.
To this day, I love family genre.
But it also
Living in a glass box
might prevent you from growing out of it.
For a while,
I didn't tell anybody I was gay.
But in my teenage years,
I made sure that I surrounded myself
with friends I trusted
to where I could be myself
when the camera was off.
And then when the camera turned on,
I turned right into that person
that was necessary to continue the brand.
I had my own show
on Disney Channel at 15 years old.
Yep, that's me.
That's So Raven was one of the shows
that I watched religiously.
When I was first thinking
about name changes,
I wanted to be Raven.
She was, you know, loud and sassy.
I really just wanted to be her.
Please stop looking at me.
Why can't I just blend in?
Since I was 12, I always thought,
"How in the world am I gonna do this?
Because I can't hide who I am forever,
but I don't wanna lose my career."
I'm gay.
When there's change,
the first person
always goes through the worst.
Ellen went through hell.
And I didn't want that reaction.
Right here in Washington,
the nation's capital, the decision is in.
The United States Supreme Court
gives supporters
of same-sex marriage a huge win.
One day I was chilling with my girlfriend.
I got the news.
And I was just like,
"Oh, my God. It's possible."
I was so happy and so in love.
So, I went on Twitter.
And some things you do subconsciously.
At that moment Raven-Symoné the brand
didn't matter anymore.
I press send and I turn my phone off.
Because Raven-Symoné kicked in and said,
"Holy shit, what happened?
What did I do? No!"
The outside world's reaction
starts coming to me
through somebody from my camp.
"Why did you tweet that?
Uninstall your Twitter."
When you're in the industry, and you have
people that support you in your work,
they're supporting
the person that you show them.
They really don't know who you are.
There is a statistic of
child stars having problems.
And every day I was warned,
reminded
and pushed positively
so that I don't become that.
One of the ways I dealt with that
was to hide behind a couple of masks.
And so,
having all of these layers penetrated,
so that who I am was now being judged,
sent me through
an emotional black hole spiral.
Because judgments were venomous.
Was that your way of coming out,
of saying you're gay?
Oprah's company asked me
to do the Where Are They Now?
And they would like
to talk about me coming out.
Everyone told me not to, in my camp.
And I remember this sentence,
"You're gonna kill your grandma."
I remember answering,
"If I don't do it, I'm gonna die."
I'm in an amazing, happy relationship
with my partner, a woman.
And I am proud
to be who I am and what I am.
I just commend her.
That's all I can do, is commend her
on being able to speak out about her truth
and still persevere in the business.
Check you later, bro.
All right, sis.
Playing Andre's sister on Black-ish
as a lesbian
and having a lesbian wedding
was so empowering.
Because now that I'm out,
I can play anything I want to.
I can't believe
this is happening right now.
Listen, Rhonda is not gay, fool.
She's just waiting for God to make a man
she's attracted to. That's all, kids.
Black-ish really touches on
what happens within the black community
where we have to have more acceptance.
That is so beautiful.
If you guys had kissed,
I would have only barely turned away.
Thanks, Mrs. Johnson.
No more "Mrs. Johnson."
You call me "Good Mama Ru-Ru."
It's a wonderful dive
into the truth of the black family.
I think it says something
about our industry
that the only stories
that they told for so long
were stories of gay white people.
And usually gay white men.
Empire, very much like Noah's Arc,
was one of the very first
opportunities we had
to see an African American family
deal with coming out
and how parents accepted
or didn't accept the character, Jamal.
The show Empire, huge.
Major network, prime time.
And we get a black gay character.
One of the leading characters.
You see him as a kid.
And he's walking around, dressing up.
He has his mom's high heel shoes on.
And it's Lee Daniels' actual story.
You out of your damn mind?
Walking in here
looking like a little bitch.
- Get over here.
- Lucious, no!
Lucious! Lucious!
It was just so powerful to see that.
For a father
to actually throw his kid in the trash.
That's how much homophobia
there is in the community.
To see black people
having that conversation in public
I love Empire for that. I really do.
The Wire was groundbreaking.
One of the first complicated
gay black characters was Omar
who was this gangster thug, ruthless.
And we just
had never seen anything like it.
- Omar!
- Omar's coming, yo!
- Omar's coming.
- Omar's coming, yo!
Did you hear what I said?
The character of Omar Little,
a gay vigilante,
became an unlikely hero
on HBO's gritty, Baltimore-based drama,
The Wire.
Y'all need to open this door, man,
'fore I huff and puff.
To have something as challenging
and complicated and complex,
not all good but not all bad.
Completely unexpected.
It was pretty badass, The Wire.
When I was a kid in Mississippi
in the late '70s and '80s,
I remember how special it was
to see anything gay
on television at the time,
which was very, very rare.
So, to have seen black gay at that time
probably would have blown my mind.
I definitely didn't see any representation
of Asian representation,
any LGBT representation.
LGBT Asian American representation,
it didn't exist really.
The only Asians I saw, really,
were either
put in a historical context, like Kung Fu.
I do think
that there's a certain amount of racism,
especially in gay men,
that we are taught
to like the Abercrombie & Fitch models,
who are basically white guys.
Conrad Ricamora
plays a brilliant hacker living with HIV
on ABC's How to Get Away with Murder.
A show that also features Viola Davis
as its pansexual protagonist.
The show is produced
by Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes.
Shonda hasn't made our story line
solely about being gay,
or being Asian in my case.
We just are allowed to exist.
Instead of being the token character,
we're allowed to have integral parts
of the plot be a part of our existence.
Imagine being a young Asian person
watching Star Trek in the 1960s
and seeing George Takei
in all of his greatness and grandness
on that show
and feeling and understanding
that Asian people
would be a part of this hopeful,
idealistic, utopian future.
Why don't you come
down to the gym with me?
Back then showing any aspects
of myself as gay
was something
that I strenuously avoided.
However, it was a silent understanding
that my Star Trek colleagues had
of who I was.
Fast-forward 50 years later,
and we get to realize
one of Gene Roddenberry's
initial wishes for the show,
which was to include
gay characters in that vision.
And what better way to convey
the lives of LGBT people of color
than to tell their stories?
In the early 2000s,
as competition shows like Survivor
took over the airwaves,
a new show called American Idol
premiered
and quickly became
a ratings phenomenon.
By 2009, the show had placed first
in the annual Nielsen ratings
for seven years in a row.
Early on, on Idol, it was being affirmed
that the music industry expected
certain things out of their artists.
Sort of a cookie cutter formula,
if you will.
Maybe you're a soul singer.
Maybe you're country.
Carrie Underwood!
And I think that was why
it took me so long to decide
that I wanted to audition for the show.
'Cause I looked at the show and I thought,
"Well, there's no place
for someone like me. I'm too weird.
I'm probably too gay."
I wanted to give you my opinion
for what it's worth.
I think you are theatrical.
Is he a good singer though?
- Yeah, but
- Is he a good singer?
Every week
that I was chosen to stay, I thought,
"I can't believe this is happening."
He was an astounding,
talented motherfucker
who was different.
And I think the finesse of just him
rattled people.
So every week I stayed on the show
was further confirmation
that "Okay, I'm being myself,
and it's working."
Adam, I think you gotta learn how to
express yourself a bit more.
And it was also my first time being
a celebrity, and it happened so fast.
I was surprised that I got to the final.
I couldn't believe it.
I'm like, "Really?
I'm in the final of American Idol. Me?"
The guy that I was up against was
sort of all-American, had a great voice.
He had a wife. He was from the South.
I mean, he fit the profile to what
American Idol always tends to vote for.
Kris Allen!
So, then I finished American Idol
as the runner-up.
I get a record deal.
And I got the closing slot of the AMAs,
which was crazy.
I'm seeing people like
Rihanna and Lady Gaga
do these incredible performances.
And I'm in the front row, and
I'm just starting to get really nervous
because I've never done anything like this
with people that I look up to
in the music world that I just got into,
that I, like, just popped into
out of nowhere.
Making his debut performance:
Adam Lambert.
I open the performance
with two boys on leashes,
and I thought that was cool.
And one of the boys comes up to me
and because I was
in the heat of the moment,
sort of nervous
after watching Rihanna and Lady Gaga
do these insane, dark, kinda edgy,
sexual performances,
I was in the moment,
and I just grabbed the guy,
and I brought him close
to my crotch for a little grind.
I was like, "Yeah, I'm sexy."
And I get up to the top of the platform
for the end of the song.
And I look at my bass player,
and I grabbed him, and I kissed him.
So the performance ends,
and I get ushered to
the first post-performance interview.
Okay, first of all
you know not everybody
all around the country can take that?
I realized in that moment,
"Oh, this is gonna be some drama."
So I get on a plane to New York
because the next morning I was supposed to
be on Good Morning America
to perform the song.
And I get a call after landing
that I've been removed from
Good Morning America.
So quickly my team shuffles around
and puts me on a different morning show
on a different network.
And they said, "The only way
we're gonna put you on there
is we have to have a sit-down interview
about the performance."
Now that you have had time to
think about the children, your child fans,
do you feel
that you need to apologize to them?
We've seen lots of sexualized performances
throughout the last 20 years
on television,
on award shows, wearing assless chaps,
doing a sexual dance,
making out or grabbing.
What I was trying to say was,
"How is me doing one of these things
different than the other?"
And to me I was like,
"I'm being targeted because I'm gay."
Do you think it's because you're male,
or do you think it's because you're gay?
Both. I think it's a double whammy.
And I remember saying,
"Look, a couple of years ago,
I saw Madonna kiss Britney Spears
and Christina Aguilera on the VMAs."
And they show a clip
of Madonna and Britney lip-locked.
But when they cut to my picture,
it's blurred out.
Because what? 'Cause it's indecent?
Or obscene?
And then they went to commercial,
and I remember looking at the reporter,
and I went,
"You just proved my point."
A lot of people pulled back
in the industry
'cause they thought
this isn't a done deal.
This isn't a sure thing.
Now there's too much risk involved.
And so I walked away from that just being
like, "Wow, this is where we're at."
I didn't realize,
but this is where we're at.
I take it we have a lot of sweater trades
to look forward to this season.
Are you okay?
Yeah, fine.
I didn't have many friends in high school.
The lunch ladies and I were very close.
That's who I used to eat lunch with.
When I was growing up, being gay
was the worst thing you could possibly be.
And I almost don't think the insults
were really meant to be homophobic.
I think it was just the easiest way
you could insult someone.
Why don't you ask Kurt? He seems to be
the only one who can score on this team.
So we're taking coaching advice
from Lance Bass now?
I didn't wanna play him
like other gay characters
that I had seen on television,
who were usually over the top and loud.
I wanted to make him more like the kids
that were in my high school
who were also gay.
They were subdued
and never wanted to reveal too much.
Hello, I'm Kurt Hummel,
and I'll be singing "Mr. Cellophane."
Anytime someone asks me to describe
Kurt Hummel, I say "authentic."
Kurt was so comfortable in his own skin
and confident about who he was.
That's something that Karofsky never knew.
And I think that was where the hate
and the bullying came from.
There are all these kids
like Kurt Hummel
that are still every day ridiculed
for who they are.
They don't have a support system.
And so I was very excited
to film something
where the character
actually stands up for himself.
Hey!
- Get out of my face!
- You are nothing but a scared little boy
who can't handle how
extraordinarily ordinary you are.
The showrunner, Ryan Murphy,
really did take that moment,
knowing that families
were watching it together,
to really dig deep
into the dark side of what was
happening to LGBTQ kids everywhere.
Time and time again on this program
we've reported on the problem
of bullying in this country,
and time and time again
we've announced the deaths of children.
Children who should not be dead.
A lot of teen suicides were happening
because of homophobic bullying.
That really hit home
on season three of Glee.
Everyone at Karofsky's school
figured out that he was gay.
Now, he was getting bullied,
and he ended up attempting suicide.
Dave! Buddy, come on. David!
Can I come in?
I was hopeful that people
going through this
and watching this on TV would think,
"Look, someone out there
is showing my story,
and there are people
that will support someone like me."
I'm gonna help you.
And so is everyone else who loves you
and accepts you for who you are.
That's sort of what Glee was.
It was this journey
in looking at all the outcasts
and making them into living,
breathing, three-dimensional spirits
for mainstream America.
I was told constantly about
how I should get a fake girlfriend.
Because gay guys
can't get the female audience.
Oh, boy.
I remember taking a trip
with the cast of Glee to Disneyland.
The one that got the most attention
and the one that people started seeing
and just weeping and crying
was Chris Colfer.
We need to debunk this terrible stigma
that we put on especially young gay actors
that they can't get a full audience
if they're honest or
if they play a gay character.
In the early 2000s,
Peter Paige became a breakout star
on Showtime's Queer as Folk.
In a strange way I actually think
my acting career
was a bit of a misstep.
I really believe what I'm doing now,
writing, directing and producing,
is really
what I was meant to do all along.
In 2013, he cocreated The Fosters,
a drama that introduced audiences
to a type of family
not previously seen on television.
What? Nobody told you our mom's a cop?
The show featured two lesbian mothers
and a cast
of several LGBTQ youth characters,
including Aaron Baker, a trans law student
played by Elliot Fletcher,
and Jude Foster,
a young gay boy played by Hayden Byerly.
Made any new friends?
There is this one boy.
Oh?
The Jude story line is probably
the thing I'm most proud of in the series.
Jude is, in many ways,
closer to me
than any of the other characters.
Don't wear that to school, okay, buddy?
The role for Jude came into my life
when I was around 11 years old.
He was a foster kid.
He moved around a lot.
He didn't have many friends or many
people who liked him or accepted him.
But then he found someone who did.
Jude and Connor were two young boys
who went to the same school.
They both played video games and formed
this strong and beautiful friendship.
Jude started to explore more about himself
and how he felt
and realized that this person meant more
to him than he had initially realized.
The one unique thing about
Jude and Connor's relationship
is that it was an incredibly young
relationship between two boys.
They just liked each other and had a very
innocent sweet love towards one another.
The kiss that Connor and Jude share
is the most chaste
declaration of love you've ever seen.
But this is the first time
I actually experienced backlash.
I got called a pedophile,
a pervert, filthy.
Gay people came for me and said,
"Why are you doing this?
You make us all look like perverts."
And my response to that is,
we have been
watching stories of young love
of heterosexual people for centuries.
Romeo and Juliet were 14.
And in more modern times, My Girl.
Anna Chlumsky
and Macaulay Culkin were ten.
I can't imagine
what it would've meant to me at that age
to watch Connor and Jude on TV.
When I started acting,
the T was not part of the L, G, and the B.
It wasn't until the mid-'90s
that they added the T on.
If you were a trans actor
you were playing a prostitute.
There are so many streetwalker scenes.
There is the typical
"I wanna kill myself" story line.
And the "I take a lot of drugs"
or "I sell drugs" story line.
Those were the roles
that were available for trans people,
and they were always
maybe one or two lines.
But then I got the audition
for Dirty Sexy Money.
I found out it was gonna be on ABC, and
I found out all these stars were in it.
I realized this is big.
It had never been done before.
A trans person playing a trans part
in a reoccurring main role
on prime-time television.
In 2011, I did seven independent films,
and I was working.
I still had my restaurant job.
And I was just thinking, I can't.
How much longer can I do this
without having a breakthrough?
But then the audition
for Orange Is the New Black came along,
and I booked it.
- Excuse me.
- Such pretty hair.
Thank you.
When those roots start to show,
be sure to come and see me, okay?
I'll take good care of you.
My first day on set, I went to craft
services to see what the food was like.
And when I was there, this woman
walks over to me, and she's like,
"Hi. My name is Jodie.
I'm directing episode three."
And it was Jodie Foster. And I was like,
"Hi. Yes, I know who you are."
And I knew none of this
when I booked the job,
but episode three would be the episode
where we found out
my character's backstory.
It was anchored
in a deep well of experiences
that trans women
from low-income communities
or communities of color had to deal with.
Audiences saw
the sacrifices that one must make
and how you're then punished
for taking care of yourself
in a world that refuses
to take care of you.
What are those? Those aren't my pills.
Talk to your counselor, okay?
I knew that it's the moment
I've been waiting for my whole career.
And I felt ready.
And that's the episode
that got me an Emmy nomination.
One of the first scenes that I filmed,
I'm laying in bed half naked
with Billy Baldwin.
And I was like,
"This is really happening."
Like, I'm laying in a bed with a Baldwin,
in a Paramount lot,
shooting a prime-time show.
Patty,
if you need to simplify your life
and just be with Ellen, I understand.
Our story line really resounded
with the audience of,
at the beginning I think
it was ten million people,
who for the first time
see a trans character
who was strong, charismatic,
and has depth to her.
People often ask me how do I deal
with having all these firsts by my name
as a transgender woman of color
who's also an actress.
And I deal with that by looking back
at my history as an African American.
And artists like Diahann Carroll
and Cicely Tyson,
Dorothy Dandridge, Eartha Kitt,
and Josephine Baker
sort of provide this blueprint for me
in terms of how they were able to proceed
as artists who were also breaking barriers
and were politically engaged.
It always takes one to start
the avalanche, or to start
I mean, it wasn't an avalanche.
It was a slow trickle.
Let's just be fair here.
But I realized that these shows
were actually pushing
the fabric of society forward.
That first season of Dirty Sexy Money,
we had such a meaningful
moment on television.
It wasn't until later I found out
that I was getting killed off.
I was heartbroken.
And then when it came out
and I was watching it,
I thought, "This is really cruel."
Being very aware
of how people treat trans people,
especially back then in the industry,
I knew it had something to do
with me being trans.
There's always gonna be
those people that don't understand it
and think that that's the reason
the show is lacking something.
In addition to the death of Candis Cayne's
character in Dirty Sexy Money,
television has had a long history
of killing its LGBTQ characters.
One of the biggest challenges that
we've had is the Bury Your Gay trope.
And that means that anybody who's LGBTQ
ends up tragically dying at the end
or is murdered at the end.
And we've seen a real resurgence in that,
and it kind of kicked off with Buffy.
Your shirt.
Then we saw it in The Wire.
And later in The 100.
And so you're seeing this narrative
continue a lot over the past few years.
I think that obviously started to happen
over a certain number of shows
and there's such a dearth
of these characters on TV,
and we're just axing them
left and right.
People really realize, "Wait a second.
We wanna be more cautious about this."
And so that's why folks who
make television have a responsibility
to be aware of the greater context.
Because everything that happens on-screen
has an effect off-screen via the viewer.
Throughout the '50s and '60s,
actors such as Milton Berle used drag in
comedic performances to make fun of women.
But in the early '80s, Atlanta public
access television introduced RuPaul
RuPaul, how are you?
I'm doing swell. It feels great.
who was destined to become
the world's most famous drag queen.
RuPaul put queerness and glamour together
and made it really incredibly
aspirational and desirable.
RuPaul became a household name in 1992,
with her debut single
"Supermodel (You Better Work)."
The next year, she was asked to present
at the MTV Video Music Awards
with comedian Milton Berle.
When I was on TV,
I used to wear gowns myself.
Is that right? You used to wear gowns,
and that's funny, now you wear diapers.
Yeah.
Milton Berle had used drag
to ridicule women,
where Ru is using it to glorify women.
And in that moment, Ru is kicking out
the old guard and bringing in the new.
RuPaul's Drag Race premiered in 2009,
ushering in the next generation
of drag superstars.
The show combined Project Runway-style
design challenges
with catwalk competitions
like America's Next Top Model
and added a sense of humor
that was distinctly RuPaul.
I wanted to do, like, a really sexy, like,
Grace Jones, Thierry Mugler
inspired, like, catsuit.
Well, you failed.
Drag Race has launched the careers
of so many amazing performers.
And Ru is amazing.
RuPaul is, like, the living version
of that woman holding the torch
on the Columbia opening.
Like, just always statuesque.
I learned a lot from RuPaul in the sense
of poise and commanding a stage with ease.
- Like, "I'm ready."
- It's the little show that could,
and it slowly built momentum
over the years.
And suddenly all these queens
were out-dragging each other
and that became gladiatorial.
It's a competition,
and there's wig snatching
and there's crying and there's drama.
Go back to Party City where you belong.
But ultimately, Ru says this all the time,
"It's about tearing that person down and
having to literally reinvent themselves."
And it's really about being
the best version of themselves.
Kennedy, you've grown
to become a fierce drag queen.
Here's a photo of you
as a little bitty boy.
It's always incredibly moving when they're
giving advice to their younger selves.
It's okay that you are different
from the other kids.
It's oftentimes a very similar story of,
"I didn't know
what life had in store for me.
I was full of fear, but now look at me."
And what you thought was
all just a dream will come true for you,
because life will get better.
Kim Chi, you didn't just get better.
You got fierce.
Even before Drag Race,
Ru was able to get into pop culture.
You know, Ru became not just
a gay icon, which Ru is for us,
but Ru crossed over in this, like,
icon of pop culture.
I've done lots of different personas,
but this one, baby, this one clicks.
The children respond to me in drag, okay?
There's something so beautiful
about living out loud
and living out loud
at, like, the decibel of ten.
He's like a fairy godmother.
- Everybody say "love."
- Love.
- Everybody say "love."
- Love.
- Everybody say "love."
- Love.
Now, take that to your special
prosecutor and investigate it.
Recasting my memories from childhood,
I never liked the word "actress."
I didn't know why necessarily,
or what about it never felt right for me.
People would say, "Oh, you're an actress."
I'd say, "No, I'm an actor."
I always wanted to play Oliver.
But I knew that I would never be allowed
to because Oliver was a boy's part
and I remember thinking
that was really unfair.
Television told me that I had to
be a certain kind of way.
Even before I had words to put to it,
I was very aware that
I didn't want to be read as a girl.
But I also didn't want
to be read as a boy.
I wasn't sort of either thing
that society said that I should be,
and so I always felt
a little out of place.
After I moved to New York
and got my agents,
I just removed she/her
from my, like, online bio material
or a program bio and I had just used
my name, which felt really good.
And then I got an audition
for a show called Billions
for the character of Taylor Mason.
I ordered you lunch. Vegan.
What makes you think I'm a vegan?
Fuck! You're not?
Of course I'm a vegan.
The character breakdown
of Taylor Mason said,
"Brilliant, a mathematical genius,
nonbinary."
So, I was like,
"Oh, okay. Let me look this up."
Nonbinary gender identity.
Not identifying as a man or a woman.
Hello. I'm Taylor.
My pronouns are they, theirs, and them.
Okay.
When I read that particular moment
in the script, I certainly cried
because that was the way in which I found
the full freedom, I feel, to be myself
which was I was assigned female at birth,
there was a gender identity placed on top
of that, which was girl and woman,
but that is not my gender identity,
and so taking it off
by using "they/them" pronouns for me
is just what felt really right.
The character of Taylor Mason really gave
me that identity, that hope, that freedom.
With their role on Billions,
Asia Kate Dillon became the first
nonbinary actor cast in a starring role,
playing television's
first nonbinary character.
After season two of Billions,
Showtime came to me
and said, amazingly,
that they wanted to submit me
for an Emmy consideration.
And they were presented with the
categories of actor and actress and said,
"We don't know how you would want
to be submitted. What are your thoughts?"
Well, I've always found
the actor/actress binary
in awards shows
to be very strange.
We never did it in any other category.
We don't have directress and director.
And so that is what I put in a letter
to the academy, and I just said,
"Let me know how you're using
the words 'actor' and 'actress'
so that I can make a better decision."
They said, "This has caused us to go back
and look at our rules
from the very beginning
which say any performer can
enter either category for any reason."
So then ultimately my decision was
to submit as a supporting actor.
Because actor is
a non-gendered, non-sexed word
that has always
historically referred to anyone,
and so that felt like
the right choice for me.
Then, very quickly after that,
I got a call or an e-mail from my team
that MTV wanted me to be
the presenter of this new acting award.
It's so cool to be here presenting
the first acting award ever
that celebrates performance
free of any gender distinctions.
They just called it the best actor award.
And Emma Watson ended up
winning for Beauty and the Beast.
Acting is about the ability
to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
And that doesn't need to be separated
into two different categories.
One of the most recent messages I got
was from a young person who said
that they had just worked up the courage
to come out as nonbinary
to their grandmother,
who the first thing that
the grandmother said was,
"Oh, my gosh! You're just like
the character Taylor on Billions.
I love them, and I love that show."
I mean, it's just such a direct connection
between representation creating
compassion and understanding.
My first memory of television was,
weirdly, Saturday Night Live,
which is gross to say since I wrote there,
but I watched it all the time growing up.
From the age of eight or nine,
I would record the sketches
and transcribe my favorite ones.
And then I would bring them
into school at lunch
and perform them with friends
in the drama classroom.
Is that disgusting?
Hey, Sister?
I bet you have a real hairy ass.
It's, like, the women that
I would watch and try to emulate,
and I remember loving Molly Shannon,
Ana Gasteyer, Cheri Oteri,
and then later Maya Rudolph
and that group of people.
And then years later, when I got hired at
Saturday Night Live and I started writing,
I met a lot of the writers who were still
there, like Paula Pell and James Anderson,
who are gay and they had written all those
sketches for and with the women.
And so all these sketches
I was inherently drawn to
I was drawn to because the women
performing them were so great,
but I also think I was drawn to it because
it was written by all these gay people.
In 2016, Chris Kelly
became the first out head writer
in Saturday Night Live's 40-year history.
I think when SNL or any show
hires queer people,
queer issues, queer ideas, queer
comedy is going to just inherently come.
So I didn't have to sit down and be like,
"Today I'm going to
speak about this gay issue."
I just based on my own life experience.
It just inherently infuses
my writing with queer stuff.
You hear that, Dyke? We done did it again.
I couldn't have done it without you, Fats.
Yeah, good going, Dyke and Fats.
- You don't get to call us that.
- Only we get to say it.
- Those are our words!
- Our words.
We love each other. We get to say it.
Whether it's sketch comedy
or comedy in sitcoms,
comedy is a way to change people's minds.
Because if you laugh at something,
there's some part of you
that agrees with what's being said.
And I think that's one of
the great things about television
is it helps us to make sense
of who we are and where we're going.
She's an angel.
You and your wife must be thrilled.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Daddy needed snacks.
Hi.
The very first scene of Mitch and Cam
is they're bringing back
this baby from Vietnam
and they're having a very funny
but very relatable argument,
and they're new parents
trying to figure out
how to navigate this new adventure
that they put themselves on.
Look at that baby with those cream puffs.
Excuse me, but this baby would've
grown up in a crowded orphanage
if it wasn't for us cream puffs.
And you know what, no, to all of you
who judge, love knows no race or gender.
- And shame on you,
- Mitchell.
you small-minded ignorant
- Mitchell
- What?
She's got the cream puffs.
I think it's really opened up
a lot of minds.
I do think that there are people who feel
like they never knew a gay couple,
but they know Mitch and Cam.
For me, you know, given
my own relationship with my dad,
I just found it really comforting
to see Ed O'Neill
try to maneuver his way
through this relationship.
And what they inserted into the story line
was my father was not getting it
and didn't understand
why I wanted to get married.
I admit it.
This whole wedding thing is weird to me.
Wow.
And that is a conversation
that I had with my real-life father.
Not specifically around marriage,
but just around being gay.
You know,
there was a lot of butting of heads.
So the fact that
they included this story line
was, I think, probably the most powerful
part of the whole episode.
If it really makes you
that uncomfortable then
don't come to the wedding.
There were families
across the country watching that show,
and it allowed them to empathize
and to laugh at their own,
you know, missteps and awkwardness.
Trying to maneuver their way
through their relationship
with their gay sons or daughters.
Modern Family lives in the present day,
and we always try to respond to things
that are happening in the real world.
So, when Modern Family started,
we did not have marriage equality.
And the summer that
Prop 8 was overturned,
my boyfriend, Justin, at the time,
worked for the non-profit organization
that supported the Prop 8 case,
the American Foundation for Equal Rights.
All of our writers
on Modern Family were trying to get
sort of an inside scoop of
whether or not this was gonna pass or not.
And they were actually calling Justin,
saying, "Do you have any sort of intel?"
We want to have Mitch and Cam get married.
Gay couples across this country
were today handed a sweeping victory
by a majority of the justices
on the Supreme Court.
- Oh, my God!
- What?
It's Mitchell. We won.
That's great! What we won?
It's fantastic. We've waited so long.
What did we won?
The Supreme Court ruling.
Gay marriage is legal.
It did feel like we were having
this weird sort of parallel,
because the show was being very informed
by what was happening in the world.
I personally got married to Justin.
And my father was dancing at my wedding.
I guess you never stop
wanting your parents' approval.
And I wanted his.
Then, a few months later, my father on TV
is walking me down the aisle,
and I find myself fictionally
getting married to my TV husband.
Then by the powers vested in me
by the state of California,
I am privileged
to pronounce you spouses for life.
You may now kiss your husband.
Modern Family won the Emmy for best comedy
for five consecutive years.
The mockumentary style of the sitcom
was inspired in part
by An American Family,
the first television show to follow
a real family in their day-to-day lives.
In 2007, another American family
took the spotlight
and became a pop culture sensation.
For a reality television show,
what you need is a lot of story lines.
There's ten million story lines
in my family.
Six kids and two crazy parents.
We're the modern-day
Brady Bunch with a kick.
On Keeping Up with the Kardashians,
I loved being the father,
I loved having fun with the kids
and, you know, that was my part.
But as I was struggling
with my own identity,
the rumor mill started to go crazy.
What's going on with old Bruce?
I was in Marburg, Germany.
There was a reunion
of Olympic champions in the decathlon.
I just got there,
it's, like, two in the morning.
I am wide awake. What can I watch?
Of course I'm flipping through it,
all German-speaking stations
except one is an English-speaking station.
Who's on but Jimmy Fallon?
He was the greatest athlete in the world.
In the world.
So, he's gotten some work done.
He looks like
he's had some plastic surgery.
And perhaps not gold medal
plastic surgery, in my opinion.
And I'm sitting there going,
"Even in Marburg, Germany,
I have to listen to this stuff."
I had no choice but to come out publicly.
I couldn't sneak off to Alaska
and go to a town of 500 people
and leave my family and hide up there.
Eventually the tabloids would find me,
and then it's, again, a tabloid story.
So if I'm gonna do this,
I have to take control of it.
Come into my house.
In April 2015, Caitlyn Jenner appeared
on a Diane Sawyer special
to discuss her identity as a trans woman
for the first time on television.
Over 16 million people tuned in.
I got Kylie on this side,
Kendall on this side,
all the other kids on the couch
'cause I had not seen it.
And Diane Sawyer starts.
So Bruce Jenner is?
I look at it this way.
Bruce, always telling a lie.
He's lived a lie his whole life
about who he is.
And I can't do that any longer.
Now, I'm sitting on the couch with
the most social media family in the world,
and they sit there, and, you know
and all of a sudden,
about 15 minutes into the show
social media started to go crazy.
Lady Gaga was the first celebrity
I remember kind of going,
"Oh, my God! Lady Gaga!"
And it just didn't stop.
And the list goes on and on and on,
of positive comments.
And I really think that's when my kids,
especially Kendall and Kylie,
'cause they're the young ones,
thought, "You know what?
It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay."
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
is a global show.
And people around the world
now knew a trans person.
I had a dinner at my house
with six other trans girls,
and I'd never met anybody who's trans.
Last we heard, she was transitioning,
but nobody had seen her yet.
It was, like, completely hush-hush.
And at that dinner,
we met Caitlyn for the first time.
Hello.
- The first to arrive.
- Hello.
- Baby, how are you doing?
- You look incredible.
We were telling Caitlyn's story,
and, you know,
we're not gonna change Caitlyn.
So what we did want
and what Caitlyn wanted
was to find
some other people who could educate her
and help her with this transition.
They were so helpful in teaching me
the ropes at the beginning.
You know, all these things that only
a group of trans girls can talk about.
One of the things I've wondered about,
everybody seems to have
pretty good vocal chords.
What have you guys done?
And Chandi, I just loved her
right from the beginning.
She goes
I haven't done one thing, Caitlyn.
Oh, my God, girl. I like that.
And I went, "I love that. Okay."
You just gotta love your voice.
It's part of you.
I feel like, "If you're gonna accept me,
you're gonna accept me."
The great thing about it, to me,
was the fact that it wasn't just Caitlyn.
We were seeing a group of trans women
have fun, go on vacation and drink wine.
I thought that was great.
The conversations that we were having
on television for the first time,
I knew were gonna be revolutionary
for the entire world.
You made a comment.
- I think it was
- What was my comment?
That if you look like a man in a dress
it makes other people uncomfortable.
Is that bad?
If Caitlyn said something offensive,
one of the other women would be like,
"Caitlyn, rein it in.
Like, you can't do that."
You're fighting for everybody,
not just the pretty ones.
It's not like someone sat down
and wrote the Caitlyn character
and said, "Okay, well, we need to make
this character that's gonna be
You know, say all the right things."
Caitlyn's interesting
because she is a mass of contradictions.
Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?
Oh, my God.
I would never ever vote for Hillary.
- We're done.
- Go Hillary.
If Hillary becomes president,
the country is over.
Oh, my God.
Being an out and fighting liberal,
then suddenly being on a bus
with a conservative
- She didn't lie to us.
- She's a liar.
You want a person that's gonna lie to you?
Because our country was so divided,
it alienated Caitlyn
from the LGBT community.
Especially in the trans community.
You're either with us or against us,
and we're very vocal about it.
Caitlyn Jenner, you're an insult to all
trans people. You don't represent us.
You're a disgrace to our community.
For the most part
I can't blame my community,
because we've had to fight
tooth and nail, throughout history,
to even have
the little rights that we've gotten.
We probably shouldn't have
been so political.
It made the message of the show get lost,
which was showing a group of trans women
that were trying to figure out life,
and show greater society
who we are as human beings.
Love her or hate her,
Caitlyn Jenner has made
trans issues
a household topic.
Monday Caitlyn Jenner debuted
her new name and her new look,
and completely dominated
the conversation online.
She was the top trend
on Twitter and Facebook
as well as Google's top searched term.
There are a few of us who've been doing
television for many years,
and we've garnered a lot of attention,
a lot of press,
but absolutely nothing to put the word
"trans" on the lips of the entire world
like I Am Cait did.
That show was shown in over 140 countries.
In countries where it's still illegal
to be gay, lesbian, trans or bi.
When Caitlyn's story first came out,
I was actually in Kenya,
at an LGBT conference.
And it was the first time that they
were invited in their own countries
to be on television,
to talk about trans issues,
because Caitlyn
was such a huge force there.
I Am Cait was breaking the form of
what a reality TV show could be
by taking trans women
and centering them.
In 2013, the streaming services
Netflix and Amazon
first began airing original content.
This advent of digital platforms
created more opportunity
for LGBTQ creators and story lines,
including the show Transparent.
Dad?
Hi, girls.
When my parent came out as trans,
I was kind of embarrassed.
Like, I didn't know
how to tell my friends.
I didn't even understand it really.
In fact, when I look back at that pilot
and I see that I wrote
the character of Maura as Mort,
I realize I was still holding on to
this idea of my dad as male,
and I was really using the show to process
my emotions around my parent's transness.
Are you saying that you're gonna start
dressing up like a lady all the time?
No, honey.
All my life My whole life,
I've been dressing up like a man.
The most important thing
about Transparent to me
was the inclusion
of the trans community
in the writing staff, in the producers,
in the actors other than the lead,
who probably should have been
trans playing that part.
For so long, shows that were hiring,
they were hiring
cis men or cis women to play trans roles.
They were not even willing to think about
having a real trans person
play a trans role.
I had cast a cis man in the role of Maura,
which, at some point pretty early on,
was clear to me was like an original sin
that was truly problematic
for trans people.
For decades, playing trans meant
an Academy Award nomination,
it meant a Golden Globe nomination,
it meant an Emmy nomination,
it meant awards,
because for whatever reason
actors playing trans has been
this very sort of brave thing.
I'm Lance Berkman.
My wife and I have four daughters.
Proposition 1 will allow troubled men,
who claim to be women,
to enter women's bathrooms,
showers and locker rooms.
It's better to prevent this danger
by closing women's restrooms to men,
rather than waiting for a crime to happen.
There was this harmful rhetoric
that trans people are dressing up
to invade namely women's spaces
as an act
of sexual perversion or aggression.
And that whole idea comes from having,
historically, cisgender men
play trans women.
Audiences see this man accepting an award,
and so when a real trans woman
is presenting herself in the world
saying "I am a woman,"
the public, because they've
been seeing men portray us,
are having a harder time
acknowledging our womanhood.
So having Jeffrey play Maura
reinforced a really dangerous stereotype
that put trans people in harm's way.
That was, like, something that I had
to live with, early on, as a huge mistake.
Does that make the show bad? No.
But moving forward, it's important to have
trans people play trans characters
so that we can break that mold,
and show people,
"No, this is what trans is."
That was amazing!
In recent years, more trans actors
have been getting trans roles,
including Nicole Maines on Supergirl
Hey. This is Trevor.
- Hey. Nice to meet you.
- How's it going.
and Elliot Fletcher on Shameless.
I love being cast as a trans person.
But I'm an actor, so I would also like
to play real thought-out characters
where there is so much more to them
than being transgender.
In 2018, Ryan Murphy
cocreated a show for FX
that would feature the largest trans
cast and crew in television history.
There really is no rush.
Indigestion isn't flattering.
I'm sorry.
I haven't had something warm in a minute.
So what's your story?
I was gonna give up acting completely.
I had been auditioning like crazy,
and there was a breaking point
where I was just like,
"I'm tired. I'm tired. I don't know
if I'm gonna do this anymore."
And my mom, she told me,
"There's something that's gotta give.
It's coming right around the corner."
I'm like,
"No. It's not. It's fucking not."
And then literally, like,
three days later,
I get a call from the one and only
Ryan Murphy.
That's how Blanca came into my life.
Pose has the largest LGBT cast
in the history of television,
and that is freaking huge.
- I'm sorry I said I wasn't like you.
- Oh, child. Hush.
You are a gay black boy.
Who else you gonna find
to make you feel superior?
As a gay man who came out in the '80s,
the "T" in LGB
was lost on many of us.
Pose puts that front and center.
It opens the door for not only
trans actors but trans writers,
and trans producers and trans directors,
so that these stories
can actually truly be told
from the people of that experience.
Even when I was hired,
I had no idea
that I was the first trans woman of color
to be hired in a Hollywood writers' room.
I had no idea that I would then
go on to be the first
to write and direct
an episode of television.
For trans women,
particularly trans women of color,
we live in a culture
that is constantly trying to erase us,
literally, with murdering us.
Seven trans women have been killed
nationwide already this year.
Last year, a record 23 were killed,
the majority black and Latino women.
Public policy is another way to erase us.
Trump administration officials are
considering legally defining gender
as somebody's biological sex at birth,
a move that could roll back civil rights
protections for transgender Americans.
In this political climate
where bigots are feeling empowered,
Pose is the show we need right now.
It is fighting back against
that kind of hate with love.
I knew that it was a show
that was gonna test the waters.
I didn't know it was gonna be
the big hit that it was.
Welcome to the ballroom world.
It has presented a world to people
that they have never seen in their lives.
I sat here, in my house,
with my two aunts from Pittsburgh.
They sat here with tears in their eyes
going, "We had no idea."
What's so interesting about
queer representation,
so often, is that we're the only
characters on a show. We're isolated.
We're there to support
someone else's journey,
some other straight or cis protagonist's
journey to authenticity
and bravery and courage,
and then we die.
I never thought that it was possible
that a show like this could exist.
I never thought that women who looked
like me and who shared my experiences
could be the centers
of their own universe.
Life isn't always good,
but right now, in this moment
it's good.
But I think that what made people return
over and over again were those scenes
with Blanca and Pray Tell
supporting one another.
I know I'm gonna end up
in some hospital wasting away
with a nurse who won't bring me my food.
Stop saying that.
But it's true. It's true. We've seen it.
They don't know shit
about this thing yet,
which means they don't know
if it's incurable yet.
Baby, they don't wanna cure it.
I had never seen a representation
in which a trans woman
was saving another person's life,
even though her own was threatened.
I'm so grateful to have lived
long enough to see this day.
We have five trans women of color as
series regulars, as a center of the show.
But then also, in our writers' room,
they're our choreographers, our PAs.
I hope that our show creates new pathways
for folk to not only be in the story,
but to be the people who are writing,
creating, helping tell the story.
We just have to keep fighting.
We have to keep telling more stories,
so that we won't have to go through
the systematic things
that we have been through in the past.
Especially in this crazy time.
I was on Twitter, and I saw
that shots had been fired at a club
and didn't really know
much more about it.
And as the information came out,
you know,
I realized this was a big deal.
Good morning. I'm Dara Brown. There's
breaking news at this hour from Orlando,
where there were reports of a shooting
at a nightclub in that city.
I woke up on June 12
in 2016, getting ready to go to Pride,
here in Los Angeles.
It was early morning,
and I turned on the TV, as I do, and
and I saw the news.
It's just horror inside this nightclub.
Several loud noises coming
from three or four
Multiple people injured after
This was an act of terror
and an act of hate.
And so right away it felt personal,
because my parents live in Orlando,
and I knew that place.
My aunt used to ask me to go there
with her, along with her gay son.
I got there about 30 minutes
before I had to go on air,
and I was talking to my executive producer
on the phone
about how we were gonna cover it,
and I said that, you know,
rather than just
telling the latest on what happened,
I wanted to start out with saying the
names of everybody who had been killed.
They're more than a list of names.
They were people who loved
and were loved.
They were people with families
and friends and dreams.
And the truth is,
we don't know much about some of them.
We want you to hear their names,
and a little bit about who they were.
Edward Sotomayor Jr.
He worked at a travel agency
that catered to the gay community.
His family says he was witty and charming.
My mom called,
and said that Brenda had been shot
protecting Isaiah from the shooter.
Brenda Lee Marquez McCool.
She had 11 kids, beat cancer twice,
and often went dancing at Pulse
with her gay son.
She supported him that much.
Her son survived the shooting.
I thinking watching Anderson and listening
to him read those names,
through his own tears, was the first time
that I allowed myself to cry about it.
So I'm grateful to him for that.
It was a sense of
two steps forward, one step back.
We've made all these strides in society:
same-sex marriage
is the law of the land.
And then you have someone
who has so much hate.
The worst mass shooting
in American history.
Fifty dead, 53 injured
at the Pulse gay nightclub.
The present-day violence
that we see in the news,
these divisions and these hatreds
and these separations are heartbreaking.
People who have tragedy in their life,
to see it and be able to touch them,
it's very different to see a human being
on TV talking about who they are,
and what they need, and how they hurt.
I didn't even wanna look back.
To look at them,
that would be the last memory I'd have,
that's not something I want to remember.
He said he was gonna die, and he loved me.
That's the last thing I heard.
And I remember two things that helped.
One was Anderson Cooper
reading their names
and Rachel Maddow.
She did a whole episode about violence
and resilience in the LGBT community.
The gay community
in the United States knows from violence,
and it's therefore a tough community.
I think when you hear a Rachel Maddow
or an Anderson Cooper
talk about an issue like Pulse, which
affected the LGBT community directly,
it becomes personal to them.
And because it's personal to them
it becomes personal to us,
and we get to see it
and feel that story through their eyes.
It's very hard to describe
what real life is like.
And so when you have
a television camera there,
and that camera lens is so thin.
It's this little piece of glass.
And as a storyteller,
it's hard trying to figure out
how to fit all that stuff
in that little piece of glass,
but it transmits truth.
For so long, television for minorities
has been the first place
where we're allowed
to be seen and be human.
And it still goes through
this metamorphosis, right?
We're allowed to be funny.
And then we're allowed to be dramatic.
And then eventually
we get to be real whole human beings.
Both lovable and fallible.
Political and taking care of our family.
And you start to get a full picture.
If you're able to fit that
through that little piece of glass,
whether it's real life in a news program,
or a situation comedy,
or a drama, or whatever it is,
it takes people to places
that they will never be able to go
and it brings them to another place.
Do you remember how you felt
when you first realized
that you were a homosexual?
Frightened. Terribly frightened.
I'd like to think that even though
television has a considerable history,
that we're still in the infant stages
in terms of how we portray the world
and the stories that we tell.
You know, we have so much correction
that needs to be done.
We are not past homophobia.
We are not past racism.
We are not past invisibility.
Things don't change
until you tell the truth about yourself.
And television now has many more artists,
creators, who are willing to do that.
Whether it's people of color,
people of different gender identities,
sexual orientations.
Wanting to create a world,
a real world, not some made-up world,
where everyone looks the same
and everyone talks the same.
Why wouldn't you go to
this deep well of talent
that's been waiting and seeking
and hoping for a chance
and give them a shot?
We have to add those layers
of not just color
but then also class, language
Don't you never marry a lazy man.
Don't worry, Doña Tita. I won't.
and ability.
I came out as gay, and it was like,
"NBD, whatever."
That was never my cross to bear.
It was always being disabled,
which makes sense,
because I feel like being gay
is much more accepted in our society
than disability, which no one talks about
and everyone tries to sweep under the rug.
Fifty years after the Stonewall uprising
was overlooked by television,
there is more LGBTQ representation
on-screen than ever before,
including reboots of some of television's
most formative LGBTQ narratives
Strong, black, beautiful, lesbian woman!
and increased visibility
for the journeys of LGBTQ people.
Being gay is part of who I am.
And I'm aware of what it represents
to be that kind of first.
When something important and big happens,
people go to their televisions.
It's where we gather
to learn more about each other
and to feel
that we are part of a larger community.
I just don't know of anything
that has a more powerful influence
because it's in your kitchen,
in your living room, in your playroom,
in your bedroom.
There are images coming at you
all the time.
And when you see images
that are reflective of your own life,
it's a reminder to you
that your life matters.
And that is the one thing
that every human being
needs validation for.
When you're not used to being represented
and your experience
is not being reflected back at you,
it is life-changing to see it on TV.
For me, the thing that's most moving
is to think about a young LGBT person
allowing themselves
to imagine a future that
they are a part of with no question.
And when you open that door
to understand different stories
That's what makes people feel like
they matter because we're equal.
You can go into worlds
and people that you have never known
and deeply, deeply engage.
That's why it's such a powerful medium,
because when we look at the television,
we're really looking to see a story
that shows us ourselves,
and that's its job,
which is to tell the truth.