Daytime talk shows have long been a space for queer people’s stories when we were virtually absent from TV. When Ellen DeGeneres came out as her character on her sitcom and in life in 1997, Rosie O’Donnell supported Ellen with her “I might be Lebanese” banter. Oprah held a thoughtful, episode-long interview with Ellen and her then-partner, Anne Heche. Those interviews stayed with me at a time when I rarely saw images of myself in media.

More than 25 years later, The Kelly Clarkson Show dedicated nearly a full episode to uplifting trans people in 2023, one of dozens of segments dedicated to queer lives. History-making Emmy nominee Laverne Cox was Kelly Clarkson’s main guest that day, but a segment featuring one of Kelly’s producers, Caragh Donley, illuminated Kelly’s commitment to LGBTQ+ people and stories. Donley joined Cox on the couch to share how Kelly and the show supported her transition at 63. “A lot of [this] is because of you, because of the tone you set on the show,” Donley said.

After seven seasons of Kelly and her team at NBC leading with humanity and inclusivity, she bade farewell to her show this week, and her dedication to uplifting queer and trans stories will be missed.

The Kelly Clarkson Show premiered in Sept. 2019 with an opening musical number set to “9 to 5”. From there, the “Kellyoke” segment became a staple. It was soon apparent to anyone who hadn’t closely followed the original American Idol’s career that she can sing “anything,” “the phone book,” and “make it better than the original,” according to social media comments since the dawn of “Kellyoke.” Kelly led with humor and empathy, that was until competitive side came out, and then it was ON. The host losing a song battle to Anne Hathaway, who beat Kelly by recognizing “Since You Been Gone” before Kelly could, is a classic clip I’ll watch every time it pops up.

Before the close of The Kelly Clarkson Show’s first season, the pandemic hit, and Kelly went virtual. The series was a salve during the pandemic, with Kelly’s relatable and upbeat reports from isolating with her family in Montana. For Pride Month in 2020, she read Tweets from her queer fans on air. In August of that year, she performed a virtual duet with Brandi Carlile of The Civil Wars, “Poison and Wine,” which, six months into lockdown, felt like a queer clarion call that had me sobbing.

Share Tracy E. Gilchrist Holds Space

I was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate from 2020 - 2022, and ahead of her third season in the summer of 2021, an offer to interview Kelly arrived in my inbox. As someone who watched Oprah and Rosie back in the day, I knew immediately that I wanted to write a story for The Advocate print about Kelly’s legacy of queer allyship on daytime.

“Whether it was Oprah or Rosie O’Donnell or Ellen or even our crew, all of those people are inclusive,” Kelly told me at the time about the “common thread.”

“That’s why those people have done well is because no one’s in the game to put anyone down or in their box or in their corner. It’s all open; everybody’s available and willing to discuss stuff,” she added. “You can just learn so much when you’re not with your blinders on. You see the whole picture.”

I’ve interviewed hundreds of celebrities throughout my career, and I still get nervous, but ahead of my Zoom interview with Kelly, I was a wreck. I’d been a fan since she won American Idol, and I’d belted “Stronger” at her concerts a few times. I was panicked in the moments before the Zoom room opened and Kelly popped up, sans makeup and as relaxed as if we were old friends getting coffee.

“Hey girl,” she said in her Texas accent, and it took me out of my head and into the moment. She was so engaging and accommodating that we started to go long.

“Kelly, I’m so sorry. I will need to go in a moment. I have a Zoom with Brandi Carlile,” I said, barely understanding the fortune in the words I uttered. One thing I’ll say about the pandemic was that it was rife with opportunities for intimate conversations with my heroes.

“Oh, my God! Tell Brandi I’m in love with her,” Kelly responded. Of course, I gleefully relayed the message, to which Brandi gave a knowing grin.

The Kelly Clarkson Show with Eli from It Gets Better and Kelly

In 2024, a mutual friend introduced me to Kelly’s producer Caragh, and we began a friendship as we considered ways to work together. For Pride Month in 2025, Caragh helped land a virtual segment on air for a story we’d covered in The Advocate about small-town Central Alabama Pride. A few colleagues and I joined the audience for the taping, grateful that six months into Donald Trump’s draconian second term, the show continued to tell our queer stories with dignity and heart.

In 2024, I joined the board of It Gets Better, the national nonprofit that supports queer youth through empowering them in their communities. Leading up to Kelly’s show ending, Caragh excitedly told me the producers were interested in a segment for It Gets Better. That’s how I found myself on The Kelly Clarkson Show with Eli, a young trans man who participated in It Gets Better’s Youth Voices program, Kelly, and Las Culturistas hosts, Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers.

In my green room next to Bowen’s and Matt’s, I marveled at the photos of some of Kelly’s favorite performers like Patty Griffin and Ariana Grande. I munched on Cheez-Its while working with her wardrobe department to determine which of the four blazers I’d hauled from Los Angeles to New York would work for the show. In the end, I chose green, and though it’s not the point, when I stepped on stage, Kelly hugged me and said, “You’re wearing my favorite color.”

Backstage with my friends Ross von Metzke, who runs It Gets Better’s communications, and my publicist Tony Morrison, I learned that when Bowen and Matt heard there was an It Gets Better segment, they asked if they could stay on stage with us to share their connections to the organization (tangentially, Bowen appeared in a hilarious parody of IGB on Saturday Night Live). In a lifetime of firsts beyond my dreams, highlighting queer rights with a young trans person, Kelly, Bowen, and Matt for an audience of millions is an experience I’ve yet to fully process.

Amid my general disbelief at being there, what stood out was that in the several pre-interviews and practice sessions I had with Kelly’s team, they allowed me to speak the truth about the administration’s attacks on LGBTQ+ people. On set, with some overwhelm about being on THE KELLY CLARKSON SHOW, I was struck by Kelly’s genuine interest in Eli’s story. She didn’t eye the prompter for what came next. She looked him in the eye, open and inquisitive, as he shared joyful stories of life as a trans young person, and she asked unscripted, thoughtful follow-up questions. At a time when trans people are political pawns, that interest in Eli’s humanity was deeply affecting.

Of course, Jennifer Hudson and Drew Barrymore thankfully regularly uplift LGBTQ+ guests on their shows, but in this time of contraction of queer stories in Hollywood (according to GLAAD’s Where We Are in Film Report), the more Americans who see us living happily and authentically, the better. The Kelly Clarkson Show told countless queer and trans stories over seven seasons. And sapphics will never forget when Kelly sent us into a frenzy with her infamous wink while singing, “You know I like my girls a little bit older” during her cover of The Outfield’s “Your Love.”

For me, witnessing Kelly’s attention to Eli reinforced why, in 2021, I was compelled to interview her and uplift her queer allyship.

“I get thanked for stuff sometimes in my career. It’s the oddest thing to be told ‘thank you’ for something that’s so obvious [embracing LGBTQ+ people],” Kelly said at the time, adding she wished things were different for marginalized folks. “It’s a sad thing to be like, Thank you for acknowledging my existence.”

Shortly after hearing the news of Dolly Parton’s passing today, I recorded a video with some of my thoughts and memories of what she’s meant in my life. Since I heard the news, I’ve barely stopped scrolling through the tributes to her across the internet from those her art and advocacy (like her Imagination Library) touched. When beloved celebrities leave us, we recognize our shared humanity through our experiences with their art — where we first heard a song or the venues where we may have seen them perform. They also represent eras in our lives and loved ones who may no longer be with us, who revered them or introduced us to their music or movies.

I wanted to write a soaring panegyric to Dolly, but the news has derailed me a bit. For now, I’ll share this lightly edited transcript from this video:

I’m listening to Dolly’s 1999 album The Grass Is Blue and thinking about the ways she touched my life and everyone who came across her artistry, sincerity, and humor.

My first awareness of Dolly had to have been when my mom took me to a matinee of 9 to 5. Dolly was a terrific actor and a consummate comedian. The entire “I’m gonna change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot,” speech is impeccable. And of course, that theme song is still relevant today in her ability to see and touch on social issues.

Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Jane Fonda in 9 to 5

My dad introduced me to Dolly’s music when I was a kid. He played her albums going back to her days with Porter Wagoner. I’m listening to her now and thinking about how the loss of a cultural icon like Dolly is a communal experience, and it’s also very personal. I lost my dad in 2004, and I spoke about his love for her at his funeral. Her music always makes me think of him.

I feel lucky enough that I saw her three times in concert, once in Connecticut, here in LA at the Greek Theater in 2008, and then at the Hollywood Bowl about 15 years ago. I was with my good friend Rick at the last show, and Dolly had played every instrument on the stage. Finally, she came out playing a saxophone. And I remember Rick shouting, “A saxophone?!” She did it all.

The effect of her support for LGBTQ+ people throughout her life is immeasurable. I remember hearing her Live and Well album for the first time in 2004, where she changed the lyrics of “Jolene” to “Drag Queen,” sending love and admiration to the drag artists, who she said looked more like her than she ever will, and were prettier than she would ever be, which, of course, we know is not exactly true. She was special.

Speaking of “Jolene,” when I adopted a beautiful tortie cat with “eyes of emerald green” in 2014, naturally, I named her Jolene, a nod to my love for Dolly.

I never interviewed Dolly, though she was at the top of my list of dream interviews.

I did interview Leslie Jordan in 2021 about recording the song “Where the Soul Never Dies” for his gospel album, Company’s Comin’. I will leave you with what the great Leslie Jordan had to say about Dolly in that interview. Here’s Leslie.

“So far as what she’s done for the gay community, I think the fact that she’s just always so accepting of us and loves us so much says so much [especially] when you’re as big a star as her to just accept us for who we are. She’s our Aunt Dolly, and I love her. I love her.”

Rosie O’Donnell hosts Jimmy Kimmel Live

Sporting a pale pink suit with sparkling succulents, Rosie O’Donnell stepped onto the Jimmy Kimmel Live stage last week to a roaring ovation. Unwavering, glowing, and joyful, the former talk show host and perennial lightning rod delivered the first monologue of her four-night stint while the crowd chanted, “Rosie!”

“If you thought the president hated Jimmy Kimmel Live when it was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, buckle up, people, buckle up,” she said at the top, announcing she was undeterred by her long-time bully Donald Trump’s venal threats.

“I’m back. You know, I couldn’t have done it without you, sweetie,” Rosie taunted Trump. “You brought me back, just like you did with fascism and the measles.”

The monologue was peppered with nostalgic callbacks to The Rosie O’Donnell Show, her Emmy-winning talk show that ran from 1996-2022. There, Rosie met her idols (Barbra Streisand and Joni Mitchell among them), fangirled out, and elevated Broadway in the decade following the start of the AIDS epidemic that took so many artists, all while telegraphing her queerness at a risky time on daytime TV.

“I dusted off my Koosh Balls,” she said on Kimmel, referring to the toys she flung from her desk into the audience regularly on her show. Later, she called Kimmel’s sidekick, Guillermo, a “cutie patootie,” her trademark nickname for those who fit that bill. During this summer of bloated fuel prices, an ongoing war with Iran, and attacks on multiple marginalized groups, witnessing Rosie, fearless in her element, cheered on and beloved by the audience and critics alike, felt something like hope.

The actor and comedian decamped to Ireland with her school-aged nonbinary and autistic child ahead of Trump’s second inauguration under his promises to punish his enemies, essentially anyone who’d ever challenged him.

Rosie’s triumphant return to the United States this summer included a tour of her one-woman show, Common Knowledge, media appearances including as a guest on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, and the too-brief residency on Kimmel.

By all accounts, Rosie is thriving in her ancestral home in Ireland. This visit to the U.S., where she unabashedly called out her oppressor, is a form of inspirational resistance and resilience that reminds audiences that Rosie is a truthteller, the Cassandra, and the canary in the coal mine who was vilified for being an outspoken woman who didn’t conform to comp/het norms of femininity and centering men.

Rosie hosting The Rosie O’Donnell Show

Rosie was in my consciousness by the time I saw her in A League of Their Own (1992) in the theater. I’m not sure how I became aware of her, but as a young queer person at a time when few celebrities were publicly out, I felt I understood her. A mainstream film about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that emerged during WWII, when men went to war, there were no out lesbians in Penny Marshall’s film. Though AAGPBL star Maybelle Blair, who came out at 95 and advised on the criminally short-lived A League of Their Own series, confirmed there was an overwhelming number of queer women in the league.

Still, the big-screen A League of Their Own was a crowd-pleaser that starred Geena Davis and Tom Hanks and featured Rosie and Madonna as scene-stealing best friends. Rosie’s character was a tough-talking, gum-smacking hitter who was not written as a lesbian, although Rosie played her as gay; she shared with me when I interviewed her on Inside With the Advocate, a virtual talk show I created to connect people in their homes with beloved artists, early in lockdowns in 2020. For those paying attention, Rosie always spoke to us, though she wouldn’t come out publicly until 2002.

From the jump on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, she pushed back against supposed gender norms, sporting suits and confusing audiences with her crush on Tom Cruise that was strictly aesthetic, non-sexual, and a-romantic. “I just want him to mow my lawn with his shirt off,” she insisted.

Madonna and Rosie in A League of Their Own

In the spring of 1997, my mother called me, excited. She lived in New Jersey, where the Rosie show aired earlier than it did in my home state of Connecticut.

“Hon, you have to watch Rosie today. Ellen [DeGeneres] is on, and they are joking about being ‘Lebanese [a stand-in for lesbian].’ It’s hysterical,” my mom said. It was the lead-up to Ellen’s coming out as her character, Ellen Morgan, on her sitcom Ellen and in life. I tuned in, expecting Ellen to continue dropping hints about her character’s sexuality as she did for at least half a season. But then, Rosie joined in.

“I think I might be Lebanese,” Rosie said, adding of ABC, the network that aired Ellen’s show, “Most networks wouldn’t take the risk.”

It was an extraordinary moment of solidarity that had me roaring with laughter while validating me as a queer woman. Two lesbians on network TV were broadcasting it to millions of homes across the country. It was unprecedented. During our 2020 interview, Rosie explained why she joined Ellen in that moment.

“I didn’t want to leave her out there alone,” she said.

In 2006, Rosie joined The View, and it was a thrill to have her back on daytime, drawing attention to Broadway shows like Spring Awakening. During that run, she took hits for speaking out, and she was eventually villainized for leaving the set during a heated discussion about the Iraq war with former Survivor contestant and conservative ideologue Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

A few months after joining the long-running series, Rosie questioned Trump as a so-called paragon of moral authority when he essentially pardoned Miss USA (the pageant he owned) contestant, Tara Conner, who’d been caught partying against the rules. In that moment, Rosie called the then-star of The Apprentice and multi-bankrupted businessman a “snake-oil salesman.” A true comedian, she flipped her hair over her head, curled her lips, and mimicked his speech pattern to a tee.

It was the start of an ongoing back-and-forth and his eventual obsession with revenge. Even as he rose to power, Rosie held fast, speaking out about his chicanery on social media and literally painting him as red-faced and bloated. A move to Ireland at a time when he doubled down on his enemies made sense for her protection, though she refused to be silent as he threatened to revoke her U.S. citizenship.

In 2020, Rosie hosted a virtual return of The Rosie O’Donnell Show to raise money for The Actors Fund to help theater workers affected by lockdowns. The show brimmed with Broadway luminaries like Audra McDonald, Idina Menzel, Patti LuPone, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and more. In those dark hours, from her crafting room, she created a space for community and hope.

Rosie on Inside With the Advocate

Last week, on Kimmel’s show, she addressed the orange elephant in the room while uplifting audiences with laughter, nostalgia, and authenticity.

“Hi, I know you’re watching,” she said with a wry smile in one of the monologues. For four nights, she hosted friends and Broadway stars like her new man crush, Sydney James Harcourt, who recently wowed audiences strutting in a jockstrap (among other things) in Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

Most of all, Rosie was joyfully herself, calling out her queerness from the desk of a network talk show at a time when LGBTQ+ people are increasingly erased, silenced, and scapegoated. In her final monologue, Rosie joked that she returned to TV to audition to “become the next Golden Bachelorette, gay edition.” Earlier in the week, guest Hannah Waddingham regaled the audience with an anecdote about being nude in a spa with her Ride or Die costar Octavia Spencer, sharing that a woman spied them fiddling with the buttons in the shower and sidled away.

“What an idiot. I would have stripped naked and jumped right in there,” Rosie said.

Rosie’s return to American TV was a masterclass in humor, grace, and confronting her bully. And she’s indicated she’d host another daytime talk show centered on hope. My social feeds have teemed with homages to Rosie since her return. While reading countless panegyrics to her, naturally, a musical theater reference came to mind.

“Well, hello, Rosie. It’s so nice to have you back where you belong,” on our TV screens.

It is a sobering fact that Hollywood is greenlighting fewer films with LGBTQ+ characters, according to GLAAD’s latest Where We Are in Film report. Still, audacious filmmakers, many of whom are queer, have made LGBTQ+ films across a spectrum of storytelling and genres that deserve to be celebrated and supported for their creativity and boldness.

Trans directors like Jane Schoenbrun and Siobhan McCarthy have upended tropes in horror and raunchy comedies, respectively. Meanwhile, Dylan Meyer expanded the stoner/buddy comedy, and Hayley Kiyoko has tapped into mid-aughts nostalgia with a timeless sapphic coming-of-age story. Other filmmakers have embraced sex positivity and kink at a time when our bodies and bedrooms are being policed.

This is not a comprehensive list of queer films this year. These are films released this year that have made me laugh, sob, and think (I have not included films that received a limited release in 2025 and a wider release in 2026). This is not homework, nor should it feel that way, because these are terrific films, but I hope you’ll support these movies and others as these artists respond to this challenging time for queer people and other marginalized groups.

Pillion

Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling in Pillion (A24)

Shy gay guy Colin (Harry Melling) finds his niche with Alexander Skarsgård’s leather-onesie-clad motorcycle daddy, Ray. There’s plenty of BDSM and sex in Pillion, with a love story at its core, though not always an easy one. Ultimately, Pillion is a story of discovery and self-love when Colin learns who he is, what he wants, and how to safely receive it.

My interview with Melling and Lighton on Holding Space with Tracy

The Christophers

Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen in The Christophers (NEON)

An exquisite near two-hander between Michaela Coel (Lori) and Ian McKellen Julian), Julian’s adult children, played by James Corden and Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning, hire Lori, an art forger, to finish a valuable series of paintings their father abandoned so they can live off the money.

The Christophers, as the paintings are called, are a clue to Julian’s past and someone he once loved. Versatile director Steven Soderbergh’s film is a delight as queer characters played by Coel and McKellen verbally thrust and parry while theorizing about art.

Mother Mary

Michaela Coel and Anne Hathaway in Mother Mary (A24)

What a gift that we got two queerish Michaela Coel films in the same season. Mother Mary is more psychosexual than overtly queer; David Lowery’s film excavates the strained relationship between Anne Hathaway’s pop star goddess Mother Mary and Coel’s Sam, the one fashion designer who truly saw her. This film gets extra points from me for casting Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer as Sam’s amanuensis, who gives shades of the assistant Marlene in the sapphic classic The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant.

She’s the He

Misha Osherovich and Nico Carney in She’s the He (Obscured Releasing)

The losing-your-virginity, raunchy comedy film gets a trans makeover in the heartfelt and funny She’s the He from writer and director Siobhan McCarthy. Best friends Ethan (Misha Osherovich) and Alex (Nico Carney) are keen to lose it all while dodging rumors that they’re a gay couple. In an attempt to stem the gay rumors, they pose as trans women. The ruse allows one of them to realize she is trans. In the wrong hands, this premise could go terribly awry. McCarthy, who is trans and nonbinary, and the cast of trans and queer actors lend crucial authenticity to this deeply funny high school comedy.

Girls Like Girls

Myra Molloy and Maya Da Costa in Girls Like Girls (Focus Features)

Set in the mid-aughts but timeless, Hayley Kiyoko’s coming-of-age queer love story Girls Like Girls is a heartwarming tale of first love that viscerally transported me back to my heady, solitary experience of being a queer young person falling in love for the first time.

Maya da Costa stars as Coley, a pensive teenager who moves to a rural Oregon town in early summer to live with the dad (Zach Braff) she barely knows. During the early days of a languid summer, Coley rides her yellow bicycle through town, staving off boredom. Eventually, she meets and falls for Myra Molloy’s charismatic Sonya, whose on-again/off-again boyfriend, Trenton (Levon Hawke), disrupts their moments together. The film is a love letter to summer and nostalgia, with Kiyoko’s sun-drenched shots of treetops rolling by as Coley pedals through town.

My interview with Kiyoko, Da Costa, and Molloy

Maddie’s Secret

Kate Berlant and John Early in Maddie’s Secret (Magnolia Pictures)

Catnip for cinephiles, John Early’s Maddie’s Secret satirizes the modern housewife/influencer and pays homage to mid-century Douglas Sirk melodramas like Magnificent Obsession. A food influencer, Maddie (Early in serious drag), is on the rise when she develops an eating disorder. Early’s oft-comedy partner, Kate Berlant, plays Maddie’s devoted lesbian best friend Deena.

The Invite

Penelope Cruz, Edward Norton, Seth Rogen, and Olivia Wilde in The Invite (A24)

A four-hander among couples in the vein of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and God of Carnage, Olivia Wilde’s The Invite dips its toe in polyamory with some queer flourishes. There’s booze, weed, discussion of pegging, and Penélope Cruz in another queer role (I’m not mad at it). Wilde and Seth Rogen star as Angela and Joe, a bickering couple on the rocks whose worldview is upended when they spend an evening with their polyamorous upstairs neighbors, Piña (Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton). Throughout the course of the evening, Piña shares that she’s bisexual and that she and Hawk are attracted to Angela and Joe. In an interview about the film, Wilde shared that Cruz improvised a kiss with her.

I Want Your Sex

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex (Magnolia Pictures)

It’s been a good year for Olivia Wilde in queer(ish) films too. New Queer Cinema legend Gregg Araki’s latest is a call to action to Gen Z to enjoy sex more, he’s said. Wilde plays Erika Tracy, a sexually fluid contemporary artist with a troubling penchant for dominating and having sex with choice employees. Erika’s latest distraction is Elliot, an assistant in a sexless relationship with Minerva (a wonderfully droll Charli XCX). There’s kink, murder (or is there?), a disappearance, and nods to Sunset Boulevard and Brian De Palma’s voyeuristic new wave classic, Body Double. The cast includes faves Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs, Mason Gooding, and Margaret Cho.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (MUBI)

The third feature from Jane Schoenbrun, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, is a two-hour nerdgasm for cinema lovers. Sure, the film is rife with the kind of self-reflexivity that has become the hallmark of horror movies like Scream. But Schoenbrun nods to the language of horror and psychological thrillers popularized by Hitchcock, De Palma, David Lynch, and David Cronenberg and inverts the tropes. At the heart of the film is a sapphic love story between Hannah Einbinder’s eager filmmaker Kris and Gillian Anderson’s reclusive scream queen, Billie. Not only does the queer couple live to tell the tale in Schoenbrun’s film, but she hands control of the narrative to the film’s central trans character, Little Death (Jack Haven), upending the anti-trans trope that began with Psycho. Queer actors including Jasmin Savoy Brown, Quintessa Swindell, and Eva Victor costar.

My interview with Einbinder on the red carpet of the Miasma premiere.

The Wrong Girls

Alia Shawkat and Kristen Stewart in The Wrong Girls (NEON)

From the mind of writer/director Dylan Meyer comes this psychedelic ride of a stoner/buddy/espionage comedy replete with iridescent squids and talking cats. Kristen Stewart (who is married to Meyer) plays Frankie while Alia Shawkat is Molly, best friends who are better at building a bong than holding down jobs. They become embroiled in a fight for a psychedelic mind-control drug.

The Wrong Girls is not queer, per se, but Meyer, who wanted to celebrate platonic friendship, says her film is still very gay, and it is! Lakeith Stanfield, Tony Hale, Kate McKinnon, and Geena Davis costar with Seth Rogen and Kamail Nanjiani voicing the cats.

Full interview with Dylan Meyer on Holding Space with Tracy LIVE on Instagram

Dreams in Nightmares (in select theaters Aug. 21)

Dezi Bing, Denée Benton, and Sasha Compère in Dreams in Nightmares (Lunette Films)

Writer/director Shatara Michelle Ford’s sophomore feature re-imagines the road trip for three Black queer friends navigating modern-day America. The Gilded Age’s Denée Benton plays Z, who, after a layoff, joins friends Lauren (Dezi Bing) and Tasha (Single Drunk Female star Sasha Compère) on an odyssey to find their friend Kel (Mars Storm Rucker), who’s off the grid. Mysticism and joy are interspersed with the stark reality of traveling while Black and queer in America. Queer actors Jasmin Savoy Brown, Charlie Barnett, and Molly Bernard also star.

With Dudney Joseph Jr. who played Munkustrap in Cats: The Jellicle Ball

An ardent theater kid who would soon discover I was queer, I was 15 when the original Broadway cast album of Cats entered my consciousness. In my teenage bedroom in small-town Connecticut, my turntable sat below a ceramic mask of comedy and drama that my aunt surprised me with from a trip to Mardi Gras, an indication of my love of theater. Cross-legged on my orange shag carpet beside that stereo, I entered the world of Jennyanydots, Rum Tum Tugger, Skimbleshanks, and the rest of the felines. Before long, I knew every word of T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats that Andrew Lloyd Webber set to music.

I’d been obsessed with Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita since I heard Patti LuPone’s “beautiful brass trap” perform “A New Argentina” on the Tony Awards. A cat lover and owner from birth, Cats formed a massive Venn diagram of things that had shaped me. Over the years, I bought Eliot’s book of poems (I recently found the tattered copy in a box of books my mother has held for me since I moved to Los Angeles 20 years ago) and the London cast album (with Elaine Paige as Grizabella) that was released two years before the Broadway version. What I learned from my obsessive, immersive adventure was indeed ineffable. Those Practical Cats had their names that would never be spoken, and I had an emerging queer identity that I didn’t know how to name.

Sometime in my Junior year of high school, my mother and stepfather took my stepsister and me to see Cats on Broadway, my dreams of someday appearing on a Broadway stage coming into focus. Later, part of my high school graduation gift included a trip to New York and tickets to the show. I was 17, and I was told I could invite a friend. It was the first time I would be in New York City without a chaperone. Just a few hours’ drive or train ride from my home in Central Connecticut, New York City had beckoned to me from the Tappan Zee Bridge as we regularly drove to where my stepfather had lived near the Jersey Shore. I fantasized about moving to the city and starring on Broadway. What I had yet to realize about the city was that it symbolized for me a place where I could be fully myself.

With Garnet Williams (Bombalurina, understudy/swing for Grizabella and Bustopher Jones)

On a pristine summer day after my graduation, Tim — we dated for a while after performing in a regional youth theater company together — and I took Amtrak to Grand Central Station for our day out in NY. It didn’t matter that he’d broken up with me shortly after my prom, where the most romantic thing that happened was hearing The Smiths for the first time. I wanted to experience NY and Cats with him. Though it wasn’t stated, I knew down deep that we shared something we weren’t ready to divulge, and a few years later, we came out to each other; the floodgates about how we always suspected the other might be gay opened in a beautiful moment of bonding. There was a sheen of magic on the day we saw Cats — two queer kids kicking around New York, simultaneously ascending as we witnessed the late great Laurie Beechman sing “Memory” as Grizabella.

In May of 2026, I was in NY to tape a segment of The Kelly Clarkson Show with It Gets Better (I am a board member). Without any other hard plans, my friend/publicist/fairy godmother, Tony Morrison, said, “Let’s just get tickets to Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” Since my teens, I haven’t listened to the music on the regular, and Cats, like Grizabella, has fallen into some disrepute. Some of it is due to Webber’s ubiquity, but mostly because of the 2019 movie that is so bad it doesn’t begin to make for good camp. Though I hadn’t listened to the music for some time, it soon became clear that it’s imprinted on me. When the overture began, the audience clacked their fans and the gorgeous company of BIPOC queer and trans performers belted “Jellical songs for Jellicle cats.” I was at attention, the words and music coursing through me. I was a lightning rod from my past to present, and it took all I had not to jump out of my seat and join them.

The cast of Cats: The Jellicle Ball

The Jellicle Ball hit Broadway this spring during a vibrantly queer year for shows including Titanique, The Rocky Horror Show, The Lost Boys, and the play Dog Day Afternoon. The reimagined version of the show is set in the queer and trans Black and Latine world of Ballroom, which began in NY in the 1970s and birthed real chosen family with the Houses and their mothers and fathers. Queer producers like Lena Waithe and Cynthia Erivo signed on to Jellicle Ball, and the show featured two guest judges of some renown at each performance since it opened.

That night in May, I exited the theater with Bustopher Jones and the Magical Mr. Mistoffelees on a loop in my brain. The show, with its glorious cast, brought me joy and something close to hope at a time when the world feels on fire.

With Julia Knitel, Sydney James Harcourt, and the cast of Jellicle Ball

I’m not a Broadway insider with the knowledge to ascertain which shows will make it past a single season. So when it was announced that Jellicle Ball would close on August 8, I was surprised and gutted for the cast and creatives and for the audience members who would never experience that profound, very queer joy.

A few weeks before the announcement, I was in NY for Pride and decided I’d stay for a while. Behind the scenes, Tony had secured a guest-judge appearance for me at the Jellicle Ball's July 3rd matinee. Though I moderated a talkback for Pride in 2024 for Paula Vogel’s Mother Play (notably at a theater across the street from Jellicle Ball), this was the first time I would be on stage during a performance of a show — MY BROADWAY DEBUT!

Just as the excitement welled up in me, the nerves hit. What would I wear, as I hadn’t packed for a stage appearance? How would my makeup not melt off in this 100-degree weather? Who will photograph this auspicious moment? Will people know what Holding Space is or will they wonder why the hell I’m up there?

With Jonathan Burke (Mungojerrie)

My friend Alex, the former editor-in-chief of The Advocate, took the train up from D.C. and accompanied me to the show, where we were seated at a banquet at the front of the theater. A producer and later Dudney Joseph Jr., who plays Munkustrap, and Nora Schnell, who plays Bustopher Jones, stopped by with notes on what would unfold for my approximately 25 minutes on stage.

Before the show began, I introduced myself to the stunning ethereal woman in a sparkling sheer number who I assumed was the other guest judge, and she was. It turns out, I would be sharing the judge’s table with Julia Knitel, a Tony-nominated Broadway veteran and a current star of Operation Mincemeat. I was told Julia would walk the runway, and immediately thought I couldn’t cop out of walking it, no matter how stressed the thought of it made me.

When my name was announced, one of the cats walked me up the steps to the stage. Julia floated down the runway like a sexy fairy. I sauntered to the end of the runway, removed the sheer, spangly outer jacket my friend Anna had lent to me, draped it over my shoulder, smacked the floor with it, then turned on a heel and strutted away. From there, I needed only react to the stunning array of talent performing before me onstage while listening for Munkustrap’s cues. Next to me, Julia was relaxed, engaged, stunning. I tried to match/complement her energy, and we hit it off. “You ate that,” she later told me, and I was sheepish and grateful.

For the span of about five musical numbers, I was afforded the view of my lifetime looking out from the Broadhurst Theatre stage at the performers framed by an audience who were cheering and clacking their fans emblazoned with “Come One, Come All.” That phrase from Eliot’s poem “The Song of the Jellicles” and “The Invitation to the Jellicle Ball” in the musical felt deeper, queerer than ever in that moment.

With Dante Nadir Wilder (understudy/swing for Munkustrap, Tugger, and more)

At one point during my time on stage, Sydney James Harcourt, who plays Tugger, had just finished shaking his tail in my face, then jumped down behind me to take a video for social. “Holding Space,” he declared as our sweaty faces pressed together on what was the hottest day of the year so far in NY. And I was in heaven. Rather, I was “up up up past the Russell Hotel / up up up up to the Heavyside Layer.”

Eventually, another cat walked me back to my seat, where for the remainder of the show, each member of the cast made eye contact or acknowledged me in some way, drawing me into the performance. The experience ranks up there with the 2023 Brandi Carlile show at the Hollywood Bowl where she surprised the audience by introducing my all-time faves Annie Lennox and Joni Mitchell. There was so much goodness that I left my body and could barely process that it was happening.

At intermission, women in the serpentine line for the restroom told me “good job” or “You were great.” At the end, a Holding Space fan asked for my picture, and I met with several cast members who came out to say hello. Because they had two shows on that sweltering day, most of the cast took advantage of their brief break. But I was grateful to have a moment with Jonathan Burke (Mungojerrie), Garnet Williams (Bombalurina and understudy/swing for Grizabella and Bustopher Jones), and Donte Nadir Wilder (understudy/swing for Munkustrap, Tugger, and more).

With Tony Morrison (founder of Morrison Media Group) in May

Cats: The Jellicle Ball closed three days ago, and its loss is a blow to queer unfettered joy and history. The show that pays homage to the ancestors of ballroom culture also stars queer Broadway legend André De Shields (Old Deuteronomy) and ballroom’s own Junior Labeija (Gus).

Not long after it was announced that Jellicle Ball would close, videos and hand-wringing about the state of Broadway, theater rental rates, and ticket prices flourished, and I learned I have much to learn about the business of Broadway. To me, Jellicle Ball would have run forever.

Then, a piece of good news! It was finally announced there would be a Jellicle Ball cast album to immortalize this historic production. This show, which began downtown, moved to Broadway, and landed three Tony Awards, was deservedly utilizing its nine lives. For me, the experience of seeing the musical from the audience in May and then from the stage in July will stay with me for the rest of my many lives. I imagine myself buying the cast album on vinyl and wearing out the grooves as I did as a queer kid listening to the original. And like my own version of “Gus: the Theatre Cat,” I’ll regale friends for decades to come with “anecdotes drawn from my palmiest days” when I was on stage with Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

“Some flowers bloom where the green grows / Our praise is not for them / But the ones who bloom in the bitter snow / We raise our cups to them,” Amber Gray’s Persephone exalts in “We Raise Our Cups.” The line acknowledges those suffering under Hades’s rule in the Underworld, while paying wider tribute to all who embrace individuality and difference.

Eva Noblezada as Eurydice and Reeve Carney as Orpheus in Hadestown

“What Hadestown has done for representation is it’s used its platform to really empower everybody,” Eva Noblezada, who originated Eurydice and plays her in the film, tells Holding Space with Tracy. “You see every single type of body on that stage throughout any production around the world. Seeing yourself somewhere that makes you feel empowered is such a beautiful way of creating community and, you know, empowering artists or people to make change in the world that they want to see.”

The musical is based on folk musician Anaïs Mitchell’s 2010 concept album (with Ani DiFranco as Persephone) that retells the Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone myths, set against the road to hell, with the messenger Hermes as the show’s narrator. Twenty years after Hadestown was first sung through on stage in 2006 and more than 25 centuries sinceVirgil penned the myth, its message resonates.

Noblezada as Eurydice with the Fates (Allie Daniel, left)

The pro-shot film was recorded in March, 2025 at the Lyric Theatre in London’s West End. As André De Shields, who plays Hermes, says, “[Hadestown] began at the National Theatre in London, where there was actually a mix of cultures, the British and the American, which is an essential part of realizing what Hadestown is.”

“When we had this opportunity to put it on the silver screen, it was either bring the British to New York or send the American OGs back to where the magic had started,” says De Shields, who is currently starring as Old Deuteronomy in Cats: The Jellicle Ball on Broadway.

Noblezada as Eurydice, André De Shields as Hermes, and Reeve Carney as Orpheus

The film stars original cast members Noblezada, De Shields, Gray, Reeve Carney as Orpheus, and Patrick Page (in a specially designed boot due to an injury) as Hades alongside British cast members, including Allie Daniel, a trans actress garnering acclaim as one of the Fates.

As the myth goes, Orpheus, a poet and dreamer, travels to the Underworld to free his true love Eurydice and bring her back to the land of the living, if only he can resist the temptation to turn and look at her on the road back from hell. The story from Virgil and Ovid has been immortalized across artistic mediums for centuries, including in last year’s Hamnet and Celine Sciamma’s 2019 sapphic masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. In that film, three women begin a polemic about why [spoiler alert] Orpheus turns around just before Eurydice is free, sending her back to the underworld for eternity. While much ado has been made about Orpheus’s move, for Carney, who originated the role of Orpheus in the musical and returns for the film, the answer is simple.

Patrick Page as Hades and Amber Gray as Persephone

“[Orpheus turns around] so that you don’t have to,” Carney says, acknowledging the original story is a tragedy and a cautionary tale. “I see a huge hopefulness and optimism in this piece. And so, Orpheus turns around so that you don’t have to. That’s the way I look at it.”

Meanwhile, Persephone and Hades find their way back to one another as Hades pauses on forcing his workers (a stunning ensemble of dancers in the film) to build his wall and remembers how new love with Persephone felt. Eventually, Hades allows her to re-enter the world of the living, ending the bitter winter and spurring spring.

During Hadestown’s early rehearsals for the original run, Page affected a limp as Hades for a few rehearsals, something that was nixed, but inadvertently became a part of the character when the actor (Schmigadoon!, the series) tore his Achilles Heel ahead of filming.

Carney and De Shields

“There was something in me that wanted to embody his woundedness because he’s so guarded and he puts on such a good front of being all powerful and omniscient that I thought there should be some indication of the fact that he’s actually quite injured,” Page says. “That was 2016. So almost 10 years later, the limp came back and wouldn’t be denied.”

What also can’t be denied is the myth’s application to modern social issues that were becoming increasingly relevant in 2016 and more so in 2026. The wealthy Hades controls the Underworld, building a wall to “keep us free,” he informs his captive workers in the haunting number, “Why We Build the Wall.” The Underworld spins at his petty whims, and it’s nearly impossible to avoid equating him with a certain current leader of this country (though Hades arguably has charm). Given Hades likeness to a certain plutocrat whose administration is scapegoating BIPOC, queer, and trans people, the film’s diverse cast informs Hadestown’s prescience.

Carney and Noblezada

With the film’s release, Hadestown’s message expands its reach. Noblezada (The Great Gatsby on Broadway) hopes “the message of this show, which is come see how the world could be,” will inspire audiences. “Hopefully, everyone sees themselves and goes, Nothing can get in the way of you expressing yourself and living your truth.”

“Coming back to that and meeting that new cast and being able to create that story with them was very special,” she adds. “I’m so glad that we’ve been able to immortalize it.”

Watch Noblezada and Carney speak about the filming process below.

(Some spoilers if you haven’t watched the finale.)

In the Hacks finale, the opposites-attract duo of Jean Smart’s Deborah and Hannah Einbinder’s Ava take a well-deserved European vacation. Ava struggles to enjoy herself under the weight of knowing Deborah has been diagnosed with cancer and has chosen not to treat it (watch the episode to find out what happens). They snipe and parry as they have throughout the series, though this time it’s softer and grounded in their deep platonic love. Their pairing is so integral to the series from Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky that Hacks star Mark Indelicato, who plays Deborah’s assistant Damien, says the show is at its best when it’s just Deborah and Ava.

Jean Smart as Deborah and Mark Indelicato as Damien on Hacks

“The thing is that they are partners. I don’t know if this is me just writing fanfiction, but I genuinely feel like they’re in a very serious relationship,” Indelicato told me on Holding Space with Tracy. “I get so jazzed when I see them, you know, not a B story. They’re the A, B, and C story.”

Indelicato grew up playing sassy Justin Suarez on Ugly Betty in the aughts, and went on to star in Gloria Calderón Kellett’s intergenerational portrait of an extended Latine family in With Love. Since 2021, he’s played Damien over five seasons of Hacks, about canceled TV writer Ava and Las Vegas comedian Deborah Vance, who are thrust together when they’re both in need of an image rehab.

Hannah Einbinder as Ava and Jean Smart as Deborah on Hacks

From the pilot, Ava and Deborah’s chemistry is kinetic. An energy sapphic audiences noted immediately. It helps that Ava, who is bisexual, found herself dreaming of intimate moments with her more mature boss. The duo navigates career highs and lows, betrayal, and forgiveness throughout the series.

This season, the creators wrote a scenario in which the fantasy of seeing Deborah and Ava as a couple plays out in the “Montecito” episode, which stars Cherry Jones and Leslie Bibb as a wealthy lesbian couple in an open relationship. Deborah and Ava spend the weekend at their estate pretending to be girlfriends while Deborah tries to wrest a Carol Burnett jumpsuit from Jones’s Kelly, a collector of Hollywood memorabilia.

“It gave the lesbians what they wanted,” Indelicato says of the episode that he calls “one of the best episodes of the series. Hacks has always featured hilarious, heartfelt performances from Downs’s Jimmy and Meg Stalter’s Kayla as Deborah’s and Ava’s managers, Carl Clemons-Hopkins as Deborah’s COO, Marcus, and Kaitlin Olsen as Deborah’s daughter D.J., and many more. Still, Indelicato calls Deborah and Ava “the soul of the show.”

“I love the ensemble cast. But there’s something electric about it just being an episode of them. Most of my favorite episodes are when it’s just Ava and Deborah,” he says, referring to the “Montecito” episode. “The gag of Deborah and Ava cosplaying girlfriends!”

Mark Indelicato as Damien on Hacks

While Hacks’ characters have moved on to the next part of their lives off-screen, the show remains in the zeitgeist. It landed 24 Emmy nominations for its final season, beating records for a single season previously held by The Studio and The Bear with 23 nods each.

Watch Indelicato’s full episode of Holding Space with Tracy below or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to this Substack. Every bit helps me tell more of our stories. Thank you to all of my subscribers.

This was a full-circle moment of the past six months for me. In December, he was my first guest on my podcast, Holding Space with Tracy. To interview him a second time at the St. James Theatre was a pinch-me moment. During the heatwave, I lolled in my friend’s 4th-floor walk-up reading his memoir for two days. I joked with Frankie that I read his memoir in my underwear.

“That’s how I wrote it,” he laughed.

Supergay is a delightful and sometimes harrowing read, in part because Frankie bares all about his drinking and drugging, an addiction that surfaced a few years into his first stint on Broadway in Mamma Mia in 2006. Seated in the Titanique dressing room, Frankie shared that at nine years sober, the light was back in his eyes and he savors connecting with fans at the stage door each night after performing as Victor Garber, the ship’s captain who belts “I Drove All Night” after hitting the iceberg.

During our 20-minute conversation, we chatted about queerness as a superpower, the thesis and heart of his memoir.

“There was a time, and we are kind of almost back there, where we are being told that being [queer] makes us wrong, makes us evil, we don’t deserve rights, we shouldn’t be able to go into bathrooms… What the hell is going on?” Frankie says.

“But [being queer] makes us unbelievably special, makes us more communicative. It makes us more connected, more emotional, more able to articulate our feelings through art,” he adds. “I think it makes me a superhuman, so that’s why I wrote this book.”

Watch/listen to this special Backstage on Broadway episode of Holding Space with Tracy. Please like and subscribe to the podcast. Your support helps me continue telling stories about art and LGBTQ+ identity. Thank you for being here!

Holding Space with Tracy on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

Around the same time, I interviewed her for the series on set where it was taped in Santa Clarita, California (around the corner from Six Flags Magic Mountain). I was parked in the character Davia’s (played by Emma Hunton) bedroom while the cast circulated among select journalists. Sherry was one of several I spoke with that day. We discussed visibility and what it meant to her to bring her queer Asian character Alice to the screen when there were few TV characters at those intersections. We’ve since spoken at least 10 times for interviews for Good Trouble and the big-screen raunch fest Joy Ride.

Holding space with Sherry Cola

As Sherry’s star continues to soar, she remains grounded, deeply funny, and dedicated to the communities she is part of as a bisexual woman who was born in Shanghai.

Something I wasn’t expecting when I interviewed Sherry long-form for my podcast was how often she would turn the tables and begin interviewing me. There’s an abiding joy in knowing one another through the years that is not lost on me.

In this episode, we get into Sherry playing a different kind of character in Netflix’s hit Little Brother, her pivotal role on Shrinking this season, and ramping up her TV career on I Love Dick before landing a lead on Good Trouble. Sherry also discusses LGBTQ+ Pride, working with heroes like Keanu Reeves and Christopher Meloni, why we need a Good Trouble-The Bold Type crossover movie, and how she may adopt the moniker Bisexual Buddha.

Me with the amazing Peppermint!

When I struck out on my own last November, I fulfilled a dream of mine to launch a podcast to hold intimate conversations with artists I admire for their talent and dedication to uplifting marginalized communities. Holding Space with Tracy’s first season began with the charismatic powerhouse Frankie Grande, and the inspiring guests just kept coming. We featured Shrinking’s Michael Urie, Grey’s Anatomy’s Alexis Floyd, and musicians Jake Wesley Rogers and Kat Cunning, among others, all recorded in Los Angeles.

We launched season 2 on June 26 with a deep dive with the inimitable Peppermint, one of the grand marshals of New York City Pride.

This bi-coastal season is anchored by a series of interviews recorded at the historic Stonewall Inn in New York City, with several other episodes recorded here in our Los Angeles studio.

Peppermint touches on what the storied Stonewall Inn means to her, becoming a grand marshal of NYC Pride, her history with drag, costarring in Survival of the Thickest, and more. The advocate and artist also answers the pod’s central question about which piece of art has helped shape her life.

This season, look for artists and luminaries including Peppermint (Survival of the Thickest), Michael James Scott (Aladdin), Harvey Guillen (The Rocky Horror Show), Marti Cummings (drag artist and activist), Plasma (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Stacy Lentz (co-owner of The Stonewall Inn), Mark Indelicato (Hacks), Valorie Curry (The Boys), Sherry Cola (Little Brother), and a bonus episode with Lena Hall (Your Friends and Neighbors).

Watch the season 2 trailer here.

Throughout the season, we center storytelling’s ability to bring about joy and resistance, and to preserve our history.

Thank you to all who are listening and watching. It’s a labor of love to produce a podcast in a busy market, and I’m grateful to all who support Holding Space with Tracy.

Watch the full episode below on YouTube, on Spotify, or on Apple Podcasts.

By now, you may have seen Ariana Grande’s vulnerable moment alone on stage during her Eternal Sunshine Tour stop in Los Angeles just over a week ago. Perched on a stool and bathed in purple hues, the megastar teared up while an audience of 20,000 cheered and held up their camera lights.

“Holy shit. LA, thank you so much,” Ariana said, while wiping away a tear with her lace glove. “Are you kidding? What the hell?” she remarked as the approbation continued.

It was my first time at an Ariana Grande concert, and her presence and openness moved me, along with the sheer artistry and creativity in her performance. It struck me that with her massive platform, Ariana has made space for her fans and for those who need it.

During the show, a central set piece at the top of the stage served as a mutable dollhouse, its décor shifting as she took the audience on a trip through her eras. An array of dancers and tight choreography complemented one another as they moved through the house, pausing in meaningful tableaus. Of course, the guiding light cutting through the screams of approval, “I love yous,” and applause at the Crypto Arena were Ariana’s soaring vocals.

Just days before I attended her show, as a guest of her mother, the most generous and warm Joan Grande, Ariana announced the launch of her Brighter Days Ahead Foundation, an organization supporting LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people. The magnitude of her talent and advocacy were in lockstep in my mind as the evening unfolded.

During the literal countdown to the show, where a digital clock on the stage counted backwards to its start, Joan pointed to a scrim lit in purple with performers posed behind it, and told me, “That’s Ariana in the middle.”

It’s not lost on me that I was afforded the enormous gift of witnessing my first Ariana concert with her mom, whom I met at the GLAAD Awards in March. At the time, when I mentioned I’d never seen Ariana live, she said, “You’re coming to an Ariana Grande concert with me.” And she made it happen.

A multimedia extravaganza, Ariana’s show features video interludes taking the audience on an odyssey of healing and self-discovery. Should the character Ariana in the video erase her memories to remove pieces of a painful past, a la the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or should she hold on to them? Nods to the mystical and Alice in Wonderland are woven into the visuals as she spirals down a rabbit hole. Eventually, she is with her inner child. At one point, Joan called out a Wizard of Oz allusion to me. Everything felt full circle, considering my viral Wicked moment with Ariana and Cynthia Erivo 18 months earlier.

For the crowd outfitted for multiple Ariana Grande eras, she opened with the banger, “yes, and,” and performed “Saturn Returns Interlude,” “eternal sunshine,” “Rain on Me,” and so on through her oeuvre. By the time she reached the final act, which included “hate that i made you love me” and “supernatural,” there was that extraordinary moment of empathy alone with the crowd.

“This is so overwhelming in the most beautiful way ever. Thank you so much. I love you so much, and I always have,” she said through tears. “Thank you so much for always being such a loving, safe presence in my life.”

A natural comedian, Ariana brought levity to the moment, sharing that she was wearing contact lenses.

“It’s so nice to see you for the first time and to be able to connect,” she told the crowd, eliciting warm laughter. “It’s so powerful.”

As Ariana held the crowd enrapt, I gazed from the box where I’d been so graciously hosted. I considered her ability to stay present in that overwhelming moment, along with her impact on her devoted fans and her advocacy for marginalized people as an artist with the courage to stand up to injustice. Recently, she called out the Trump Administration for co-opting her music to promote ICE’s heinous acts. The Brighter Days Ahead Foundation, with funds going to on-the-ground organizations like Translash and SAGE USA, was front of mind as the superstar sent her message of love and gratitude to her fans. At a time of much discourse about the intersection of art and advocacy, Ariana has modeled how to do both with grace and, as few can do, a well-placed whistle note.

Myra Molloy as Sonya and Maya da Costa as Coley in Girls Like Girls (Focus Features)

Set in the mid-aughts but timeless, Hayley Kiyoko’s coming-of-age queer love story Girls Like Girls is a heartwarming tale of first love that viscerally transported me back to my heady, solitary experience of being a queer young person falling in love for the first time.

It was the spring of my junior year of high school when I had my first kiss with a girl, well, the first time it wasn’t under the pretense of “practicing for boys.” The week before, we had wrapped our spring musical, Godspell, where I played an apostle and sang “Day by Day.” A cool senior girl in the ensemble and I had grown close during rehearsals and myriad debauched cast parties. At some point, she became my de facto ride home from rehearsals. In her beige Volkswagen Rabbit, we talked for hours about everything and nothing while Simon and Garfunkel serenaded us from my boom box. Each time we parted, my brain raced for hours alone in my bed with thoughts of her and why I was having them. That first kiss that truly mattered to me happened on a Friday night in the foyer of the condo where I lived with my mother in high school. That Saturday, overwrought with what we would now call limerence and terrified that someone would discover my feelings for another girl, I strolled the streets of my small hometown thinking about the kiss and willing my crush to drive by in her Rabbit so it could happen again.

It’s a time I don’t think about all that often, some decades later, but occasionally an empathetic piece of art stops me in my tracks, with my sense memory of it. That was my experience viewing Girls Like Girls, Kiyoko’s personal story that began as a song and a video in 2015, became a YA novel that she wrote in 2023, and is now a feature film she wrote (with Chloe Okuno and Stefanie Scott) and directed.

“I just think about accessibility. I know that there were queer people before me and that there was representation before me, but I don’t feel like I had enough mainstream access to find those stories, whether it was books or film or television,” Kiyoko tells me in an interview for It Gets Better. “My goal as a creative and as a storyteller has been, how do we make this more accessible? How do we prove to the world that our stories are not niche, they are mainstream, there are millions of us, and love is love.”

“That’s been my approach, whether it’s been through music, writing books, now directing a feature film. I want to be able to reach the people that so desperately need to see themselves represented on the screen. Like, imagine living a life never seeing yourself,” she adds.

Hayley Kiyoko directs Da Costa and Molloy (Focus Features)

Maya da Costa stars as Coley, a pensive teenager who moves to a rural Oregon town in early summer to live with the dad (Zach Braff) she barely knows. During the early days of a languid summer, Coley rides her yellow bicycle through town, staving off boredom. Eventually, she meets and falls for Myra Molloy’s charismatic Sonya, whose on-again/off-again boyfriend, Trenton (Levon Hawke), disrupts their moments together. The film is a love letter to summer and nostalgia, with Kiyoko’s sun-drenched shots of treetops rolling by as Coley pedals through town. Hallmarks of the mid-aughts, like flirty messages over AIM, a denim jacket handed down from Coley’s mom, and a soundtrack that includes Imogen Heap and Tegan and Sara, underscore Coley and Sonya’s romance.

Girls Like Girls delivers a hopeful ending, a step beyond the story in the 2015 video and song. Still, Coley’s experience of love and heartbreak alone in her room or in the margins of her town is universal for so many queer kids who feel they have no one to share it with.

“It was really important for me to try to portray that as truly as I could because I know that there are a lot of Coleys out there, that they go through that stuff alone, and they think that they are alone,” da Costa says. “I have so much empathy, and I am just grateful for the chance that this is going to be something that someone can just go to the theater and see a poster that says ‘girls like girls’ at any public theater. I’m glad that the Coleys are going to know that they’re not alone in there.”

Da Costa and Molloy in Girls Like Girls (Focus Features)

While Coley’s path is one of coming into herself and creating a relationship with her dad after losing her mom some months before, Sonya, the popular girl, struggles with self-acceptance, which causes emotional harm to her and Coley.

“It’s so interesting because, like, I saw so much of myself in Coley and so much of myself in Sonya in the sense that we’re all human. We’re all here for the first time, and especially when you’re so young, you’re so confused,” Molloy says. “Your heart wants what it wants, but your mind, whether it’s the people around you or the judgment, or you feel like you have to live up to some standard with your family — whatever noise it is, there’s always this internal conflict of your head and your heart split, and you can’t stand up for yourself.”

Kiyoko, Molloy, me, and da Costa

Girls Like Girls is a love story between Coley and Sonya, and it’s a universal story of learning how to love yourself. It’s also born of love for the queer community. Through several modes of storytelling, Kiyoko’s tale has, for more than a decade, and will continue to reach young queer people (like I once was), helping them feel less alone after that first exhilarating and terrifying kiss that changes their worldview.

“To be able to have a film to be like, ‘Hey, did you see this? Oh my gosh, how did you feel? How did I feel? Who did you resonate with?’” Kiyoko says. “It creates conversation, and it creates momentum to move forward.”

Just as her Eternal Sunshine world tour kicked off and an imminent album drop for Petal, LGBTQ+ ally and icon Ariana Grande is doubling down on supporting LGBTQ+ people. The Wicked star has launched a foundation to benefit trans and queer causes. The Brighter Days Ahead Foundation will support the community through four funds supporting the various needs of LGBTQ+ people to thrive.

An ally from the beginning of her career, Grande has continually spoken out for LGBTQ+ people. Last fall, she caught heat from the White House when she shared an Instagram story pushing back against the Trump Administration’s cruel treatment of trans people and the ICE raids. Now she’s supporting advocacy organizations, including Lambda Legal, Translash, Transgender Law Center, Sage USA, and several more, through her foundation.

“I am beyond excited to finally announce the brighter days ahead foundation. Our mission is to support, protect, and provide resources for our vulnerable friends in need. Through four different funds, we will be supporting handfuls of incredible organizations that provide the safe space and care that is desperately needed by so many right now,” Grande wrote in a statement. “It has been my privilege to be able to support these causes on my own over the years, and I’m grateful to now be able to expand that reach and amplify the life-saving work that these organizations do through the brighter days ahead foundation.”

The foundation’s 360-degree approach to supporting LGBTQ+ rights goes to the following four funds:

“The Protect & Defend Fund empowers grassroots groups that advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights, and reproductive justice, helping to create communities where people feel safe, supported, and have care and resources to turn to.

The Heal & Dream Fund expands access to mental health care and community support, helping people feel seen, understood, and able to heal.

The Seen & Celebrated Fund helps ensure LGBTQ+ voices and stories are heard and shared.

The Emergency Support Fund is a responsive fund that helps communities meet urgent moments with aid and resources, providing rapid support and relief during times of collective need.”

Earlier this week, the Trump Administration used Grande’s 2024 “Bye” in a video extolling ICE deportations. Grande replied to the video with the now hidden comment, “Please do not use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense.”

Now, the Brighter Days Ahead Foundation will also help fund organizations that support immigrants, including Al Otro Lado, Kids In Need of Defense, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, and This is About Humanity.

Obviously, I have a great deal of respect and awe for Ariana, given her immense talent and her warmth, which helped the few moments I spent with her during the Wicked junket launch me into new places. It is her artistry, advocacy, and empathy that make her singular.

Ginger Minj, RuPaul, and Jujubee

“She Fun!” is the campaign slogan of RuPaul’s President Gagwell in Stop! That! Train!, and the same can be said of the disaster movie parody starring RuPaul’s Drag Race alums and featuring a cavalcade of camp icons.

Arriving in the middle of Pride Month, the comedy from director Adam Shankman (Hairspray, AJ and the Queen) and writers Christina Friel and Connor Wright, is a nonstop gagfest inspired by the ubiquitous disaster movies of the ’70s and the subsequent satire Airplane. Only this time, the leads are queer, in drag, and saving a high-speed train, the Glamazonian Express, from a Stormaganza. As silly and bonkers as Stop! That! Train! is, the movie centers on chosen family and joy, and that is essential this Pride Month and always.

Ginger Minj and Jujubee

Queens Jujubee and Ginger Minj play best friends DeeDee and Tess, respectively, who nimbly fashion new uniforms and pose as attendants on the Glamazonian express when they lose their longstanding jobs at the defunct Stank Rail train line. There they bump against the first-class attendants, a trio of meanish girls including Brooke Lynn Hytes’s Amber, Symone’s Ayshleiygh, and Marcia Marcia Marcia’s Alli. A musical number serves as the train’s safety speech because, of course!

Passengers include Missy Pyle as the horny divorcee flirting with Chris Parnell’s passed-out conductor, Nicole Richie as an over-caffeinated woman traveling with her mother in a coffin, a young man with an emotional support scorpion, Drew Droege as a rich gay, and Sarah Michelle Gellar as herself, though nobody recognizes her. Those are just a few of the movie’s outrageous passengers. At the control center, Rachel Bloom’s Donna Dusk is the only person taking the Stormaganza seriously. Latrice Royal keeps popping up with quips, and for some reason that needs no explanation, Charo is there.

Marcia Marcia Marcia, Brooklyn Hytes, and Symone

“When you’re watching Stop! That! Train!, and you see our characters, it’s just a development of what we are in real life,” Jujubee told Holding Space with Tracy. “It’s a celebration of our friendship. And you can see this on screen, there’s real chemistry, and you can’t fake this kind of friendship, you know, because it would never be real, and in this world that we created, of course, it’s a comedy, but for us to be so centered and and grounded in the reality of this world, I think that’s where people can see how real and loving our friendship is.”

In an interview at Los Angeles’s Union (Train) Station, Symone spoke about building the on-screen relationship with Brooklyn and Marcia. “Portraying that [friendship] in this time it kind of leans into like being with your community, and like hunkering down with your friendships and the people around you that you love so much, because it’s crazy what we’re living through,” she says.

Ginger Minj and Jujubee

When I screened Stop! That! Train! at the premiere a few weeks ago, I laughed until my mascara ran. It was the kind of cathartic belly laughs and silliness I didn’t realize I needed. The following day, I was at Union Station interviewing the Queens and Shankman on a train platform. It was a complete joy.

Please enjoy this bonus episode of Holding Space with Tracy featuring Shankman, Jujubee, Ginger Minj, Brooklyn Hytes, Symone, and Marcia Marcia Marcia.

Holding Space with Tracy’s second season is dropping soon. Please follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube (or all three) to catch the new season.

Before the Internet and countless lists of LGBTQ+ films (like the one I’m curating here), I felt an enormous sense of discovery when I unearthed a queer-themed movie at the art cinema or in the piles of VHS sleeves in the dank aisle of my small-town video store. With Pride Month’s arrival, I began thinking about those earliest films that made me feel like I uncovered something that felt rare and just for me, whether I watched a worn, glitchy VHS copy in my basement under the cloak of night or in a theater with the art crowd.

Here, I share a handful of those films, beginning with The Hunger in 1983 through 1996, a benchmark year for my queer viewing. A few of these films are from New Queer Cinema auteurs like Tom Kalin and Cheryl Dunye, while others are from allies. This is not a comprehensive list of queer films from that era, and it’s not a best-of list. It’s culled from my experience with them. I did not include some obvious favorites like Desert Hearts because I finally had a chance to screen it after it was heavily recommended to me. Though revelatory, it was not one I felt like I discovered.

I hope the mention of these films (listed chronologically) jars memories of seeing them or spurs you to check them out.

Happy Pride!

The Hunger, 1983

The epitome of New Wave cool, I rented Tony Scott’s The Hunger from my local video store and watched it in my basement because it starred one of my favorites, David Bowie. I was unprepared for the sapphic sex scene between Catherine Deneuve’s vampiric Miriam Blaylock and Sarah, a young scientist played by Susan Sarandon. “Are you making a pass at me, Mrs. Blaylock?” is forever imprinted in me.

Another Country, 1984

Based on screenwriter Julian Mitchell’s 1981 play of the same name, Another Country features beautiful young men who fall in love at school, a la Eton in the 1930s. Rupert Everett (My Best Friend’s Wedding) and Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride) star as the men who fall in love in the film that explores class and politics. Colin Firth stars as a political rabble-rouser and Marxist in the film from Marek Kanievska. Before I attended Mount Holyoke College as a non-traditional-aged student in my 30s, I had a girlfriend who attended and took me to several queer films at the college’s screening series. I was simultaneously thrilled to watch this film on the big screen and scared someone would know I was gay by virtue of my being there. Those were heady times.

My Beautiful Laundrette, 1985

Before he was a multi-Oscar winner, Daniel Day-Lewis starred as Johnny, a punk who falls in love with Omar (Gordon Warnecke), whose family owns a laundrette in London. From the great LGBTQ+ ally Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, Prick Up Your Ears, Philomena), the romantic comedy highlights London’s Pakistani community during the Thatcher years. This was the first queer film I saw on the big screen with an audience at the Mount Holyoke screening series, and it was formative.

Maurice, 1987

Another period piece from England! Maurice is based on E.M. Forster’s novel that was published posthumously. This Merchant-Ivory classic examines class and queer identity in the early 20th Century. It stars James Wilby as Maurice, who falls for the gorgeous Clive ( a stunning Hugh Grant) at Cambridge. The cast includes Rupert Graves as the working-class man Maurice eventually falls for, Denholm Elliot (who was gay), Simon Callow, and Ben Kingsley. I screened this film at Trinity College’s Cinestudio in Hartford, Connecticut, where I would eventually screen dozens more queer films at the Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Torch Song Trilogy, 1988

Based on Harvey Fierstein’s play of the same name, Torch Song Trilogy’s plot pre-dates HIV and AIDs, but it was released in theaters at the height of the epidemic. The film stars Fierstein Arnold, a drag performer navigating love and finding queer community while he spars with his homophobic mother, played by the legendary Anne Bancroft. Matthew Broderick and Brian Kerwin star as Arnold’s love interests. Funny and devastating, I saw Torch Song Trilogy in the Village and sobbed through the credits. Its poignancy about the time right before the epidemic wrecked me in an era when so many of my queer brothers were fighting for their lives.

My Own Private Idaho, 1991

By the time Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho was released in 1991, River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves were rising Hollywood stars, which made their appearance in this queer ode to William Shakespeare’s Henry IV a revelation. As best friends and hustlers in Portland, Oregon, the bona fide stars took a leap at a time when playing queer was considered career-killing. Phoenix’s Mike is in love with his Reeves’ Scott, adding a layer of longing and desire that felt distinctly lesbian to me at the time. This was one I screened at Cinema City in Hartford, Connecticut, a multiplex art cinema located at the end of a service road near strip clubs and a cavernous sex-toy shop. Heaven.

Swoon, 1992

Since Swoon is on some level about obsession, it’s fitting that I screened it with an ex-girlfriend who had pushed, pulled, and recently dumped me, and wanted to be friends despite my unfettered adoration of her. Swoon sits squarely in the New Queer Cinema canon with its experimental elements and direct interrogation of queerness. From director Tom Kalin and producer Christine Vachon (who’s helped get dozens of queer films made), Swoon delves into the queer identity of real-life murderers Leopold and Loeb, whose story was loosely told in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, 1993

While performing with a theater company at a stop in Eugene, Oregon, in my early 20s, a fellow castmember bought a used copy of Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, handed it to me, and said, “When I write the screenplay for this movie, I want you to play Bonanza Jellybean.”

Well, he didn’t write the screenplay, and I did not play the brash queer cowgirl Jellybean. That role went to Rain Phoenix (yes, River’s sister) in Gus Van Sant’s film about Sissy Hankshaw, a hitchhiker with enormous thumbs whose odyssey takes her to a ranch and beauty spa in the Dakota Badlands run by disparate women. Critics panned the film, but I adored it with its pristine lesbian soundtrack by k.d. lang and Thurman with those massive phalanges. The movie cut out chunks of the novel, making the love story between Sissy and Jellybean central. The cast was packed with indie darlings, including Lorraine Bracco, Angie Dickinson, Pat Morita, Keanu Reeves, Udo Kier, John Hurt, Crispin Glover, Carol Kane, Heather Graham, and the list goes on!

Go Fish, 1994

Before The L Word, there was Go Fish, from director Rose Troche and writer and star Guinevere Turner. They both went on to work on The L Word. The film, shot in black and white on a microbudget, made a splash at Sundance, and it landed at my beloved Cinema City art house, where I saw it twice. It was the first time I saw a friend group of lesbians depicted on screen. The characters drank, had sex, pontificated, played “Never Have I Ever,” and excavated a lesbian aesthetic and politics.

The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, 1995

The first girl I loved when I was 16 handed me a note, her senior photo, and a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in the hallway of our school the week after we first kissed. In Maria Maggenti’s The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, popular girl Evie (And Just Like That’s Nicole Ari Parker) gifts her crush, baby butch Randy (The L Word’s Laurel Holloman), a copy of Leaves of Grass. Obviously, I related to that moment on a visceral level, but there was so much to love about the sweet comedy with a happy ending. My best friend and I saw the film at the Angelika Film Center in SoHo in a theater spilling over with sapphics. I’d screened several queer films in theaters by that point, but it marked a sea change in audience demographics for me. I think I ascended partway through the film.

The Watermelon Woman, 1996

Cheryl Dunye’s meta-examination of Black and queer identity and history is an enduring classic. The writer/director stars as Cheryl, a video store clerk making a documentary investigating the true identity of a Black actress from the 1930s known for playing roles similar to those Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen were often relegated to playing. I cut work one day to catch this masterpiece at an art gallery/cinema, Real Art Ways in Hartford.

I Shot Andy Warhol, 1996

American Psycho director Mary Harron’s first feature starred Lili Taylor (Say Anything, Dogfight) as Valerie Solanas, known for shooting Andy Warhol and for writing the SCUM Manifesto (a treatise on eradicating men). The film is catnip for those intrigued by the denizens of Warhol’s Factory. It stars Jared Harris as Warhol, Stephen Dorff, Martha Plimpton, Justin Theroux, Michael Imperioli, and Craig Chester. I happened upon this gem while on a day trip to Red Bank, New Jersey, which boasted cool record shops, book stores, and vegan restaurants.

Fire, 1996

Fire, part of Deepa Mehta’s trilogy with Earth and Water, was banned in India upon its release for its forbidden love story between sisters-in-law who fall in love. Nandita Das plays Sita, and Shabana Azmi stars as Radha, women whose bond deepens as they go about their quotidian lives of keeping up their households for the husbands who barely notice them. A warning that there is no happy ending, per se, but I found hope in the possibility that they could be together in the distant future.

The cast of Cats: The Jellicle Ball

Like Grizabella rising to the Heavyside Layer in Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Celine Dion as she traverses the ship’s grand staircase in Titanique, or Cee Cee Bloom’s stardom in Beaches, there were moments during these patently gay musicals where I ascended from pure queer joy this spring. And they were all within a cat’s whisker of each other on 44th Street between Broadway and 8th.

In April, I arrived on the East Coast for 10 days of meetings, podcasts, exposure, and finger-holding, thanks to my publicist, Tony Morrison. It was a glorious trip that kicked off in earnest with the opening of Beaches on Broadway.

Feeling fancy in my green velvet jacket on a cool city evening, I tittered with excitement (as evidenced in the video below) as I turned onto the block of 44th Street that is also home to the Helen Hayes Theater, where 2nd Stage Theater’s plays (currently Becky Shaw) are housed. During Pride Month in 2024, I moderated an onstage talk at the Helen Hayes for Paula Vogel’s semi-autobiographical and queer Mother Play with Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons, and Celia Keenan-Bolger. I had made my Broadway debut, I joked at the time. That opportunity and trip to NY spurred my renewed longing to finally fulfill my first dream of living in the City. Two years later, the block where I moderated that talk became the epicenter of joy during otherwise dark days for queer and other marginalized people.

Strolling up to the Beaches red carpet at the Majestic Theatre, I spotted Tony chatting with former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre, whom I’ve interviewed and have known for years. We took some photos together on the red carpet, and then I chatted with several outlets about my history with Beaches. Our little corner of the orchestra section on opening night was a little who’s who of LGBTQ+ folks, including Peppermint, Ariana DeBose, Neil Patrick Harris, and Todrick Hall.

Beaches closed prematurely on May 24, but I enjoyed it immensely for its focus on a lifelong friendship between women and its comedic and heartrending performances from leads Jessica Vosk (Cee Cee) and Kelli Barrett (Bertie). When I came out, there wasn’t much visibility for queer women on screen. My girlfriend at the time and I saw the movie Beaches a few times. To us, it was a queer love story. She was the practical Barbara Hershey character, and I was the flamboyant Bette Midler character. The musical brought me back, and I am a sucker for anything that centers on women’s friendships.

Jessica Vosk and Kelli Barrett in Beaches

The following week, I was at the glorious Titanique, where I laughed so hard, I was sure I looked like Courtney Love on the cover of that Hole album where her mascara is down her face. Its journey as the scrappy off-Broadway show that became an international sensation and found a rightful home on Broadway at the St. James Theatre (next to Sardi’s), is itself a queer success story. Titanique stars several LGBTQ+ actors, including creators Marla Mindelle (Celine Dion) and Constantine Rousouli (Jack), Layton Williams (the Iceberg and more), Jim Parsons (Ruth DeWitt Bukater), and Frankie Grande (Victor Garber), John Riddle (Cal), and icons Melissa Barrera (Rose) and Deborah Cox (Unsinkable Molly Brown). I knew of Titanique’s premise, that the story from the smash film is told by Celine Dion improvising, breaking the 4th wall, and swinging for the fences. Still, I was not prepared for the utter queer zaniness. There was Barrera’s Rose adoring an eggplant-shaped phallus, Williams’s rousing “River Deep, Mountain High” as the Iceberg in a Tina Turner wig, Grande’s Garber belting “I Drove All Night” after hitting the iceberg while on Molly, or Mindelle’s improv that urges Jack to ballroom dance a la Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli, and Melissa Barrerra in Titanique

Following the show, I gleefully joined Grande on stage for a photo. In a bit of a reversal, for which I’m always grateful, another guest of the cast asked to take a photo with me on stage (my childhood dreams coming true). When I interviewed Grande at the GLAAD Awards in March, while Titanique was still in rehearsal, he said, “[Titanique] is a radical act of queer joy. We’re just bringing queer joy to 1,300 people every single night, because during this political climate we feel like that is the thing that can affect change in this world.”

Less than two weeks after my April trip, I was back in NY to tape a segment for It Gets Better for The Kelly Clarkson Show (love and thanks to Clarkson and her team for telling our stories). As a board member, I was thrilled to amplify the non-profit’s mission to uplift LGBTQ+ youth. During that short return trip, Tony took me to Cats: The Jellicle Ball. This reimagined Cats was a hit off-Broadway and situates T.S. Eliot’s poems set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber in the queer ballroom scene that began in Harlem in the ’80s. The Jellicle Ball reinvigorates the musical with runway struts, celebrity judges, and a stunning cast brimming with BIPOC and queer people while honoring queer elders like Junior LaBeija, who delivers a riveting Gus the Theater Cat.

With Tony at Cats: The Jellicle Ball

My history with Cats began in adolescence, when I played the soundtrack on vinyl on repeat. Though I realize I no longer listen to the soundtrack regularly, perched in my seat as the audience clacked along with fans and cheered with the likes of the Rum Tum Tugger, Skimbleshanks, and Mr. Mistofelees, I knew every word. Those songs have permeated my cells. It was all I could do to remain seated and refrain from belting along. I apologized to Tony, who was in the fray of all of that theater kid energy vibrating off of me.

Jim Parsons, Frankie Grande, and Deborah Cox in Titanique

There’s more to new gay Broadway this season than the shows on that block on 44th Street. The Rocky Horror Show and Schmigadoon come to mind, but I’ve yet to see them. For now, my queer joy emanates from a single block between 8th and Broadway where the daily news cycle dims when the lights come up, and a celebration of queer lives and culture takes center stage. I’m indebted to those performers and creatives who made queer art for the masses. Grande was onto something when I spoke to him in March.

“I hope that people can come off the street from Kentucky, from Arkansas, they go to TKTS, and they say, ‘Oh, Titanic, I liked that movie, let’s go see it,’” he said. “And then they leave, and they say, ‘Those gay people, they look like a fun time, so much fun. And I want to be a part of their party.’”

In the first few minutes of The Devil Wears Prada 2, Anne Hathaway’s character, Andy Sachs, attends a journalism awards luncheon with her team from a vetted, respected news outlet. Seconds before her name is announced as a winner, the phones at her table ping. At the moment she’s recognized for her work, Andy learns she and her colleagues have been laid off. Accepting her award, she delivers a panegyric to journalism that will serve to send her back to Runway and Miranda Priestley.

It was Friday afternoon in Los Angeles when I took myself to Prada 2 on opening weekend. With a fistful of popcorn headed toward my mouth, I reeled at the critical turn the film takes in its opening moments. Though I was there for the witty barbs and nostalgia (there is plenty of that), I left hopeful that art and soulful storytelling will prevail.

Less than 24 hours earlier, I had returned from a whirlwind 10 days in New York City and Washington, D.C., where my publicist, the great Tony Morrison, had secured me myriad opportunities to see and be seen. From the opening of Beaches on Broadway and a few NBC News appearances in New York to the Grindr and MS Now parties in D.C. around the White House Correspondents Dinner (that’s a story unto itself), I basked in the glow of my viral moment that came 18 months prior.

Coming off a high that included recording episodes of my podcast, Holding Space with Tracy, at The Stonewall Inn, shooting a music video with a RuPaul’s Drag Race alum, Andy’s storyline was a gut punch, a bleak reminder that just six months earlier, I had been laid off at my height of recognition after writing hundreds of stories and years of making myself available practically 24/7.

Six months earlier, nearly to the day, I was in New York for the Now You Me: Now You Don’t junket, where stars Ariana Greenblatt and Justice Smith lost it when I walked in to interview them. “Holding spaaaace,” Greenblatt said as she tapped Smith. The star of I Saw the TV Glow’s jaw dropped. “We know who you are, Tracy,” Smith and Greenblatt declared when I slated my name and outlet.

In the year since I’d gone viral for “holding space with the lyrics of ‘Defying Gravity’”, I’d had several similar interactions with artists I’ve interviewed who turned the tables on my newfound “celebrity.” This moment stuck with me, particularly because by the time the video was published, I was job searching along with several others from my company. It wasn’t entirely a surprise to me that I became a statistic of this wild west of media, even as I encountered those in the community who were shocked by my departure, those who asked to take a picture with me while holding my finger, a la the moment Ariana Grande held Cynthia Erivo’s finger during our interview.

For Andy, the workings of a deus ex machina send her back to Runway to head up the features department. For anyone who’s worked in digital media, the film’s subsequent conversations about traffic goals and hitting metrics are grim reminders that the success of any story, no matter how well-researched and engaging, depends on how well the algorithm is fed, that is, if it even gets past the AI summary.

The Devil Wears Prada was released in 2005, and offered a mostly frothy glimpse into couture via Andy, the aspiring journalist in the acrylic cerulean sweater, seeking enough experience and cache to launch her into the next, more serious part of her career. Quips aimed at Andy from Meryl Streep’s Miranda and Emily Blunt’s overly ambitious assistant Emily were biting and funny. Twenty years on, print magazines and journalism are in a tailspin. Newsstands are a quaint vestige of the past. Listicles, sexy content, and rage bait reign.

Ahead of my screening of Prada 2, I began a rewatch of the original film on my flight back to L.A. There’s the famous scene in which Miranda chastises employees amid racks of designer fashion.

“Why is no one reaaaaady?” she states in a low, terrifying tone before determining the look she’s assessing needs a belt. An employee holds up two belts that are alike to the undiscerning eye. “They’re so different,” the employee says, and Andy scoffs. Now it’s Andy’s turn for a dressing down on the history of the color of her “lumpy blue sweater,” which she no doubt “fished out of the clearance bin” of a Casual Corner. The scene is one of Streep’s masterclasses, but its purpose is to spotlight the real artists and designers from whom Andy’s simulacrum of a sweater was birthed.

The original Prada educated viewers on the lifecycle of a fashion trend. Prada 2 takes on late-stage capitalism and the implications of mass production and automation, particularly in journalism in the age of AI and algorithms. From director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, the film introduces the divorced billionaire couple Benji (Justin Theroux) and Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu), no doubt inspired by Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott. In recent years, Bezos is famous for co-opting the Met Gala and sending his new wife, Lauren Sanchez, to space, while Amazon is a documented dangerous workplace. Meanwhile, Scott is a renowned philanthropist.

I attended my matinee of Prada 2 hoping to be transported for a few hours. Instead, it plunged me into my life of the past six months, applying for jobs on a platform that relies on AI to determine my worthiness, all humanity removed. I watched Andy’s story unfold and longed for the deus ex machina that might afford me the financial space and freedom to be creative without worrying how I would make the payment for the used car I purchased a year ago, which I needed. For years, I’d driven my beat-up Scion XA to the edge of the Oscars red carpet, embarrassed to hand the keys to the valet. My life had become a series of contradictions, of fabulous events coupled with shame for not having made it financially. I had on many occasions been Andy in a “lumpy blue sweater.”

Since leaving my former company, acquaintances consistently tell me, “You’re killing it,” based on my public appearances and access to interviewing celebrities, while I shake down all of my contacts for someone to offer me the opportunity to write. Of course, I recognize my vast privilege, opportunities, and the people who’ve stood by me since October. I’m not running the features section of a major fashion magazine, but I’ve laid the groundwork for my next big move while ardently recording episodes of Holding Space with Tracy.

It’s not lost on me that I launched a podcast about the power of art and storytelling to transform, heal, provide solace, and inspire at a time when journalism is in upheaval due to a lack of confidence and a whole lot of tech. My first job when I was 11 was as a papergirl, delivering a hard copy of the daily afternoon paper, the New Britain Herald, directly to people’s doors. Once a week, I rang the bell to speak with the human on the other side of the door to collect my earnings. In recent years, before going viral, I wasn’t sure if anyone saw my work.

The fate of Runway hangs in the balance for much of Prada 2, its future in the hands of a soulless board of tech devotees, but the film delivers a Hollywood ending in which faith in journalists, art, and fashion is restored. The movie closes with Andy running the features department of Runway her way in a blue sweater that nods to the original Prada. If Andy can live out her dreams, maybe I can too. She’s come full circle as a serious journalist doing what she loves, all while sporting cerulean.

When a press release for season 2 landed in my inbox, I immediately responded with a request to interview the cast and creators. After all, they had unwittingly become a salve for me in times when I needed it. It’s not lost on me that as an independent media outlet, Prime Video afforded me the opportunity to speak with stars Kate Box and Madeleine Sami and the creators, The Kates.

(Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. That support allows me to do more of this work)

Madeleine Sami as Eddie

When I told creators Kate McCartney and Kate McClennan that I’ve watched the first season at least four times, McCartney said, “Stop! Stop watching, or you’ll notice the plot holes.”

Well, McCartney didn’t stop me. I watched all of season 2 and went back to season 1. There’s too much to love in Deadloch, including Det. Dulcie Collins (Box), a lesbian (with a sex-positive, horny, and devoted wife, Cath, played by Alicia Gardiner), and Det. Eddie Redcliffe (Sami), a foul-mouthed outsider with a limited wardrobe and a heart of gold. Season 1 follows Dulcie and Eddie as they solve a serial killer case in Dulcie’s newish town of Deadloch in Tasmania, where the lesbians begin to outnumber the misogynist men. For season 2, the partners head to Eddie’s hometown, Darwin, in the Northern Territory, where the stifling heat is giving Dulcie thrush under her breasts, and the place is overrun with crocodiles.

Kate Box as Dulcie

In her hometown, Eddie grapples with her past while Dulcie attempts to stay hydrated. The only one who is thriving is Cath, who adapts to her new environment with ease, working alongside the townspeople and continuing to love on her buttoned-up wife. The first season was a hotbed of lesbians, while season 2 introduces two nonbinary characters, and the entire town seems a little queer.

In my interview with the stars on Holding Space with Tracy E. Gilchrist, Box explained the show’s inherent queerness.

Alicia Gardiner as Cath

“It’s often phrased in a question about queer representation, and I think there’s a dryness to that, which obviously representation is deeply important, but there’s this kind of lived-in vigor, where we should just be very, very present at all times,” Box says. “The way we were talking about storytelling earlier is an incredibly queer thing that The Kates do, where they look at a story, and they go, We will not tell it like this. Our job is to show up differently. The queer brain is one that was born to interrogate and to self-reflect and to define what it is to be themselves because they’ve had to…”

The on-screen world of Deadloch teems with queer characters, and so does the world off-screen. Box, Sami, McCartney, Nina Oyami (who plays Abby, the put-upon forensics expert), and Jean Tong (who plays nonbinary journalist Leo) are all part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Sami, Jean Tong as Leo, and Box

“Deadloch does not hit you over the head with queer messaging. Deadloch is just very, very queer. Its audience is very, very queer, but also, there is a massive straight audience out there for Deadloch,” Box says. “Maybe unbeknownst to them [they] are absorbing this queer messaging [of], Let’s look at things differently.”

Watch Box, Sami, McCartney, and McLennan on Holding Space with Tracy.

Emmy-nominated Shrinking star Michael Urie has been playing queer roles on TV since his breakout character Marc St. James on Ugly Betty 20 years ago. A Broadway darling who has starred in Torch Song, Spamalot, Once Upon a Mattress, and Oh Mary!, Urie chatted at length with me on the latest episode of Holding Space with Tracy.

I first met Urie in 2022 at the Frameline International Film Festival, where I was in conversation with him on stage for a career retrospective. A while later, I interviewed him for Shrinking’s first season. It’s always a pleasure to chat with this humble, multi-talented Juilliard-trained performer. I’m honored that he took time out of his packed Shrinking press schedule to come into the studio to chat with me.

In our conversation on the podcast, we learn about his childhood as a theater kid in Texas and his character Brian becoming a father on Shrinking this season, and what that means for LGBTQ+ visibility. Speaking of Shrinking, we get into the scene where he sings “The Confrontation” from Les Misérables with Jason Segel (and there’s a brief snippet where we sing to each other). Urie also shares just how deep his love of Barry Manilow runs, and he gives some insight into his favorite divas, including Christine Baranski, Audra McDonald, Vanessa Williams, and Sutton Foster.

“I think everybody should star in a Broadway musical with Sutton Foster at some point in their lives,” he says. I can’t disagree. Sutton, call me if you’re watching this!

In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I interviewed Ariana DeBose paired with Kerry Washington for The Prom. I began the interview as I always do, by thanking the talent for taking the time to speak with me. Kerry thanked me in return and noted the importance of telling the story of acceptance in The Prom. When I shared that I had been out a long time but that I’d never seen myself as the romantic lead in a movie musical, Washington nearly started to cry (she confirmed this in the interview), so I pivoted to Ariana to discuss queer visibility on screen. Her answer was warm and inspiring. The interview remains among my all-time favorites. I’ve since interviewed Ariana five more times for various projects, and she is always a dream.

It is a challenge to launch an independent media outlet, even with the heat I picked up from the viral moment. I am grateful to the publicists working on Scarpetta, who put forth my request for a junket interview with Ariana, and I’m moved and humbled that she answered the call. If you watch the full Scarpetta interview below, I begin by saying, “Ariana, I feel like you always take my calls,” because she does. It means the world to me to have that support.

Thank you to all of you who are supporting Holding Space with Tracy.

(Ariana Debose as Lucy in Scarpetta. Credit: Connie Chornuk/Prime)

Scarpetta

A nail-biting thriller anchored loads of family drama, Scarpetta is the ride of the season. Based on Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series, about a genius medical examiner, the series (told in both past and present) stars Nicole Kidman in the titular role and Jamie Lee Curtis as her wild-child elder sister, Dorothy.

Oscar winner for West Side Story, Ariana DeBose, plays Dorothy’s daughter, Lucy, who grew up with her aunt while her mom spent decades finding herself. In the present, tech-savvy Lucy is back living in her aunt Kay’s guest house, while not entirely over the death of her wife, Janet (Janet Montgomery), as she engages in full conversations with an AI version of the woman she loved and married. Dorothy, her husband Pete (Bobby Cannavale), who happens to be Kay’s former ally on the police force, and Kay’s FBI agent husband Benton (Simon Baker), form an unlikely family who look out for Lucy. The series sees Lucy navigating grief, family dynamics, a little romance, and thriller sequences without making a point of her queer identity. Although in 2026, LGBTQ+ representation is revolutionary.

“We’re living in a time where, you know what was once, maybe not groundbreaking, but where our community really fought for this, being able to play a character like this just to be the norm, right? Like where we got really comfortable with that, and I think that’s a good thing,” DeBose said on a bonus episode of Holding Space with Tracy E. Gilchrist. “We should have been comfortable with that, because there’s nothing wrong with it. But as we’re seeing in the world today with the shredding of individual rights in this country, and, you know, being denied health care, or the defunding of medical research, and there’s an onslaught of things, or examples like that that we thought were very much in the past. And history is cyclical. There’s a big pendulum swing.”

A former federal agent, Lucy begins to explore life outside her life with AI Janet when she’s pulled into Kay’s latest serial killer case, which shares commonalities with her aunt’s first case 20 years ago. At the same time, she works through her unconventional relationship with her mother, Dorothy.

From creator Liz Sarnoff, Scarpetta balances the past (starring Blue Jean’s Rosy McEwan as Kay) with the present, along with dark thriller elements and broad comedic moments. At the story’s core is Lucy, around whom the disparate family unit gathers to support her, each in their own way. The character even finds a little flirtation with Officer Blaise Fruge (Tiya Sircar), who’s working the case.

(Bobby Cannavale as Pete and Ariana Debose as Lucy in Scarpetta. Credit: Connie Chornuk/Prime)

A multitalented actor, singer, and dancer, DeBose originated the role of “The Bullet” in Hamilton. In 2021, she became the first queer woman of color to win an Academy Award when she won the Best Supporting Actress honor for playing Anita in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. DeBose has played queer roles in the films The Prom, House of Spoils, and I.S.S. She credits Scarpetta’s team with ensuring Lucy was fully realized.

“I applaud our show runner, Liz Sarnoff, and, quite frankly, all of our producers, and Prime for not shying away and for not asking me to dim mine or Lucy’s sparkle, or any part of her personality,” DeBose says. “As much as Lucy’s sexuality is a topic of conversation — it is, but it isn’t. She’s just there. She just gets to be a whole person.”

“I am very glad of that, because it shouldn’t just be white presenting characters that get to play fully formed, layered, dynamic entities on screen. We exist, like, we’re not going anywhere,” she adds. “This particular show is a point of pride for me in that way, not only because we get to explore loss identity and also just the fact that Lucy’s brilliant. How great to have a brilliant queer character. She’s special.”

Scarpetta is streaming on Prime.