Pop Culture Fix: Carmilla’s Elise Bauman Makes the Yuletide Gay in Hallmark’s First Lesbian Christmas Movie

This morning I woke up to find I’d written “hippo” on my to do list last night. If anyone has any idea what I meant by that, please let me know. In the meantime, here’s your mid-week Pop Culture Fix, the TOP of my Wednesday to do’s!


+ Carmilla‘s Elise Bauman will finally be making Hallmark’s yuletide gay, alongside Tattiawna Jones! They’re starring in Hallmark’s first lesbian Christmas movie! It goes like:

Marketing whiz Alma Beltran (Elise Bauman) and Christmas tree whisperer Charlie Freemont (Tattiawna Jones) cross paths when Charlie finds the perfect tree for the Maine Governor’s Holiday Celebration – right in Alma’s back yard. While they initially spar, romantic sparks soon begin to fly between the two women as the enchanting tree and some Christmas fairy dust from the town’s pâtissière extraordinaire (Ricki Lake) bring out the best in them and spark each other to take leaps of faith and fight for love and Christmas magic.

+ Grimes says she’s gonna make a lesbian space commune now that she’s broken up with Elon Musk. NO THANKS!

+ The L Word: Generation Q’s Rosanny Zayas chatted with Black Girl Nerds about the best part of playing Sophie, Afro-Latina representation, and that time in season one when Tina said she didn’t want to have a Black baby.

+ Amazon’s The Boys, which had a surprising bisexual woman supe in season one, is spinning off with the original showrunners. 

+ Here’s the official trailer for The Girl in the Woods. 

+ The tricky trans politics of FX’s Y: The Last Man

+ JoJo Siwa transforms into bona fide gay icon with epic Lady Gaga routine on Dancing With the Stars

+ Parade interviewed The Circle’s gay fave Sophia Layne (spoilers for the season three finale, be warned!).

+ Last night, Courtney Vandersloot became only the second WNBA player in history — after Sheryl Swoopes — to pull off a triple double in a playoff game. During her post-game interview, her wife Allie Quigley stood by and waited, proudly and patiently, to remind her to say happy birthday to her mom on camera. 😂

+ The Hollywood Foreign Press Association continues to be dragged into 2021 and has added five people to the credentials committee “to help with diversity.” 

+ Life Is Strange: True Colors blends a playable indie movie with a stunning treatise on empathy.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

19 Comments

  1. I’M SO HAPPY FOR ELISE! I am constantly amazed and confounded about how she and and Natasha haven’t gotten tons of work after Carmilla. It’s very upsetting. Anyway, I’m super hyped for a new lesbian Christmas movie!

  2. After Vandersloot wished her mom a happy birthday and took her headset off, she then turned to her wife and visibly mouthed, “I got a triple-double!” and at least in my broadcast, I swear you could hear Allie Quigley going “WHAT” in response. It made me as happy as the win.

    • If only. Instead there has to be Elon Musk and someone who thinks it’s okay to name her child a string of unpronounceable symbols 🤮

      Why world why?

  3. I watched the trailer for The Girl in the Woods and I was like “the lead looks like Stefanie Scott, the girl from Hayley Kiyoko’s Girls Like Girls video” and it is her!

  4. Thank you AS for continuing to post JoJo Siwa videos so I don’t have to watch Dancing with the Stars! I seriously got a little teary eyed watching that dance.

    • the only bummer is not hearing the judges hopefully gush about how amazing that was, but otherwise so so so same.

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