We Found Queer Creators Throughout Disney’s D23 Announcements
Considering Disney is notoriously coy about queer representation in their movies, there was a surprising amount of queer-adjacent news coming out of their big D23 announcement-palooza this year. Granted, it’s mostly just queer celebrities attached to their projects, but hey, I’ll take it!
There were many amazing performances at the show, including Auli’i Cravalho singing a song from the upcoming film, Moana 2, with songs written by Barlow & Bear, the creative duo behind the unofficial Bridgerton musical that was viral on TikTok a few years ago. There was also a performance by the upcoming cast of Hercules on Broadway which isn’t technically gay but I was in love with Megara at a young age so I’m excited in a gay way about it.
Queer artist Miley Cyrus was honored as a Disney Legend. She got emotional as she accepted the award for her time on Hannah Montana, and she’s the youngest person to ever become a Disney Legend.
Queer, asexual actor Piper Curda is also joining the Disney family. (Side note, when I was looking up Piper’s pronouns — she/they — I found an instagram post referring to them as “gender irreverent” and I’m stealing that.) In the upcoming Disney/Pixar original movie Hoppers, Cruda will voice the main character, Mabel, who is a little girl who puts her mind in a robot Beaver. Sounds weird, but I’m in!
In other animation news, Frozen 3 was announced, with a potential Frozen 4 in the mix, and I swear to the Norse gods, if Elsa doesn’t get a girlfriend by the end of this franchise, I’m going to riot. There will also be a pro-shot of the Broadway musical coming to Disney+, which is great to hear, because the song created for the stage version, Monster, is amazing and everyone should get to see it performed.
Marvel dropped another haunting trailer for Agatha All Along, and Kathryn Hahn and the cast even performed a song at the show.
The lucky people who were there (my invote must have gotten lost in the mail) also got to see footage from the upcoming film Ironheart, a Marvel film with at least one queer actor in it with Shea Couleé, and potentially queer characters if the Dora Milaje make an appearance.
And last but not least, Freaky Friday 2 (now called Freakier Friday) will come out next year and center around Lindsay Lohan as she prepares to blend her family with Manny Jacinto’s character’s.
There were a ton of other announcements, but as far as I could tell, those are the queer-adjacent highlights. Definitely let me know if I missed any!!
Queer News, the Sequel:
+ Bre-Z worked hard behind the scenes to make sure Coop’s story progressed and didn’t stay stagnant on All American
+ Half of the lesbian couple on Tracker will be MIA next season
+ Nicole Maines talks about taking her trans superhero Dreamer from the Supergirl screen to the page in Bad Dream comics
+ Chappel Roan had yet another a huge showing at Outside Lands (and even called the VIP section “no fun” for not doing her HOT-TO-GO dance)
+ Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Victoria Monét, Olivia Rodrigo and Megan Thee Stallion among artists nominated for VMAs
+ Netflix dropped a sneak peak of the new season of Arcane
+ Elliot Page did an interview with Them and in it, he talks about how his first queer crush was from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which is relatable
+ Lady Gaga has a hilarious follow-up from the time she told the world “Poker Face” was about sleeping with a man and thinking about women
+ Holland Taylor and Sarah Paulson are still going strong. maybe love isn’t a lie after all
Ella Purnell as a serial killer? Yes, please.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DU8iUSgoog
Ooh! Sold!
I will never ever get over the cancellation of Work in Progress, so I like to pretend Tracker is a spinoff show, and Abby is doing great!
“Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Victoria Monét, Olivia Rodrigo and Megan Thee Stallion among artists nominated for VMAs”
Has Olivia Rodrigo come out publicly? The others listed here have spoken about their queerness. Since all the other artists included on this list are queer, it’s misleading to include someone who isn’t publicly queer.
The song Lacy feels pretty publicly queer to me.
In that case, you might as well include Taylor Swift on this list, since she has songs like “Betty” and “Hits Different” that are specifically about women.
Even if she’s not out as queer, she’s an artist that a lot of queer folks really like. Gay icons who aren’t gay is a known pop-culture quantity, and I think she functions as one of those for the Tik Tok children.