Pop Culture Fix: Shondaland’s “Bridgerton” Is Confirmed Queer (At Least Briefly)

There’s a blizzard on its way to NYC and this is your Wednesday Pop Culture Fix!

+ Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is only two days away! And here is another wonderful Viola Davis interview!

+ Carmen and Natalie have been doing so many investigations into whether or not Shonda Rhimes’ first Netflix series, Bridgerton, is going to be gay — and finally it has been confirmed with the trailer! Kind of! There’s some ladies in corsets making out at what Carmen suspects is an underground sex party.

+ Disney makes up for Tiana being a frog for half the movie by giving her a series.

+ On Peace of Mind with Taraji P. Henson, Gabrielle Union explains how Zaya Wade felt outed by gossip blogs.

+ Stevonnie leads the way on Cartoon Network’s new pronoun PSAs!

+ Black Swan is a Hanukkah movie.

+ Over at Wired, Angela Watercutter pulled on the thread of that Charlize lesbian Die Hard tweet and basically made the whole movie!

+ Look who’s making another movie!

+ At Slate, trans critic Emily VanDerWerff wrote about how Mrs. America reconfirmed that women’s history is her history.

+ The Saved by the Bell reboot gave me an existential crisis.

+ The Wilds cast on queer teen girls surviving on an island.

+ Like you, The Crown‘s Princess Diana loved Mae Martin’s Feel Good and Jo Ellen Pellman uses GBBO as a coping mechanism.

+ Related: Jo Ellen Pellman knew her people were out there.

+ Nonbinary TV characters had a landmark year. Advocates say hold the applause.

+ All American season three is full of secrets.

+ Queen Latifah’s Last Holiday gets its due on Two Old Queens.

+ Since they will never air, here are the loglines for the final six episodes of One Day at a Time. 

+ St. Vincent announced a new album yesterday.

+ The Whitney Houston biopic has found its Whitney.

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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.

2 Comments

  1. Thank you for your sleuthing Carmen and Natalie! I really hope Bridgeton is both good and queer. I don’t remember any underground sex parties in the books but it is Shondaland. I have hope.

  2. Disappointingly, Bridgerton only had about 2 seconds of queerness. In fact, I felt bamboozled because not only was a queer shot included in the trailer, but the series kept hinting the second son had an infatuation with another man. Seriously, the despondent look on his face when he learned his “crush” was married was real. Yet the shot in the trailer WAS the only queer scene, and didn’t occur until episode six. Benedict’s secret non-queer reveal was ridiculous and redundant thanks to his older brother’s storyline. Since that reveal occurs in the last 15 minutes of the series, as a gay man, I felt strung along waiting for something queer to happen that didn’t. Since Shonda is known for having multiple queer characters in each of her shows, I felt their actions were just to keep some queer extra eyes on the show, knowing nothing was going to occur.

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