The Q Agenda: Give Us More Queer Characters on Screen!

Today on The Q Agenda, our guests explore one of our favorite subjects: representation in cinema. For Glamorous star Miss Benny, playing a TV character with a trans storyline without trauma is a reason to celebrate. For Fire Island director Andrew Ahn, making honest gay films means reflecting diverse gay experiences. On Hot Takes with Hot Cakes, our host Lianna Carrera challenges the approach to queer identity in the American education system. And finally, we toss to a short episode of LATV’s original docu-series, Más Que Pride.

Actor Miss Benny grew up in a religious family in North Texas, so being queer came with a complicated set of obstacles.

“[I would] wait until everyone’s asleep, close the door, do my make-up, wash it all off, go to church the next morning with, like, mascara smudges,” Miss Benny says on the show.

When she was a kid, she often got wrapped up making home-made movies with her siblings, and, since she was the youngest, she was made the living room star. Eventually, she enrolled in an acting class. As a teenager, she got her groove on doing commercials, and once she saved up enough money, she made the move to Los Angeles. She never returned to Texas.

As she made preliminary steps through Hollywood pre-transition, Miss Benny was often turned down for being too gay. Anti-queer legislation coming from Washington didn’t pave a hopeful path into the future, either. But she stayed motivated, grounded in her belief she was capable.

“The hurdles you have to get over to create queer TV was so particularly challenging and it’s still challenging at times,” she says, “[but] I always felt like people would be interested in hearing stories like mine.”

From one audition to the next, she figured out when and how to approach casting as the “diet version” of herself. And as she kept afloat, the tides began to change. The same executives who gatekept opportunities from queer and trans performers in the 2010s have decided to greenlight those kinds of narratives in the 2020s.

Miss Benny is a face reflective of that turning point. When she auditioned for Glamorous, she was told to be exactly who she was—and that’s how she landed the role. Of course, it’s you, they told her. Finally, her time had come.

“I feel so much sense of celebration about myself now,” she says. “Filming the show and seeing that the queerness of these characters—and specifically, the trans storyline of Marco—is such a superpower that Marco has, and there’s never any explanation or justification.

Glamorous is a show grounded in comedy and circumstance. The trans narrative exists in-between. This way of telling queer stories not only normalizes queer life within all genres but makes these characters relatable for queer and non-queer audiences alike.

Next on the show is director and writer Andrew Ahn, whose films explore the intersection of queer and Asian-American identity.

This creative concentration dates back to one particular memory. When one of his first short films screened at a local festival here in Los Angeles, a man in the audience shielded his eyes when two male characters kissed on screen. In that moment, he made a decision.

“I’m going to make really, really gay movies until people stop reacting like that,” Ahn says on the show.

From his moodier drama, Spa Nights, to the popular rom-com, Fire Island, Ahn infuses his films with cultural variance and expressive diversity to reflect the many shades of the queer community in frame. For him, it just makes the stories more interesting, too.

“We all express our queerness in different ways,” Ahn goes on to say. “I [want] to show that it’s a very personal decision and expression of who we are, but that we can still be friends.”

Sometimes, film holds up a mirror to the present. Sometimes, film suggests a future to forge. Whichever story he’s telling, Ahn throws himself into his work.

This year, he was honored by Outfest Film Festival.

“I’ve been a part of the Outfest family for a number of years,” he says. “I’ve had multiple films screen there. I’ve been an advisor, mentoring queer youth and filmmakers. So, it’s just been really magical…It feels like a homecoming.”

Don’t miss these full conversations on air with The Q Agenda hosts—who, at the top of the show, will also get real about the state of gayborhoods. Are they only just for gays anymore?