Anna Akana Is Queer: “Stitchers” Actress Comes Out During Her Streamys Acceptance Speech

Yesterday, actress Anna Akana came out in an acceptance speech during the Streamy Awards. Cue the rainbow streamers!

Anna won her Acting in a Drama Streamy for her work on a YouTube show called Youth & Consequences. Unfortunately, I can’t speak to her role on that show, or how queer the show is in general, though there is an episode called Gender Fluidity that addresses trans issues in an interesting way. At first I thought it was hella problematic but I think it ended up being okay in the end? I would have to watch more episodes to see the character’s arc before passing too much judgement. At the very least, Anna’s character seems pretty cool, and they included the Trevor Project information at the end of the episode.

Anyway, what I CAN tell you that Anna played queer badass on the show Stitchers, where she played Amanda, patient, brilliant girlfriend to Allison Scagliotti’s bisexual character Camille. (RIP Stitchers, gone too soon.)

When Anna was accepting her award, she had two ‘thank yous’ to impart. The first was for the writers of the show, “An actress is only as good as the words she’s given.”

Her second was pre-emptive, thanking the audience, viewers, and fans for voting. She stressed the importance of voting in the upcoming midterms and added that it’s important to her not only because she’s a woman of color, but also because she’s a queer woman.

Based on her follow-up tweet, where she said, “I guess I came out on the Streamys,” I’m not sure she originally planned that moment to come out. But I think she’s only one of many people who’ve been feeling like they need to state their truth as loudly as possible lately. The oppressive political noise is louder than ever, and marginalized people are using their platforms to get their message out to as many people as they can. And I think things like this help; putting a familiar friendly face to the word “queer” in mainstream places so it’s not an ambiguous adjective. The more knowledge people have about it, the less fear they’ll have, the less likely they’ll be to believe the lies told about us. I think Anna’s speech is especially important because she was accepting an award for a show aimed at a younger audience.

I also think there’s a trend (though I haven’t crunched the numbers…yet) of actors who play queer coming out as queer eventually. Whether they just weren’t out yet but took the role knowing they were queer, or playing queer helped them discover more about themselves is anyone’s guess. Fine by us! The more people who come out the better.

Congrats, Anna! Happy to have you on our team!

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Valerie Anne

Just a TV-loving, Twitter-addicted nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories. One part Kara Danvers, two parts Waverly Earp, a dash of Cosima and an extra helping of my own brand of weirdo.

Valerie has written 543 articles for us.

4 Comments

  1. I noticed the trend too. Which I find romantic(not sure if that’s the word I’m trying to use) in a way. Because here we are saying “representation matters” and it feels like it’s definitely mattering to the people portraying those representations, allowing/encouraging them to be themselves. Like I imagine actors who haven’t questioned their sexuality, auditioning for a queer role thinking of the impact it can have on the audience, but in the end, it impacted themselves and they’re like, “oh!”

  2. I could have swore Anna Akana came out a long time ago. Maybe I’m confusing her with someone else.

  3. Anna Akana is one of my favorite YouTubers! (Well I should say actress honestly.) This is good to know and I’m happy for her.

  4. Glad to here this! I’d been leery ever since she posted that vid about how drunkenly kissing girls Definitely doesn’t count as cheating because she is Very Straight. Insert a youknowwhatthatis?growth.gif

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