Art by Autostraddle. Photography via Raymond Hall/GC Images and Niecy Nash on Instagram.
Yesterday, Good Morning Gaymerica really lived up to its name (what? Do other people not call it that?) when Niecy Nash stopped by the set to host a bachelorette party for Robin Roberts and her fiancée, Amber Laign.
One of my favorite running bits with my friends is that every time a lesbian over 50 blinks three times, Robin Roberts appears. So it’s especially delightful to see another over-50 queer icon, Niecy Nash, give the queen of daytime television her rightful due. Nash has previously credited Robin Roberts as being one of her first and closest confidantes during her own coming out and surprise wedding to Jessica Betts in 2020, thanking Roberts publicly in the years since for holding the necessary space for her privacy in that process, which of course makes all of what happened yesterday all the more poignant.
The Good Morning Gaymerica set was transformed with palm trees, a blue sky background, and all around “Key West” beach party theme (according to Nash, Key West is a favorite location for Roberts and Laign). The cast of GMA was present, along with close friends and family of the couple, wearing colorful dresses or blue button-downs with the inscription “RA” for Robin and Amber, even Gayle King made it to the festivities — for maximum bougie Auntie vibes.
Let there be cake(s)! 🎂
We love you, @robinroberts and Amber! ❤️ pic.twitter.com/ZQKqq1AEfz
— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 16, 2023
There was something called the “Bachelorette Express” involved, with Niecy behind the wheel of a makeshift fake car yelling out, “This is going to be a wild ride, Robin. We got your sister Sally-Ann, some of your closet friends and even En Vogue!”
And yes, En Vogue did perform…. Because did you not hear what I just said about bougie Auntie paradise?? But the real tears began with Robin’s sister, Sally-Ann, who brought out as a wedding present a customized cutting board inscribed with her favorite family recipe:
“You know how much mama is blowing kisses to you right now, and now you have her recipe for rosemary chicken,” Sally-Ann told Robin. “I know you’re going to be in the kitchen, where you always are.” The siblings’ mother, Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts, passed away in 2012.
“I should’ve known when I saw the Kleenex box,” Robin quipped as she wiped away tears, visibly choked up.
GMA co-host George Stephanopoulos asked Roberts, “Could 14-year-old Robin Roberts have imagined she’d be having a bachelorette party on national television?”
“Uh-uh, no,” Robin replied, shaking her head. “Especially to a woman.”
And really, isn’t that the whole thing? Yes, a morning talk show segment on a lesbian engagement is hokey and corny and all of that. But is it not also… really beautiful? Like when you think about it. Is it not? When Robin Roberts was 14 in 1974 (and yes, I did the quick math on that), this was not on any plane of reality. But now, because of her, because of the decades that she went through, so many of them live and in front of a camera as she pushed through hardship after hardship, we can’t say that anymore. This is what tangible change looks like, and sometimes it comes with cheesy daytime plastic palm trees.
I am so happy for Robin and Amber, on behalf of everyone at Autostraddle, may their wedding next month bring them nothing but joy and peace for decades more to come.
Watching this brought me so much joy 🥹
I’m so happy for them! It was such a great thing to watch 2 women celebrating their love with a cheesy morning television bachelorette party.
I have watched GMA since I was a kid. It just feels weirdly like a comforting way to start my day. It does, however, often feel like pro-america propaganda. However, between this and their insistence on continuously talking about climate change – esp within the weather segments – makes me appreciate it greatly bc I know the audience is not just progressives on the coasts – that middle Americans and conservatives watch it too. Maybe it gently helps people who otherwise would not be exposed to this stuff more open.
Love this