Pop Culture Fix: Katie McGrath Is a “Bisexual High-Octane British Truth Bomb” in a New Aussie Series

It’s Wednesday! Pop goes the culture fix!


+ Katie McGrath will continue her unbroken streak of playing gay characters in the upcoming Australian thriller series Secret Bridesmaids’ Business, a story about, I think, a deadly wedding. McGrath is “Saskia, a fast-rising lawyer and an arresting, high-octane British truth-bomb. She is relentlessly intelligent and fiercely loyal. A bisexual woman, Saskia defies pigeonholing and holds a secret that could mean the end of friendship with her best mate, Olivia.” HIGH-OCTANE BRITISH TRUTH BOMB. Valerie Anne would like me to take this moment to remind you of McGrath’s turn in Dracula and Natalie believes it is a crime that more of you do not know about McGrath and Gemma Chan in Dates. And, of course, you all know Lena Luthor.

+ Watch Laverne Cox get ready for the Met Gala.

+ THE LESBIAN BATWOMAN COMETH.

+ Lena Waithe and Gina Prince-Bythewood chatted with The Hollywood Reporter about the shortcomings of Hollywood diversity initiatives and starting a mentoring program.

+ grown-ish is back June 5! Pose is back on June 11! Good Trouble is back on June 18!

+ This is good stuff over at the New Yorker: The Delights and Discomforts of “The Bold Type,” a Woke Fantasy of Magazine Journalism

+ How trans actors are rewriting the rules of TV casting.

+ Julia Roberts wants all restrooms to be gender neutral.

+ The live-action Lady and the Tramp is replacing their racist cat song with a new track from Janelle Monáe.

+ CBS censored a musical short about China on The Good Fight this week???

+ The gay way Suranne Jones is struttin’ around on Gentleman Jack is on purpose.

+ IndieWire thinks Eve and Villanelle are getting way more alike and they’re kinda freaked out about it.

+ The Dingle Oceanworld Aquarium in Kerry reports that half of all their penguins are gay. I don’t know if this is technically pop culture news but also I do not care; it is vital information.

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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 1719 articles for us.

27 Comments

  1. I need a full Batwoman trailer so bad but we’re probably months away from getting one. *cries*

  2. wow you came fast with that Katie McGrath info! (although who wouldn’t come fast with Katie…)

  3. OMG I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT MCGRATH AND CHAN IN DATES AND I AM FEELING BLESSED BY THIS KNOWLEDGE/GIF TYVM

    also the gay walking in Gentleman Jack is True Representation(TM)

    • You can watch the entire episode online, too! It’s called Erica and Kate. Good stuff. There was a follow-up episode with Chan’s character, but Katie’s character is only briefly mentioned in that one.

    • Okay, I am glad the gay walking is a thing,and I don’t just have a really weird kink. 😆

  4. “The lesbian ones will take action if they feel broody. They will waddle over to a male to do what needs to be done and rear the chick with their female partner.” So this is the lesbian penguin equivalent of borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbor, I take it.

    “‘Scuse me, Oisin, don’t mean to bother you and Uisce, won’t be a moment, just saw your door was open – would you mind – right, thanks, that’ll do. As you were. I’ll let myself out!”

  5. Katie McGrath was also very gay in Merlin, a show which did not treat her character well but did give her *several* incredible looks and let her really use her evil smirk to great effect!

    • YES. She played Morgana soooo well and had wicked chemistry with Morgause. Also, she was SO HOT in Merlin. So, so HOT. The more she turned to the dark, the hotter she got. I guess the dark side had better wardrobe choices.

    • Katie McGrath in Merlin was a key part of my gay awakening and I will die on the hill of “Morgana had SO MUCH potential as a character and the writers just wasted it.”

      Somewhere out there is a parallel universe where they do right by her arc, and it is a better universe.

  6. I guess I got over excited and accidentally misread this headline as “Katie McGrath is bisexual” and then I realized there were more words after that and got disappointed, but I recovered and I’ll still watch the show because I will watch her in anything. The proof of that is that I have seen A Princess for Christmas.

    Also, her episode of Dates is indeed very hot, but I also think I remember all of us being upset about her character being biphobic in it. So, something to keep in mind for those that haven’t watched it yet.

  7. If Katie McGrath isn’t a bisexual high-octane bomb in reality I’ll eat my damn hat.

  8. Tomorrow, when I don’t want to wake up, I will say to myself: “If Katie McGrath could spend her one precious month of Supergirl hiatus to go on the other side of the globe to Australia where every spider is a killer to kiss women on screen again, you can face another day of your gay life”.

    • Thanks for this. As a person allergic to mornings, this just might get me out of bed.

  9. While we were watching the first ep of Gentleman Jack, my girlfriend commented that she walks like I do. Honestly, I have never been so chuffed, and went to work the next day with a little extra BDE.

    “‘Scuse me, folks, butch with shit to do coming through…”

  10. I’m a bit concerned about the title of that show with Katie McGrath. Anything called “Secret [something] business’ is a racist reference to secret women’s business, i.e. the sacred and mysterious lore relating to Australia’s indigenous women. It is mocking the testimony of the Ngarrindjeri women of South Australia made during the Hindmarsh Island bridge controversy in the mid 1990s and the long battle to clear their names after the courts, a royal commission, and the Murdoch run media all claimed and “proved” they had fabricated the story.

    It got so bad at the time that “secret women’s business” became conservative code for “lying aborigines”. Of course, it’s been more than 2 decade since then, a later court vindicated the women, the state government had a formal apology ceremony, and it’s likely few people remember the racist origins of the phrase, but it’s still of interest.

    • I’ve only lived in Australia for 15 years, and I’ve only heard the phrase in a positive context. But only quite recently as well.

      So here’s hoping it’s not a callback to the negative association you mention. It’s also a phrase used around the English-speaking world (not so much the “women’s business” bit), so it could well be as innocuous as that.

      However, given what certain prominent “comedians” get away with on mainstream TV in Australia even today, it’s impossible to tell yet.

  11. This post is making me seriously consider my identity and whether it could be low-octane British truth bomb.

  12. wow I totally watched that The Good Fight episode and thought the censored scene was a bit, as it fit the theme of the episode. They censored an animation about censorship. just wow

  13. YouTube recommended that bit of the Kate and Erica scene in the bar to me and I literally sat in front of my computer gasping and silently yelling,“WHAT IS HAPPENING?“
    I’m not going to get into how an algorhythm knows me better than a lot of rl people.

  14. I KNEW it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world realized how incredible Jen Richards is 💖 she deserves all the NYT writeups and more. Next stop: HerStory on “real” teevee!

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