Pop Culture Fix: Natalie Morales Will Play an Openly, Casually Bisexual Lead on NBC’S New Comedy “Abby’s”

It’s Pop Culture Fix day! That means you’re halfway through the week! Way to go!


+ Yesterday some very exiting news broke at NBC’s TCA event. Natalie Morales is going to headline a new comedy called Abby’s, in which she will play an “openly, casually bisexual character.” She also noted she’d be the first Cuban-American as a lead in a TV comedy since Desi Arnaz. It lands on March 28th, directly after Will & Grace!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ6LmX6wPfM

+ Lena Waithe’s Boomerang… reboot? Are we calling it a reboot? Adaptation feels more correct. Lena Waithe’s Boomerang adaptation, which is coming to BET on February 12, looks gayer every second! BET has set up a landing page for the whole show. The first two episodes screened at Sundance this weekend and people seemed to like them a lot!

+ DC has blessed us with a Birds of Prey teaser, featuring Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya! Heroic Hollywood has a closer look. (If this song makes you think of Skins it’s because the band, Moderat, is a supergroup that includes Apparat’s Sascha Ring, who did so much music for that show.)

+ Issa Rae and Robin Thede have created a new series called The Black Lady Sketch Show: “The half-hour sketch comedy — featuring, as its name implies, black women — has been picked up straight to series [by HBO]… It is considered the first sketch comedy in TV history to be written by, directed by and starring an array of black women.”  The writers room includes Brittani Nichols!!!

+ Rafiki is finally landing in the U.S.! It will open in Brooklyn on April 19 and will then roll out to Los Angeles, Seattle, and Denver!

+ Rent was apparently Fox’s least-watched musical — but definitely our most trafficked liveblog! Wonder why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=e53jgMA9380

+ God Friended Me will be back for a second season.

+ Gillian Flynn’s new Amazon series, Utopia, has cast its first character and IT’S SASHA LANE! According to the Hollywood Reporter, “Lane will play Jessica Hyde, who is described as being tough and feral after a life on the run from a mysterious and dangerous group — she believes all the answers about her perplexing life story may be hidden in the graphic novel Utopia.”

+ Megan Rapinoe thinks men should take a few hundred years off.

+ The Daily Beat loves DeAnne Smith’s new Netflix comedy special.

+ Twitter is convinced Bo Peep is a lesbian Jedi in the next Toy Story movie.

+ Laneia mentioned this in Monday’s Also.Also.Also, but I really want to make sure you see it and hold it in your heart: Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor met on Twitter. 

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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.

8 Comments

  1. do you know how mad i am that i have the hots for vanessa hudgens in this year of our lord 2019? this is not 2006! why did she glo up that hard!

    • So glad I’m not the only one! Talk about a glow up. Never thought I’d end up crushing on Gabrielle from HSM but here I am.

    • This is not what I want. This is *not* what I planned. And I just gotta say, I do not understand.

  2. I didn’t know DeAnne Smith’s Netflix thing existed and now I’ve watched it and cried a bit because I have another person to add to my small list of celebrities whose genderfeels approximate my own! Thank you for bringing this to my attention!

  3. You know what when I saw that Toy Story 4 poster I thought they were going for a Wonder Woman vibe, but Star Wars is owned by Disney now so the Jedi thing makes sense.

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