What a week, y’all!
This was a week that saw Drag Race herstory happen and casting news that was a decade in the making for Glee fans. Plus there are new queer horror films on the way, some queer celebrity commentary and plenty of spicy takes. It can be a lot, but luckily every week in “The Buzz” we round it all up for your perusing pleasures.
Here’s what you missed this week in queer and trans pop culture.
→ History was made on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 7 this week. When Jinkx Monsoon and Monét X Change took the stage to lip sync for their legacies, it wasn’t a bop, banger or jam that came over the speakers, but rather a speech. For the first time in history, the show featured a spoken word lip sync, this one set to the “the night the lights went out in Georgia” speech from ’80s TV series Designing Women.
Spoken word lip sync has long been a drag tradition, and frankly it’s surprising that it took this long to get it on the Drag Race stage.
But now that the metaphorical spoken word ice has been broken, Drag Race fans are weighing in with their serious (and not so serious) suggestions for what iconic speech should be tackled next, from viral videos to web series to Glee to prestige horror.
And of course The Real Housewives franchise is full of options.
My personal pick is Meryl Streep’s iconic “cerulean” monologue from The Devil Wears Prada, which SNL star Bowen Yang went viral for doing to perfection back in 2018.
→ On the topic of Glee: Lea Michele is set to officially take over for Beanie Feldstein in the Broadway revival of Funny Girl. Longtime Gleeks understand the magnitude of this moment, but for the uninitiated, Michele has basically spent her entire career evolving into someone who would take on Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, and then was passed over when Feldstein was cast (possibly due to the wave of controversies and bullying allegations that have surfaced about Michele in recent years).
But hey, Mr. Arnstein, here she is! The stars have aligned for Michele to take on her dream role, as Feldstein departs to go get happily married and whatnot.
Michele will officially take over on Sept. 6.
→ The Emmy nominations are here, and some queer favs made it into contention for the annual celebration of TV, including SNL’s Bowen Yang and a bunch of love for Hacks, Euphoria and Yellowjackets. Check out the full list of nominations here.
→ Soccer star and activist Megan Rapinoe received the Presidential Medal of Freedom last week in a ceremony at the White House.
Rapinoe wore a white suit for the occasion with WNBA star Brittney Griner’s initials on the lapel as a way to draw attention to Griner’s continued detainment in Russia.
→ In a match made in gay heaven, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK breakout Bimini is set to tour alongside sapphic indie rockers MUNA in the U.K. this summer.
→ The trailer for the upcoming queer horror film Hypochondriac is here to give you plenty of nightmares.
The film follows a young, Hispanic gay potter grappling with mental illness that he is desperate to keep hidden, and the wolf-like creature that begins stalking him.
→ Autostraddle has published a list of 100 lesbians, non-binary folks and trans mascs in suits and it will make your day.
→ In a recent interview with Out, Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Watiti talked about bringing queerness into his projects.
“We’re all queer,” Waititi said. “Just to varying degrees of where we are on the [sexuality] spectrum, I think. I think, innately, humans have all got some degree of queerness in them.”
→ A bunch of queer former Disney Channel stars including Alyson Stoner, Debby Ryan and Tim Bagley are coming together to make a queer horror film called Howdy, Neighbor!
→ After the creator of Friends shared regrets about how the show handled a trans storyline, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane said he wouldn’t change his show’s controversial trans storyline.
“Look, there are always things that you would do differently when you look back at earlier points in your career. There isn’t a big change I would make. It’s more about the individual moments and individual jokes,” he said.
→ The cast of Heartstopper had the best response to anti-LGBTQ+ trolls at a Pride event in London, throwing a huge dance party to Whitney Houston and flipping them the bird.
→ The Crown star Emma Corrin opened up about gender, fluidity and being non-binary in an interview with Vogue.
“The next generation is so much more chill,” Corrin said. “They are finding a way to express themselves which is less binary in a very organic way. While we’re almost caught in between.”
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