"Rugrats" Reboot To Feature Single Lesbian Mom

anim8rfsk

2021-05-30 21:17:59 UTC

The reboot of the classic Nickelodeon children’s cartoon “Rugrats” will
reimagine one of the characters as an openly lesbian single mother.
“Rugrats,” which ran throughout the 1990s until 2004, launched Thursday
as a new series of the same name on the streaming service Paramount
Plus, which is owned by ViacomCBS.
“Nickelodeon is reuniting members of the original voice cast behind
iconic toddlers Tommy Pickles, Chuckie Finster, Angelica Pickles, Susie
Carmichael and Phil and Lil DeVille in the upcoming all-new Rugrats
animated series,” read a press release from Nickelodeon.
Most of the characters will be the same as they were in the original
series, though Betty, who is the mother of twins Phil and Lil, is now a
single lesbian mom. Natalie Morales, who is openly queer,

For which we blame Adam.

Last I heard she was ambiguously bi.

Oh, wait, this is the news woman from NBC that BTR likes.

voices the

character, and recently explained to entertainment website the A.V.
Club how she wishes there had been more gay characters in cartoons when
she was growing up.
“Betty is a single mom with her own business who has twins and still
has time to hang out with her friends and her community, and I think
it’s just so great because examples of living your life happily and
healthily as an out queer person is just such a beacon for young queer
people who may not have examples of that,” Morales said.
“And yeah, Betty is a fictional cartoon, but even cartoons were hugely
influential for me as a kid and if I’d been watching ‘Rugrats’ and seen
Betty casually talking about her ex-girlfriend, I think at least a part
of me would have felt like things might be okay in the future,” Morales
added.
“Some things to know about this updated version of Betty: She loves
football, owns a café called Betty’s Beans, and she cracks jokes about
her ex-girlfriends,” the A.V. Club further reported. “Now all we need
is to know her thoughts on sharing a name with Taylor Swift’s gayest
song. We’ll get to find out more about this new version of Betty when
the show premieres May 27 on Paramount+.”

I had to look to see if this cost the original voice actress, Kath Soucie,
her job. She’s credited on the new show but in different roles.

But how far does this “your sexual orientation must match the characters”
crap go? I never worked on Rugrats, I refused to because the characters
were so ugly, but would I be allowed to animate a female gay character now?

More and more children’s programming has been getting LGBT
representation. As The Daily Wire reported about an upcoming reboot of
Disney is revamping “The Proud Family,” a 20-year-old cartoon
sitcom about an African American family, and will be featuring
a cast that includes two interracial gay dads whose adopted
daughter is a teenage racial activist.
Actors Zachary Quinto and Billy Porter, both of whom are gay,
will be playing Barry Leibowitz-Jenkins and Randall Leibowitz-
Jenkins, respectively, according to Entertainment Weekly (EW).
The two are a couple and mixed-race adoptive parents to Maya
Leibowitz-Jenkins, a 14-year-old black activist voiced by Keke
Palmer.
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