Following the success of Michaela Jae’s latest single, “Green Lights,” the trans Golden Globe-winning and Emmy-nominated actress, singer and activist released a Spanish version of the track entitled “Green Lights (La Luz),” a press release noted. The track also features additional instrumentation from Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire who played bass on the song. Of the new rendition, Michaela Jaé explains, “La Luz is an ode to my culture and community. When ‘Green Lights’ was first created, I had strong and high hopes of doing it in Spanish, having top-tier instrumentation and production. … [Coincidentally], we are releasing in Hispanic Heritage Month and I’m so happy I can say this one is truly for my Latino and Latina community!” The video for “Green Lights” is at this link.
Tony winner and two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington’s and Tony nominee and Academy Award nominee Jake Gyllenhaal’s return to Broadway in William Shakespeare’s Othello has found its Broadway home and set dates, according to Broadway World. The production will play Broadway’s Barrymore Theatre, beginning previews on Monday, Feb. 24, 2025 for a Sunday, March 23, 2025 opening night, playing a strictly limited 15-week engagement at the Barrymore through Sunday, June 8. Complete casting for Othello will be announced soon.
More than 70 LGBTQ+ models and eight designers took over the Brooklyn Museum for dapperQ’s ninth annual queer fashion show, “Presents Nine,” coinciding with the start of New York Fashion Week, NBC News noted. While the event is not part of the official New York Fashion Week lineup, dapperQ—a digital magazine focused on covering queer fashion as a form of activism—intentionally makes its show just as big of a spectacle. The idea for the event came to founder Anita Dolce Vita more than a decade ago, when she started receiving invitations to Fashion Week shows.
Transgender filmmaker Lilly Wachowski is co-producing an adaptation of Hell Followed With Us—a dark-fantasy young adult (YA) novel written by Andrew Joseph White, PinkNews noted. The 2022 novel follows Benji, a 16-year-old trans boy who has escaped from the cult that raised him; after meeting a group of queer teens, he, with the help of new friend Nick, works to discover the beast hidden deep within him. Wachowski has said, “Hell Followed With Us shines a much-needed light on the power of found family and the imperative to protect our LGBTQIA+ siblings in the fight against dogmatic hate.”
HBO has ended the drag reality show We’re Here after four seasons, per Variety. Series co-creators Johnnie Ingram and Stephen Warren said in a statement, “Creating We’re Here was a dream come true and our hearts are overflowing with love. We are grateful to HBO for giving us this opportunity, to our fierce drag mothers and drag community, to our production team at IPC, and to all those that shared their hearts and stories with us.” The first three seasons featured RuPaul’s Drag Race stars Bob the Drag Queen, Eureka O’Hara and Shangela traveling to small towns to give drag makeovers to members of the LGBTQ+ community and its allies; the fourth season featured Priyanka, Sasha Velour, Latrice Royale and Jaida Essence Hall.
Billy Porter has released his new EP, Black Mona Lisa Vol. 2: The Cookout Sessions, according to a press release. It serves as the companion and successor to his acclaimed 2023 full-length LP, Black Mona Lisa. The release states, “These six tracks deliver an unabashed homage to black music and dance music. Simultaneously, he consciously harks back to his R&B roots. … Laced with a message, the track transmits a politically charged clarion call trumpeted with raw and righteous soul.” Tracks include “Black Mona Lisa” (featuring Big Freedia), “Leap,” “Not Today,” “Skin Deep,” “Audacity (Live)” and “Leap (Sgt. Slick’s Discotizer Remix).”
Laura Jane Grace & the Mississippi Medicals—the new rock quartet fronted by trans musician Grace and featuring Matt Patton of Drive-By Truckers (bass), Mikey Erg of The Ergs (drums) and Paris Campbell Grace (vocals, percussion)—released the band’s debut EP, Give an Inch, per a press release. Recorded by Patton at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi, the EP includes songs such as “All Fucked Out” and “Karma Too Close.” The band is slated to play a sold-out gig at Chicago’s The Empty Bottle on Sept. 21 and will be part of the Chicago event Riot Fest that’s taking place Sept. 20-22.
Shailene Woodley is set to star in a biopic of queer musical icon Janis Joplin—and the film will receive $2.5 million in funding from the California Film Commission, Variety noted. Woodley is acting and producing the film, which will shoot over 30 days and spend about $10 million in “qualified expenditures.” The commission also announced that it has awarded $12 million to get Suits L.A. to actually film in L.A; NBC’s Suits spinoff series shot its pilot in Vancouver—home of one of the world’s most generous film tax incentives.
GLAAD announced the second season of the GLAAD digital original series, Dímelo, through a press release. The series (hosted by comedian, writer and GLAAD Media Institute consultant Gabe Gonzalez) debuts amid this year’s Latine Heritage Month with five episodes, which spotlight LGBTQ+ Latine comics Vico Ortiz, Roz Hernandez, Danielle Perez, Ian Paget and Lorena Russi working across television, stage, and digital platforms. The season premiere will be available to watch on GLAAD’s YouTube and LatiNation+ app, with exclusive clips from each interview released on Instagram and TikTok, starting Tuesday, Sept. 19; new episodes will premiere each week on GLAAD’s YouTube through Oct. 15 and can be found on the LatiNation+ app after airing.
Fans expressed their disappointment when it was revealed that Beyonce (as well as her album Cowboy Carter) was excluded from the Country Music Awards nominations, NBC News noted. Beyoncé posted on Instagram earlier this year that the album was “born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed,” adding that her experience motivated her to do a “deeper dive” into country music. Many fans speculated that she was referring to the backlash she received after performing her song “Daddy Lessons” at the 2016 CMAs with the country group The Chicks. The Cowboy Carter song “Texas Hold ‘Em” became the first by a Black female artist to top Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart after it was released in February. Shaboozey, a Black artist who was featured on two tracks on Cowboy Carter, received two nominations in this year’s CMAs.
And speaking of awards, Taylor Swift made history at MTV’s Video Music Awards (VMAs), per USA Today. Swift became the solo artist with the most career VMA wins, and the artist with the most video of the year wins. Swift’s Eras Tour opening act, Sabrina Carpenter, won for song of the year, for “Espresso.” Queer artist Chappell Roan won for best new artist (over acts such as Shaboozey and Teddy Swims) while bisexual musician Anitta won the Best Latin award for her song “Mil Veces”; Billie Eilish won the “Video for Good” award for “What Was I Made For”; and Megan Thee Stallion won for best art direction for “BOA.”
Also, regarding Chappell Roan, GLAAD released a statement about her win. “Chappell Roan is one of today’s most talented and adored music stars and her dedication of her Best New Artist win at the MTV Video Music Awards to drag artists, queer and trans people, namely queer youth in the Midwest, is a crucial moment as it puts our community front and center on a global stage,” GLAAD Vice President of Communications and Talent Anthony Allen Ramos said. “Roan’s words on the VMA stage have the potential to reach an audience who may be less familiar with the LGBTQ community. It’s truly inspiring to see that along her meteoric rise to stardom, Chappell Roan is proud to show her identity as a queer woman in music and is also deeply committed to uplifting voices from all parts of the LGBTQ community.”
The queer band The FMs plan to release the album 51122 on Nov. 22, per a press release. Produced by David Werner and inspired by lo-fi dream pop, classic new wave and disco, the album follows PINK + BLACK, their sophomore record released earlier this year. The lead single for the new album is a cover of Joy Division’s “A Means to an End”; some of the other tracks include “My Sex,” “Deviant” and “Wild New Earth.” High school friends Matte Namer (she/they) and Frankie Rex (he/they) began The FMs in 2016, establishing a close bond through their respective journeys coming out as transgender and shared love of synthesizers.
Queer singer-songwriters Rufus Wainwright and Meshell Ndegeocello will be among the musicians performing at the Big Ears Festival when it returns March 27-30, 2025, to downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, per a press release. ANOHNI & the Johnsons—who helped launch Big Ears in 2009—will return, along with musicians such as Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding, Waxahatchee, Anoushka Shankar, Bela Fleck and many others. Passes are on sale at BigEarsFestival.org.
Joe Locke’s role in the upcoming Disney+ series Agatha All Along puts him in a club that few MCU actors belong to—an LGBTQ+ actor portraying a queer character in that universe, according to The Direct. Also in this group is Tessa Thompson, a queer actress who stars as the bisexual Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder. Another openly LGBTQIA+ actor, Brianna Hildebrand, starred as the queer Negasonic Teenage Warhead in the Deadpool movies who, after appearing in Deadpool & Wolverine, also forms a part of this exclusive MCU club.
Sir Elton John cried at the Toronto International Film Festival as the global premiere of Elton John: Never Too Late was shown, Variety noted. A tearful John told the crowd at Roy Thomson Hall that family is more important to him than fame. “On my tombstone, I don’t want it to say he sold a million records. I want it to say he was a great dad and great husband.” Never Too Late captures John’s journey to becoming one of the world’s biggest rock stars, bookended by performances at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles in 1975 to more than 100,000 fans and again in 2022 during the final North American stop on his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour. The documentary also chronicles the relationships with husband David Furnish and their sons. Also, John cited 1989’s Field of Dreams as a film that stayed with him “because it’s a father-and-son thing” and listed The Godfather Part II as his favorite movie.
Dua Lipa’s “Radical Optimism” tour will hit North America—but not until September and October of 2025, Variety noted. The pop superstar announced 20 dates in the U.S. and Canada for the fall of next year, as part of a broader tour announcement that also included concerts she is adding onto her tour in Europe and other parts of the world starting in March. North American stops will include Chicago, Atlanta, LA and Dallas, among other cities.
Queer pianist and rising pop star Micah McLaurin released the music video for his club anthem “Call Me” via Casa Doce Music, a media release noted. The video was directed by An Le (who’s worked with Cher and Mariah Carey) and styled by Eyob Yohannes (Madonna; Julia Fox). The release stated, “Intertwining biblical and sexual references, the “Call Me” visual draws inspiration from the golden age of big, pop music videos to find Micah reclaiming and owning the parts of himself he had to hide from his devout, religious upbringing.”
Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and producer (as well as former NSYNC member) JC Chasez and Golden Globe-winning songwriter, producer and composer Jimmy Harry announced their new musical-theater concept album, Playing With Fire, according to a press release. Inspired by Mary Shelly’s classic novel Frankenstein, Playing With Fire marks Chasez’s first major musical theater recording project. Among the 16 songs are “Father,” “You Used to Touch Me,” “Build Me Someone to Love” and the title track.
Three lost season-four episodes of the reboot of One Day at a Time (including what would have been the series finale) will get a charity-table read for the late Norman Lear‘s People For the American Way foundation, Variety noted. The show’s cast and executive producers will reunite to read unproduced scripts on Saturday, Oct. 5 at the TV Academy’s Saban Media Center in North Hollywood.The entire cast from the series—which ran for three seasons on Netflix, followed by one more on Pop TV—will participate, including Justina Machado, Rita Moreno, Ed Quinn, Stephen Tobolowsky and more.
The Real Housewives of Orange County star Heather Dubrow revealed how daughter Kat, 17, and son Ace, 13—who both identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community—have been thriving at their new Los Angeles-area schools after the reality stars sold their Laguna Beach home last year and relocated to Beverly Hills, per Yahoo! Entertainment. “One of the main reasons we moved back to L.A. is because there’s more inclusive opportunities for my kids,” Dubrow said during the Bravo series’ Sept. 5 episode. “For Ace, making a fresh start for him has been wonderful. For Katerina, the school that she’s at has such a high-level film production program, she is thriving.” Ace is transgender while Kat identifies as lesbian.
Broadway Dear Evan Hansen stars Ben Platt and Noah Galvin have married, two years after becoming engaged, according to Playbill. Galvin took over the lead role in Broadway’s Dear Evan Hansen from Platt; Galvin was the first replacement. Both Platt and Galvin starred in the film Theatre Camp, co-written by Galvin and Platt with Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman.
Memphis rap artist and LGBTQ+ ally NLE Choppa released a new single entitled “Or What?” featuring New York collective 41, available now via NLE Entertainment/Warner Records, per a press release. In other news, Choppa is on the cover of PAPER Magazine’s very special 40th Anniversary issue—on stands just in time for New York Fashion Week. The 21-year-old rapper has amassed more than 8.5 billion streams and has earned 24 RIAA-certified plaques, including multiple platinum and gold singles.