Fan Expo Chicago offered something for the entire family, and this year that also included chosen families. A rainbow of costumed characters, vendors and celebrities attended the fan-focused festival at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont from Aug. 15-17.
Several panelists and artists embraced the LGBTQ+ community in attendance over the weekend. Among them was actor Beverly D’Angelo, who was joined in person by her National Lampoon’s Vacation cast mates, Chevy Chase, Anthony Michael Hall, Dana Barron and Randy Quaid.
Beverly described the experience to Windy City Times: “A basic human need is to be seen and heard. At first, I noticed a lot of collectors, but then what started to happen at my booth was that they just wanted a personal meet and greet. That is what I like, a little time to connect and say thank you to each other.”
The 73-year-old actor has been busy with her over six-decade career lately. She said, “I have been working back-to-back. I have new films that will come out soon, such as Sleepwalker with Hayden Panettiere and The Heart Brake, which is a sweet story about a girl who has to go back and live with her mother because of a hard situation she fled from, to find love and herself. It’s a beautiful little tale.”
D’angelo has another film called Last Hand, where she plays a character named Lilith Fudent. The movie is set for release next year and was directed by Nate Dushku and written by his husband Amnon Lourie. She stated, “One character represents the LGBTQ+ community, who has a lot of heart and I am happy to be a part of the project. When the community needs me, I am there for them.”
Venezuelan actor Patricia Velásquez was another participant at the expo was joined by fellow stars from a very different classic flick. She met up backstage to talk about her part in a 1999 action-adventure film: “The best thing about this week is this is the first time we have reunited after The Mummy came out. It feels like no time has passed and we are still a family.”
“Other moments that have stuck out for me over this weekend are when at least six different girls came up to my table at this convention to tell me that the fight scenes in The Mummy made them realize they were gay,” she added. I hear that a lot, and two girls even had t-shirts made to state the fact that The Mummy was a queer awakening for them.”
Velásquez is also an author and wrote the book Straight Walk: A Supermodel’s Journey to Finding Her Truth. She reflected, “Coming out was amazing. I was at the top of my career and being photographed for every magazine cover, but at my core, I was feeling very fake. I was going around helping communities, but at the end of the day, I wasn’t living my truth. I was leading a double life. I was afraid of disappointing my fans, a lot of them were guys, because I was involved with Victoria’s Secret and Sports Illustrated. I was raising my daughter with my partner at the time and at one point, I felt I had to show my daughter what it was like to live life truthfully. I was also in the Catholic community where it was not even thinkable, but I did it and decided to write the book. The truth came out and I didn’t lose any fans. It was quite the opposite and I gained a whole new community, which I am so proud to be a part of.”
Patricia’s activism didn’t stop on paper; recently, she has walked the talk with keynote speaking around the globe. The lead in the lesbian romance Liz in September said, “I have been doing keynote speaking and running The Wayuú Taya Foundation, which has helped over a million people in Venezuela. That is why I go to organizations like the Milken Institute, Clinton Global Initiative and TEDx. This takes up a lot of my time and I work hard. I do what I can and I am satisfied if I help even one person. Last year, we sent over 12 million dollars in medicines and supplies to people.”
Her foundation was established in 2002 to improve Latin American Indigenous communities while respecting their culture.
Another outspoken member of the LGBTQ+ community, Mae Whitman, took a break from autographs to reminisce about her career.
“I feel this is a very positive environment where everyone comes to uplift each other,” she said. “As someone who grew up as a misfit, it’s nice to gather together with other people who feel the same way. This is a whole collective that is so positive while encouraging people to be themselves and making their weirdness stand out. Don’t hide and be who you are. Enjoying ourselves at something like this is what we need right now. It feels special to be a part of it.”
At 37, Whitman has played numerous roles since starting as a child actor in When a Man Loves a Woman. She remembered some pivotal points, “I have been lucky to play so many queer roles in the past. It’s my dream come true and the queerer the better. Roxy is a classic lesbian in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and people come up to tell me it was their awakening. I played Amity Blight in The Owl House, who ended up dating Luz Noceda.”
The Owl House won a Peabody Award in 2021 for Children’s & Youth Programming and was praised for Disney’s display of LGBTQ+ representation in 2023. That is only one of the many animation projects the Los Angeles native has worked on, most notably voicing April O’Neil in five seasons of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and three seasons on Avatar: The Last Airbender, both on Nickelodeon.
Whitman talked to WCT about her previous role as Annie Marks on the NBC series Good Girls. “That show ended up being even more special than I could have dreamed,” she said. “Up until that point, I had always played someone who was wise beyond her years or a super-mature kid who grew up on the streets. Annie was the opposite. She was arrested and couldn’t get it together. She was 17 years old when she had her kid. I have that side to me as well in real life, so it was fun to explore that and put that side of myself into that character. There were deep levels and she had a truly good heart. She was a loving person who had a hard time being an adult and that’s the same for me too.”
Mae revealed more about her behind-the-scenes experience on Good Girls: “My storyline with my son on the show, played by Isaiah Stannard, was not originally written to be trans. The character was written as a boy. Isaiah auditioned by sending in a tape and he was so little at the time. He talked about being in the Pride club at his elementary school and how he made rainbow bagels and brought them to the school. He was already an incredibly strong person at that age.”
She continued, “From the first day of the show, we were ready to see how his journey would go and wanted to support him by making it part of the story. I remember the first day on set, the 11-year-old turned to me and asked if I knew what the Westboro Baptist Church is, which I did. He said I really feel bad for them because it must feel lonely to have so much hate in your heart. From that day on, we became close friends. Now that I have a kid of my own, I hope my son is a fraction of the person that Isaiah is. I loved being on that journey with him.”
One thing Mae especially enjoyed about the production was that it “didn’t use his storyline as a big thing, and it was just a moment of Isaiah revealing who he is, where his mother just loved him even more. It was a natural moment and it was really powerful, especially because Isaiah was going through it in real life. He was able to represent that on TV for all of the kids who go through that and it was told in a loving way. That was the most important thing about Good Girls to me.”
Highlights at Fan Expo Chicago for the pansexual performer were when participants “will tell me at my booth that their kid came out as non-binary or trans. They said that watching the show together helped them understand and opened up a channel of communication. That is the highest compliment ever and there’s no point in doing what I do if it doesn’t open up a conversation. This is all about community and opening up communication, especially about the queer community, is my goal. These conventions are safe spaces and that’s a huge part of why I like them. It opens up an adventure for me. People come here to tell me that my work gave them the confidence to come out or that one of my characters allowed them to be who they are. Those are my favorite compliments to receive and it’s so special.”
Known for his role as Louis Litt in the legal drama Suits, Rick Hoffman also had a special time at Fan Expo. “People are serious about their Funko Pop!s,” he joked. “How do you have a bad time when you have all of these people coming up to you saying these wonderful things? I live in northwest Ontario and I come down to see all of these fans.”
Future projects for Hoffman include a Netflix movie with Jennifer Lopez called Office Romance and a small part playing the legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell. While he has not portrayed a gay character in his varied career yet, it almost happened: “Showtime offered me a role to play a gay man with full frontal nudity, but I had to take a Steven Bochco show instead.”
For 53 years, Fan Expo Chicago has been the longest-running comic convention in the Midwest and is the largest comic con producer in the world.
