It’s the end of an era. The recent string of queer TV cancellations — and slow-down in new series — mark the end of a television movement where queer creators and queer audiences were finally being valued. But that makes Shayna Maci Warner’s new book The Rainbow Age of Television: An Opinionated History of Queer TV all the more important. If it had been published in 2017 or 2018 when they began working on the text, it would have been a celebration. Now it’s a call to action.

It’s essential to understand history in order to better move forward. It’s also essential to understand what worked and didn’t work about this rainbow age. It’s tempting to yearn for a past high-point in queer TV — but how about working toward something even better?

It was such a pleasure talking to Shayna about their book. We’re just two TV queers covering all the hot topics from whether Queer Representation™ is still important to how we felt about the Killing Eve finale to whether actors on cop shows should be questioned about their choice of roles. If you care about queer TV, I hope you enjoy this conversation!

Drew: You write about your changing feelings around representation. How do you hold the value and limits of that concept?

Shayna: Something I learned while writing this was how slow it is to write a book — well, not for some people, some people are incredibly quick and I have a lot of admiration for that — but for me the book was always going to be at least a year behind me and maybe two years behind whatever I’m writing about. I’ve progressed and the subject has way progressed. And that was really challenging.

But where I’m at now is probably similar to the very end of the book: What I value the most about this concept of representation is not really the metaphorical but the concrete. So how does queer representation affect people who make a living off of it? That includes their creative impetus, as well as their livelihood. Because the TV landscape is industrially so depressing I think I’m even more in line with that perspective. I’m so concerned about labor.

Drew: It’s interesting, because I agree with you fully. And also I came out because of Transparent.

Shayna: Yes!

Drew: It’s this thing where I don’t want to diminish the experience for people who need that now. Right? But at the same time I’m like well let’s think bigger, what if a TV show isn’t what someone would need to come out?

Shayna: Absolutely.

Drew: I appreciate what you said that yes it’s labor and also it’s queer people getting to express themselves. That’s something to value. Because it is this thing where the classic idea of representation was my experience, but what if our world was better so it could just be about the art?

Shayna: Exactly. Something I mention at the very beginning is TV is how I came out too. So I can’t diminish the importance of that. It shaped my worldview completely. And it also shaped me wanting to work in storytelling, in television, in history in some way. So it’s not nothing! Queer representation is cyclical. The people who are affected by it or by a lack of it are then motivated to make it and to think about this concept. I was alone until I saw this now I can make this for someone else who will no longer alone. However, I’m still a maker, I’m still in here, and I’m still being treated very poorly. It’s all very connected and I’m glad you mentioned you came out because of Transparent. Because it’s an important perspective and it’s an additional layer of grounding. Who am I writing this for? Why do I care about this still enough to write a book?

Drew: In terms of the writing of the book, at one point when discussing firsts you express how hard it is to be a completionist and see everything. I know when I was doing the project where I wrote about “every” queer cop in film and TV, up until publishing I was still discovering new things. How did you know when you were done? How did you find the balance between wanting to be thorough and knowing it’s kind of impossible?

Shayna: This was a really difficult one. (laughs)

Drew: (laughs)

Shayna: Thankfully, I had really incredible references on hand: Alternate Channels by Steven Capsuto and The Primetime Closet by Stephen Tropiano. The two Steves. Both of those are mostly 20th century broadcast, but Steven Capsuto’s especially has been through multiple editions. It still doesn’t go into 20th century but it is extremely thorough. I was using primetime listings of television as well. There was essentially a research process happening where I felt that impossibility and, of course, there are a lot of people who have done this work before me and put it up for everyone to access. LezWatch.Tv is actually an incredible resource.

Drew: It’s incredible!

Shayna: If you can’t find it there, it is going to be very surprising that you, yourself, will be able to research and find it elsewhere. So I was definitely relying on sources that have already been compiled. But if I read an episode description and I couldn’t find it noted anywhere else, then I would go watch it. Oftentimes it would turn up something and that was always exciting. That’s how I found the St. Elsewhere episode that had the t4t romance which was wild. But in terms of a cutoff point, what I looked for were primarily trans representations, two spirit representations, and nonbinary representations that hadn’t necessarily been written about elsewhere. While I had to become really well-versed in early gay and lesbian representations, there has been enough written about them that I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel.

I did have to cut myself off when it came to asexual representations. And that was because I had to think about how asexuality is categorized. There’s a lot of asexual representation when you think about how couples were portrayed on television in the 1950s. But that would be an entirely different book. That was kind of the test. Whenever I was like this would require another book of research that’s where I cut myself off.

Drew: How often did you watch stuff vs. just reading plot descriptions? Especially when it wasn’t just a one off episode but an arc or an entire series?

Shayna: So I started working on this when I was 21 in 2017/2018, so I had a lot of time to watch a lot. And I had my whole life before that to watch a lot. If I had seen an episode or two of something and got the general gist of what I was trying to answer or confirm then I’d leave it there. But that’s disappointing to me, because sometimes I’d watch an episode and be like great I have that thing confirmed and then I’d watch the next episode just because I like TV and it would open a whole other realm of things. But, again, I had to just cut myself off, because the structure of this is so wide. If I were to write another book I would not go this wide. Because I don’t think by anyone’s standards — and certainly not mine — this is thorough enough.

Drew: It’s one of those things where each one of your chapters could be a book, and even each show could have an entire book. But, you know, I would probably never pick up a book about St. Elsewhere, and I loved learning about that episode. There is a value to a broader approach even if it breaks your heart to not include every detail.

Shayna: The most basic answer to when I watched a whole series vs. a few episodes was if I had found my point. Sometimes something might have been written about the show before, but I felt like there was something else to the episode or series that had been missed. That’s often where I made the most interesting discoveries. But especially toward the end of writing this I was trying to be as efficient as I could.

Drew: You mentioned St. Elsewhere. What were your other favorite curios you discovered throughout this process?

Shayna: One of my favorites was an episode of Lloyd in Space called “Neither Boy nor Girl” and it’s about a little purple potato cartoon character named Zoit who is voiced by Pamela Adlon.

Drew: I loved that detail.

Shayna: *chef’s kiss* A whole book on that!

Drew: (laughs)

Shayna: But the conceit of the episode is boys vs. girls. The boy aliens really want to have an extra member on their crew and the girl aliens want an extra member on their crew. And it’s ridiculous because they’re aliens. But neither of the groups can figure out Zoit’s gender and it becomes a competition once they realize Zoit’s species can choose after their 13th birthday. And, of course, Zoit’s just so happens to be the next Monday. They all want Zoit to choose their side and it ends with Zoit so frustrated with having these presumptions placed on them that they don’t tell anybody what they choose. It’s on this kid’s cartoon! It’s fabulous. A rich text.

Drew: It’s fascinating because if that came out today it would be boycotted and people would be so angry. It just goes to show people often need to be told what to be mad about. These narratives have been around and it’s only when someone says this is the wedge issue and then it’s like oh my god it’s an election year I guess I need to hate trans people more!

Shayna: I would love to see that episode get re-aired.

Drew: I appreciated how much you wrote about archival work and about all the stuff that’s lost that we can no longer see and how there’s stuff that could be lost now. And the stakes of protecting new work in the streaming era even something like Mrs. Fletcher.

Shayna: Oh my God that was so devastating. That was a real-time archival loss. I say as one of the five fans of Mrs. Fletcher.

Drew: We’re on this call. This is the Mrs. Fletcher fan club.

Shayna: (laughs)

Drew: When I thought about queer TV history, I thought there was Ellen and then there was Will and Grace. I never made this connection you write about that in a way Ellen was rejected while Will and Grace was embraced. Can you talk about why you think that happened?

Shayna: Yeah let me think for a second, because I feel like I wrote about Ellen and Will and Grace and then blocked them out.

Drew: (laughs) Ellen is my dream interview. I mean, only if she’d actually talk openly. But there’s something in me where I can’t fully abandon people like Ellen or RuPaul. I’m fascinated by what they had to do and who they had to be and how that’s led to who they are now. Anyway, I could talk about Ellen forever. I find her fascinating.

Shayna: Oh she is fascinating. I would love to see a prestige drama about Ellen.

Drew: About her? I’d love to see one starring her! I want to see her have a Jodie Foster moment like how Jodie Foster is now doing some real acting again.

Shayna: I’d be interested to see it.

Definitely part of it had to do with parent companies. Will and Grace was NBC, Ellen was ABC, and ABC is Disney. They did not support her whatsoever. That was the main thing. She took this giant leap — that had been planned, a very premeditated coming out — and then they just dropped her. They didn’t stand behind her whatsoever. I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall in all those meetings to find out what the conversations were, because they’re kind of locked down. She talks about it a little bit in an Apple TV series about the history of queer TV but she also tells it in a way where some of the dates are off so I wonder what really happened.

Also Will and Grace was not heavily invested in initially. And then it became a hit. For Ellen, it was this huge premeditated risk and they were waiting for her to fail. That’s my analysis. And also Ellen the show is so much tamer than Will and Grace. Even though we might look at Will and Grace and think it’s extremely tame by today’s standards, it had a different audience. But it is really fascinating to see how fast Ellen herself just plummeted but then she came back pretty quickly. We don’t really talk about that as much when we talk Ellen’s series cancellation. She hopped back onto TV fairly quickly. They just let go of this series.

Drew: When did If These Walls Could Talk 2 come out? 2000? She has a sex scene in that! So it’s interesting that very briefly she leaned into her queerness before part of bouncing back meant assimilation. But honestly I’ve never watched her follow up to Ellen. And while that first show was very tame given the type of sitcom it was, it also did very explicitly deal with gay stuff in a way I didn’t associate with her moving forward. Even though she had a quick comeback, it felt like a requirement was not engaging as explicitly with her queerness.

Shayna: Oh yeah. Capital L Lesbian but your friendly neighborhood one. Her talk show was so heterosexual. Daytime talk, a whole other book, but thinking about her audience for that: extremely heterosexual.

Her show did continue for another season and it was gay, but it was slapped with this ratings warning before every episode. And that speaks to the network. They would rather apologize in advance. So that shapes the perception no matter what you see after that warning. Will and Grace never had to do that.

Arguably Will and Grace is funnier and it has a veteran TV director at its helm, but we know there are other factors.

Drew: Yeah I don’t know. I think Ellen season five was pretty great. As far as 90s sitcoms go? I’m an apologist.

Speaking of problematic faves, do you think queer audiences are coming around to less perfect queer representation? Even since you first started writing this book, have you seen a shift in what queer audiences are excited by and willing to support?

Shayna: I think so. But I don’t have a demographic survey I could pull from and I’m in my own bubble. I just did a Nitehawk run that was the second year of Be Gay, Do Crime. We sold out screenings. So based on my own bubble, yeah for sure.

Drew: (laughs) I know your bubble, so I’m laughing.

Shayna: Exactly. My attitudes have also shifted based on the world around me. I didn’t come to be gay, do crime on my own. That was absolutely informed by other people.

But if we think 2015 marriage equality, the pinnacle of good gays, and traveling from that to 2024, yeah I think there’s been a shift in our general culture.

Drew: To me, the next step is not having to convince oneself that the bad gays are good gays. Because there were people who worshiped Bette and Tina during the original run of The L Word and are like, they didn’t do anything wrong. Then there’s a reaction to that like, actually Bette Porter was evil and now we hate her. It also can just be that she’s a complicated TV character.

Or, I don’t know, I’m going to get in trouble. But I do like that I’m mentioned in the book defending the Killing Eve finale. People being like that’s my baby and it’s like no actually that’s an assassin. You can be charmed by that character, you can be invested in that character, and, of course, you can even hate how the finale is done, but the way some people talked about Villanelle was so interesting. I was like oh you don’t know how to take pleasure in a villain being queer without defending that character’s actions. And that is kind of sinister to me!

Shayna: That’s a good point, because when you asked if people were trending more toward bad queer representation, I did think about fandom culture and the infantilization of queer villains. There’s a justification of murder and whatever else. I’m trying to think of a queer character who is truly reprehensible who I can’t justify their actions. One of those is in the Power series, but even then a justification of actions would mean taking on an entire system. Or thinking about The Wire, but not Omar because he gets a lot of justification.

Drew: Right and I don’t think there’s any problem with that. That’s just complexity. Not that you can’t just have a full-on villain. But I think there’s a difference between a show adding nuance and complexity and a fandom being like they did nothing wrong. We can still have conversations about their upbringing and society.

Shayna: But they still did something heinous.

I was thinking about Queer as Folk as well. Brian as a character who is so hotly contested within the world of the show itself and is dating a 17-year-old for the whole first season and how prickly he is and how unlikable he is. I watch it now through the lens of I enjoy anti-assimilationist characters and while he did do stuff wrong, the show lets him make some arguments.

Drew: For all its flaws, I did appreciate how the reboot tried to approach that. There was enough that was interesting there. I’d rather a reboot be deeply flawed than boring. I’ll take the Queer as Folk reboot over Gen Q any day. Gen Q had its strengths and I had fun watching some days when it wasn’t making me want to die — and you know as a trans woman, that show probably would’ve been happy to kill me — but the Queer as Folk reboot feels very similar to Tales of the City. You can feel the tension in the writers room, you can feel the voices who are wanting to push it here and push it there and it’s a lot of television all at once.

Shayna: In that reboot scenario where the sins of the past are recognized, characters so rarely stay characters. They become symbols.

Drew: It’s maybe not great television. But it is interesting.

Shayna: Even us on this call trying to come up with a morally reprehensible or justifiable character is interesting, because it puts us in a position of judging what is good and what is bad. We may be flipping it so that bad and good mean opposite things, but we’re so invested in what’s the right way to do a queer character. And that can be limiting.

Drew: That’s a really good point. I’ve had to work on that for myself and realize even if something isn’t for me that’s not necessarily a judgment of its quality or importance. Not that we shouldn’t have bad reviews. Criticism is important. But there are times where I watch something and I’m like even if this isn’t for me it is a type of story that should exist.

Shayna: It’s this frustration you were talking about earlier about whether or not representation still matters. And it’s like yeah it does, but we wish this wasn’t the world in which we had to engage with queerness. It’s the same argument. It’s the same thread. If we could engage with queerness in storytelling just as storytelling and base it on its own merits and not be criticizing it based on a foundational structure that wasn’t built for queerness we would be having a much more expansive conversation.

Drew: I loved the interviews that you have at the end of each chapter. In approaching your interviews, how do you find the balance between asking real and difficult questions and being respectful? Especially when talking to people you really admire.

Shayna: (laughs) Ahhh.

Can I ask if you’re thinking of something specific?

Drew: Well, knowing your politics… Okay, look, Stephanie Beatriz didn’t write Brooklyn 99, so I don’t think she should have to answer for all cop shows and their legacies. But, I don’t know, if I was interviewing her about the show it is something I would bring up. And maybe she’d have nothing else to say and maybe there’s no point in pushing an actor — especially one who is a really lovely person! — on this topic. But I also think those conversations need to happen! That was the one that jumped out at me.

Shayna: Totally. That’s a great one. I thought you were going to say Jennifer Beals to be honest for totally different reasons.

Drew: (laughs)

Shayna: That was probably an omission on my part. I could have asked. And she probably would have given an answer. I’ll be very frank and say the conversation with her became more revealing than I expected it to. She was putting things together as she was answering that I probably could’ve asked. And I could’ve asked how she balances the pride she takes in having played this queer character with Brooklyn 99 being a cop show.

Drew: I mean, look, I interview people all the time, and I’m asking this because I’m always trying to figure out that balance. Like if I talked to Jennifer Beals, I would probably just be like you’re amazing, Bette Porter is amazing. I wouldn’t be like, as the star of this show and a producer on Gen Q why did xyz happen and how were xyz treated? Because what am I going to really get out of that? It’s something I’m always trying to figure out as a cultural critic. Knowing when it’s the right time and what’s the most effective way to reveal a truth about this industry.

I never want to avoid something out of fear, but I do want to be aware that not every moment is the time for every discussion. So it’s not a critique of you as much as it’s a desire to understand your process.

Shayna: Yeah I’d be asking the same question.

I feel like I got bolder as the interviews went on. It also really depended on how nervous someone seemed in speaking to me. Because there were people I could tell were a little afraid of me and that I was going to pry. I do start out with this very personal question about seeing yourself represented. To me, it’s a fun party game question but it can get nerve-wracking. Some people answered the same as other interviews and other people went way off and those were the people who I asked more difficult questions to. There were other people who stayed very straight-forward.

Drew: Last question. What is your hottest queer TV take?

Shayna: Queer subtext can be more interesting than text because it’s not sanctioned or scrutinized in the same way.

The Rainbow Age of Television: An Opinionated History of Queer Television is now available.

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