Queer Stories Strike Back! ‘Heartstopper,’ ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ and ‘Bottoms’ Lead a New Surge of LGBTQ Content

Within a three-week time span this August, audiences have been able to watch two British teenage boys wrestle with when to come out as a couple to their school (in Season 2 of the Netflix series Heartstopper), the first son and the prince of England make passionate love in a plush Parisian hotel suite (in the Amazon Prime Video rom-com Red, White Royal Blue) and a pair of lesbian BFFs start a fight club at their high school to cajole the hottest cheerleaders to sleep with them (in the MGM sex comedy Bottoms).

This is, to put it mildly, unusual.

When I started out, youd have one queer show in the U.K. on TV a year or every other year and that was it, says Heartstopper executive producer Patrick Walters. It was a niche thing: One and done, and then we move on to more mainstream stories.

Instead, this month boasts the greatest concentration of high-profile queer content in recent memory. On Max, the DC animated series Harley Quinn and Sex and the City sequel series And Just Like That have been exploring queer characters messy attempts at long-term relationships. Meanwhile, the new season of the FX comedy What We Do in the Shadows boasts a cast of perpetually horny pansexual vampires who help throw a magically inappropriate Pride parade on Staten Island.

None of these titles could fairly be called blockbuster sensations, but theyve all, to varying degrees, been hits Heartstopper and Red, White Royal Blue debuted at or near the top of their respective streamers Top 10 charts. More to the point, with this many options available at one time, none of these titles has to be a sensation. Thats in sharp contrast to what happened to Bros last September. Breathlessly touted as the first major studio romantic comedy about two gay men, it bombed in theaters, grossing just $14.8 million worldwide, and left the stinging and fallacious impression that mainstream audiences werent interested in any queer stories.

Rather than soft-pedal or abandon their productions, however, both Netflix and Amazon heavily promoted Heartstopper and Red, White Royal Blue as significant releases.

It is not very in vogue for a member of the WGA to say anything nice about a studio, says Red, White Royal Blue director Matthew Lpez, who adapted the script with Ted Malawer from Casey McQuistons bestselling novel. So Im saying this as a member of the DGA: I had real support from the studio to make this movie. I never went begging for more cash.

Lpez is quick to note that Amazons faith in his film was bolstered by McQuistons robust book sales. You could chalk it up to people finally understanding that theres actually money to be made from this, he says of the rush of queer content. My fear is that its a fluke. My hope is that it represents a willingness to allow queer filmmakers and queer storytellers to own their work in ways that I think weve never been allowed to before. We are not a monolith. We have as many stories inside of us as there are queer individuals who are telling stories.

Indeed, Bottoms with its gleeful ultraviolence and extravagantly profane worldview could scarcely feel more different from the earnest and gentle Heartstopper. Director Emma Seligman, who co-wrote Bottoms with star Rachel Sennott, was inspired by her love of over-the-top high school movies from the 80s and 90s that have fallen out of fashion. I wanted to bring it back, and part of bringing it back for me is making it queer and female driven, she says. But that doesnt change the genre. Its just our version of it. (The film premiered at SXSW in March and debuts in theaters Aug. 25.)

Heartstopper also reframes teenage romance through a queer lens, especially as Season 2 broadens its scope beyond the core couple of Nick Nelson (Kit Connor) and Charlie Spring (Joe Locke) to its lesbian, trans and asexual characters. And simply centering LGBTQIA characters in a tried-and-true storytelling format automatically set the project apart.

We were trying to make a show that appealed widely to all ages, but specifically to the younger teen audience, says Walters. And there just wasnt a show like that. Rather than view Heartstoppers uniqueness as a liability, however, Walters and his colleagues at See-Saw Films used it as a selling point. We said to Netflix, Youve got to be part of this because its doing something thats not been done before, and thats really exciting.

Even a cursory search of social media for reactions to Heartstopper and Red, White Royal Blue makes plain the impact theyve had on audiences and how queer visibility has changed for Gen Z viewers. Just one example: Freshly out Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp recently went viral for tweeting, Where do I find a Nick Nelson?

In that kind of environment, says Walters, producers need to strike while the iron is (ahem) flaming hot.

I think the real danger, in terms of being a queer producer and queer creative, is that you dont go, OK, weve done that one thing, and were not going to get it again, so were not going to ask again, he says. You have to keep going back to the decision-makers. There is such an appetite for all different types of queer stories. We should keep going.

Jaden Thompson contributed to this story.