RF: That was the first discussion Bruce and I had when we knew we were coming back, and specifically as it related to the Michael character. Michael’s clearly a member of the LGBTQ+ community, but we just weren’t really allowed or, shall I say, encouraged to explore his story in a more honest and authentic way. Although we did do a very interesting episode when Michael was called a sissy in the first go around, which did address that issue on some level, but we thought, ‘OK, coming back, we have to this right.’

First of all, it was important to have voices of the character with an authentic voice. And that led us to seek out E.J. Johnson to voice the character. And then because we knew E.J. was this kid when he was growing up, so he was perfect and we loved his voice. And then the other part was a character redesign. You know where we portrayed Michael as someone who owned his personality, owned his presence, owned who he was and was confident. I think one of the things the E.J. talked about is he talked about how he wants to portray Michael as being this fierce, confident character. So it could give strength to young kids like him so that they can know that they can be that way and that he wishes he had had that when he was that age. So that was a thing we knew we had to correct about the original show and do.

But along the way, we also decided to add some more characters to the universe because it’s always weird how in shows you have one LGBTQ+ character, and that person has to carry the weight of everything. Everything falls within that character. It has to represent everything. And that’s not true. It’s the same for older shows when they would have the one Black character that had to carry the show. That’s when we came upon the idea because we knew we were going to bring in new kids. Why not make their parents same-sex dads? And that’s led us to Billy Porter and Zachary Quinto.

BS: It was important for us just to have a spectrum of Blackness in the show. And that’s always been paramount.

RF: We knew it was going to be controversial, even though it shouldn’t be, and that we knew there was going to be a discussion, there’s going to be a dust-up. And we invited that. We think that discussion should be had. But if anything, we’re going to air on the side of representation and authenticity. So that’s what we’re about.

Ralph Farquhar