Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor Billy Porter (Kinky Boots, Pose) will appear in the next season of Sesame Street with Elmo and his friends, wearing the black tuxedo dress that he wore to the Academy Awards last year.
Sesame Street today posted photos of Porter on Facebook and Twitter, showing him on the iconic set, with Muppet Elmo, and with an unnamed Muppet penguin. I’m guessing there’s a tuxedo joke in there somewhere—but perhaps the avian is also a subtle reference to the many same-sex penguin pairs that really exist. Porter, who is gay, married his husband Adam Smith in 2017.
The hashtag #Season51 indicates the episode will air as part of the show’s 51st season this fall. That will be the first season where episodes will debut on the upcoming streaming service HBO Max before airing on PBS Kids.
Sesame Street has included a few brief mentions of same-sex parents in the past several years and briefly showed Muppet Grover in a dress in the 2017 song “Anyone Can Play,” about breaking down gender roles. The show has also posted Pride Month messages on social media. Compared with some other shows for young children, however, it feels like the venerable series, known for its groundbreaking representation of other aspects of diversity, has been cautious in depicting clearly LGBTQ and gender expansive characters.
That caution may stem from the show’s historical place on public television’s PBS Kids network, dependent on donations, grants, and member station dues for support. In a 2005 episode of PBS Kids’ Postcards from Buster, produced by Boston’s WGBH, rabbit Buster visits Vermont to learn how maple-sugar and cheese are made. His tour guides are children from two different families, one of which is headed by two moms. Buster’s one comment on their family structure was, “That’s a lot of moms!” Nevertheless, U. S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings denounced the episode and asked the producers to return all federal funding. The conservative American Family Association launched a campaign to support her decision.
PBS pulled the episode. WGBH aired it, however, and 57 other stations, representing more than half of PBS viewers, chose to broadcast it. Producer Jeanne Jordan told the New York Times in 2006, however, that the controversy made it difficult to find funds for a second season.
In 2015, however, Sesame Street inked a deal with HBO whereby episodes aired first on the cable network, and then on PBS Kids. A new deal last fall will shift the episodes to the new HBO Max streaming service this coming year. As I speculated a couple of years ago, perhaps the deal has given Sesame Street the financial security to include content that some might see as controversial, such as LGBTQ characters. Promoting Porter’s appearance in a dress might be a big rainbow signal about the new direction.
We can only hope. Sesame Street has not been afraid to have LGB people guest star, including Neil Patrick Harris, Lance Bass, Margaret Cho, Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Harvey Fierstein, Martina Navratilova, and Rosie O’Donnell—but it was never clear they were LGB. (They have had no transgender guests, to the best of my knowledge.) Not that every appearance by an LGBTQ person should be “about” their LGBTQ identity—it shouldn’t—but never mentioning it makes it seem like they’re missing opportunities for education and representation. Maybe Neil Patrick Harris could bring husband David Burtka and their adorable twins to the show next time. Even better, I’d love to see the show commit to having LGBTQ human and/or Muppet characters join the show on an ongoing basis.
It’s unclear what Porter will talk about during his appearance. I have to think that if he’s wearing his dress, gender expression will come up somehow. Even if it isn’t discussed explicitly, though, his appearance in the outfit feels like a step forward in representation.
Is it too much to hope for a Pride Parade down Sesame Street in the future?
