This past week in Austin, Texas, ATX TV Festival celebrated its 14th season, a four day festival celebrating all things television with panels, readings, reunions, awards and more. GLAAD has continually been a partner to the festival as a platform to celebrate and uplift LGBTQ-inclusive television. Catch our coverage of last year’s partnership here, as well as past conversations from previous years.
To kick off the fest GLAAD’s Special Entertainment Consultant Ryan Mitchell moderated a panel for Clean Slate. The comedy that premiered on Amazon Prime in February 2025, stars Laverne Cox and George Wallace as a daughter-father duo after she comes home to Alabama for the first time as a transgender woman. Although the show was canceled after one season, it was the number one comedy on Amazon upon its launch, and was the final comedy executive produced by producer Norman Lear.
The panel included Wallace, executive producer Brent Miller, and executive producer and co-creator Dan Ewen as they reflected on Lear’s great television legacy, the importance of transgender people’s stories, and the power of comedy as a genre on television to open people’s hearts and minds, and change cultural attitudes.
To further the conversation on Clean Slate, Mitchell will have Cox on their podcast “HIGHKEY!” on Friday, June 6th, to discuss the show, her work, and her career and impact so far.
On Sunday, GLAAD’s Associate Director of Entertainment Research, Raina Deerwater moderated a panel on The Future of Queer Storytelling, which included out industry professionals and talent Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman (UnReal), Dan Bucatinsky (Hacks), Nathan Lee Graham (Mid-Century Modern), and Ben Roy (Finding Mr. Christmas).
The television executives and actors discussed the start of their careers in Hollywood, upcoming queer projects they are working on, the need to see more LGBTQ stories from people of all backgrounds on television. The panel also zoomed out on how much has changed in the last few decades and Hollywood and how to keep pushing for LGBTQ inclusion on TV, from watching inclusive shows as audience members to highlighting our successes.
Several LGBTQ-inclusive events at ATX TV Festival included many of the talent who were featured on GLAAD’s panel. Bowyer-Chapman was on the 10 year reunion of UnReal, Roy and co-creator and host Jonathan Bennett talked all things Finding Mr. Christmas, and Bucatinksy and Graham both participated in the live reading of The Golden Girls, which closed out the festival.
ATX TV festival will be posting the full videos of the panels, so be sure to keep an eye on their social and YouTube pages to see the full panels.
