Latest news with #ICanFinallyBeFree
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Outside the Diddy Trial, a New Media Guard Rules
Every weekday around 3 p.m. local time at the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, a frenzy begins. Following hours of sensational testimony and evidence in the sex-trafficking and racketeering trial of hip-hop and fashion mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs — whose nosedive as a cultural icon after three decades of success seems to sink him further from those heights as new victims take the stand to implicate and denounce him — you'll spot the first trickle of media types, supporters and everyday folks stepping out of the rear entrance at Manhattan federal court. Some are frantically typing on their just-returned smartphones (which are contraband inside the building), instantly relaying the lurid details from the day's testimony; others make a beeline to catch the uptown 6 train beneath nearby City Hall to a midtown newsroom. After watching hour upon hour of often harrowing allegations of forced sex, battery of women, coercion, gaslighting and emotional cruelty by a romantic partner, which the women named as Combs' victims have delivered nearly every weekday for five weeks, some of the people exiting the courthouse, with no newsroom or editor to speak of, quickly attach their phones to tripods or selfie sticks to spill the courtroom tea du jour online. Soon, a black van is spotted pulling up to 500 Pearl Street, and it's time to race around to the front of the courthouse to capture the afternoon's most valuable moment. More from The Hollywood Reporter Stray Kids' Seungmin Is Burberry's Newest Brand Ambassador K-pop Star Bain is Ready to Open a New Chapter Following Historic Coming Out: "I Can Finally Be Free" G-Dragon Is Headed to North America and Europe for World Tour Here, a scrum of livestreamers, YouTubers and TikTok influencers coalesce to snag footage of the Combs' family leaving court. Janice Combs, the defendant's mother, who, after his father was killed, raised him 30 miles north of the courthouse, is the most sought-after photo subject as she attends the trial daily. A moment of chaos erupts when Janice, 83, exits the court and walks the 20 feet to a vehicle that's just arrived. 'Janice! I'd drink your bathwater!' one young livestreamer yells out a few weeks into the trial (he was referencing dialogue from The Color Purple, he tells me later). Janice's popularity during this trial is followed by that of her grandsons, King and Justin Dior Combs, who both make for big moments for the livestreaming set — or for their viewers, rather, as hundreds, or for some thousands, are watching and commenting in real time, fueling the online Diddy media industrial complex. It's a classic media frenzy moment, but these are not typical media professionals. The livestreamers have stepped into the Diddy trial beat for the past eight weeks, bringing a wide range of voices as they discuss the legal case and defendant's unlikely life story. It could come with a trigger warning: 'Not only will there be discussions of domestic violence and emotional abuse, while creating content, you might fall down a rabbit hole leading to unfounded comparisons to Jeffrey Epstein and the collection of kompromat, wild speculation about every celebrity who's met the rapper and, in turn, link already unfounded rumors to QAnon.' All of this and more has already happened online amid the explosion of Diddy-related video content that came after Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura filed her civil suit against Combs and again after his arrest. Sure, not all of the new media creators and livestreamers are guilty of creating any of this dangerous clickbait, but they stand outside the courthouse in its context and the wild possibilities of revelations at his trial that are now butting up against the the reality of this case. The trial's livestreaming players each come with a unique delivery style that's less polished or familiar, and rife with the slang du jour. Among this gang of street journalists are the sometimes frantic and frazzled but, more often than not, sharp and informative explainers like YouTuber Tisa Tells; the conspiratorial voice of FamerTube; the comedy trial coverage of first-timer Sam Croupen, who has a 510,000 followers and a growing TikTok fanbase; and the wildly popular Rotten Mango, aka true crime podcaster Stephanie Soo, who has taken up the Diddy trial and is running with it so successfully she overtook Joe Rogan as the top podcaster on YouTube. This trial and the non-professionals covering it have been commanding the eyes and ears of so many that the old guard is even playing nice, at least anecdotally. 'The way the mainstream has treated influencers has changed so much,' said Brianna Logan, who told The Hollywood Reporter she is in New York after crowdsourcing funds and has covered several big trials for her Instagram account. 'When I was covering Ghislane Maxwell, it was so disrespectful the way I was treated. Like, 'Give me that seat! I want to sit there,' and they're like, 'Oh, cute. You're on Instagram.' They're so much more respectful now. It's different. I think they have to acknowledge that their numbers are down. Social media numbers are up — there's no denying that. And it's probably good of them to admit there is a change happening.' Behind us, across from Pearl Street and distanced from this new media gaggle, stands the media's old guard, firmly set up with expensive cameras and weather-protective canopies in a neat row on the west side of Columbus Park. Hair and makeup are on point. But it's unclear if these camera-ready reporters are actually inside watching the trial unfold each day before their stand-up live shot. This may not matter because legacy media outlets have an entire apparatus moving information from the courtroom that is fodder for live blogs and published in near-real-time — giving a detailed rundown of testimony, feds vs. defense courtroom tension, Combs' silent antics with the jury and Judge Arun Subramanian's shifting mood. What all of this costs the networks and cable news outlets is surely sizable; what's produced is beholden to the many limitations or traditions of TV news: outmoded news segment formats, restrictive standards. red tape and, often, middle-of-the-road story selection. The result? Legacy media isn't getting the full Diddy trial story as some of it unfolds right in front of their poised cameras. The contrast between these two groups of media figures — all parties being content creators, after all — and their proximity to the court when it lets out at 3 p.m. feels too on the nose. With online news' pivot to video nearly a decade ago and the TikTok and influencer era that followed, impactful on-camera reporting has shifted away from the stoic, as-neutral-as-possible, serious journalist to the selfie-style-shooting, personable, quirky novice who caters to an audience of their own creation. On any given weekday outside Combs' trial, content creators and livestreamers shout rundowns and takes to their followers, some even fielding legal questions. The problem for many is that these livestreams are often unpolished and, at times, messy, with cringe-inducing errors, admissions of having 'no idea what I'm talking about.' This has always been an uncomfortable fact around the democratization of media and the rise of individual voices as news sources on social media, Substack, YouTube and the rest. With the backbone of a news report, namely fact checking and sourcing, jettisoned in favor of trust cultivated by personality-driven influencers and popular takes, will the truth slip out of the old idea of journalism and holding truth to power? This slippage is occurring amid some upsetting trends for the old guard and great news for digital platforms. According to the Pew Research Center, 86 percent of Americans turn to digital devices for news, with two-thirds using news websites and apps and around half getting news directly from social media channels. Meanwhile, 23 percent say they prefer to get their news from apps and websites, but those who prefer social media news rose 6 to 18 percent. This is deeply relevant to this moment and the Combs' narrative and trial, which comes 30 years after television and cameras in the courtroom rattled the O.J. Simpson trial, which may have affected public opinion and contributed to the case exposing deep national divides along race. The influencers and livestreamers may not have such an impact here, but the size and diversity among the audiences they command can mobilize and shouldn't be ignored. 'You get so many passionate people telling stories and creating content in different ways,' creator Emilie Hagen told THR outside the federal court. 'You have people that are sleeping outside as a career right now, just aiding the culture of Diddy. It shows what he built, and it shows why the stakes are so high.' Hagen, one of several one-woman producer-hosts milling about the courthouse perimeter each day, also dabbles in comedy, written journalism and ghostwriting. She had garnered attention online by meticulously preserving rapper Kanye 'Ye' West's oft-deleted missives and rantings (@kanyesposts). Since she crowdfunded her followers to fly to New York for Combs' trial in mid-May, she's been uploading rapid-fire clips, consisting of her roving around the Diddy trial happenings outside of the Pearl Street federal courthouse. She posts her incisive and, at times, revealing work on the regular platforms: Instagram, which gets the bulk of her traffic; YouTube; and Twitch. She arrived from California, as she told THR in an interview, 'more interested in documenting the chaos surrounding the courthouse, what characters it attracts, and what the culture like is outside the courthouse.' Hagen's move was wise at this untelevised trial, where phones or even vapes won't move past security. She was the first to nail down the story behind a group of seemingly unhoused and potentially high men and women donning 'Free Diddy' T-shirts who had gathered in Columbus Park. What looked like a semi-transparent orchestrated pro-Combs protest turned out to be a promotion for Diddycoin, a cryptocurrency launched by two of Combs' sons. That this stunt took place feet from the cameras owned by the networks and was missed but exposed by a roving livestreamer speaks more than that the story was confronted by a tenacious reporter. Hagen has also revealed, by simply walking over, phone extended and asking for an interview, the identity and firsthand account of the woman who was dragged from the courtroom after running to the front of the gallery and yelling to Combs; mainstream outlets largely referred to Jacqueline 'Candor' Williams as an 'unidentified woman;' and when West arrived in court, Hagen was kind enough to provide THR with some of the details of his visit. 'These characters are as much a part of the trial, I think, as the people inside,' Hagen said, referring not only to the estimated two dozen livestreamers documenting the trial's major revelations and its strange fringes, but also everyone in the spectacle: the angry man who arrives daily to rant at the crowd, the man who turned up in Renaissance-era garb, the revelers and the Diddy truthers. Some of the livestreaming new guard feel an ownership of the Diddy story that the mainstream media hasn't earned — or forfeited by not covering Ventura's 2023 civil suit against Combs. They watched as interest from the networks and other mainstream outlets grew after Combs' quick settlement out of court came the next day. They noticed as Combs' legal woes became a hot story and then possible RICO case. The interest outside of streaming gradually grew with civil lawsuits and complaints, and then exploded with a salacious civil case in February 2024 from producer Rodney 'Lil Rod' Jones. From there, the Diddy headlines came daily and eventually were unavoidable. For livestreamers like Donat Ricketts, a.k.a. Donat POV, this is tantamount to theft of services. 'I'm the most viral thing out here,' Donat tells me outside the courthouse as we wait for the Combs family to depart for the day. 'Like, getting them engaged, actually having critical thinking and viewpoints. I understand a lot.' Donat explains how he shadowed under different lawyers in Los Angeles in a four-year program but says he decided he doesn't want to be a lawyer, because you have to 'get indoctrinated.' He'd rather livestream from the big trials of rappers and others who will help him grow Donat POV's audience. But the media trying to take over from here stings, he says. 'I think the significance of this case, in this very moment, is showing the power of streaming platforms,' he told THR. 'You gotta understand something: When Cassie filed a lawsuit before the prosecutor and they sent Diddy a letter. I have a video [from then] with 650,000 views talking about Diddy — we're the ones who really amplified this. The mainstream media is playing catch-up, and we always said that we weren't gonna let mainstream media take authority over something that we did the work to investigate.' Donat's coverage of the Combs' trial — personality-driven, entertaining (if unpolished), informed but not always correct, deeply engaged with its audience — encapsulates the advantages and pitfalls of the imperfect medium. Influencer content and livestreaming's continuous audience-gobbling from the mainstream's old guard is not an 'if' question but one of 'how much' on quarterly damage assessments amid shrinking resources for newsrooms. As for the persistent pitfalls of the one-person newsroom — no fact-checking, no logistics, no security or crisis training and just too much information for one person to process and deliver — it seems that some of the deeper and most problematic issues of this encroachment will go unaddressed, at least for now. 'I think people are trying to uncover something big,' Hagen said about her coverage. 'I'm trying to capture a moment in culture, emotionally. Traditional media can't really explore that. CNN can't be talking about their emotions. They just have to stick to the facts.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Hollywood's Highest-Profile Harris Endorsements: Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen and More
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Golden Girls' Creatives Spill the Tea on Bitter Feud Between Betty White and Bea Arthur — and Making a Classic Anyway
Creatives behind The Golden Girls shared funny and, at times, very candid behind-the-scenes stories — namely, among the long-rumored feud between stars Betty White and Bea Arthur — during a 40th-anniversary celebration of the long-running hit show on Wednesday night. The sold-out event, held at NeueHouse Hollywood as part of the monthlong Pride LIVE! Hollywood festival, featured a panel of writers, producers and others who worked on the show, which ran for seven seasons on NBC, from 1985-92. The series, created by Susan Harris, starred Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak, Betty White as Rose Nylund, Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux and Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo. (The Hollywood Reporter is the presenting media sponsor of Pride LIVE! Hollywood.) More from The Hollywood Reporter K-pop Star Bain is Ready to Open a New Chapter Following Historic Coming Out: "I Can Finally Be Free" The 'Wizard of Oz' of Gay Erotica OUTtv: They're Here, They're Queer, They're Canadian! Co-producer Marsha Posner Williams brought up a topic that has been much-discussed and speculated on: whether Arthur and White got along in real life. 'When that red light was on [and the show was filming], there were no more professional people than those women, but when the red light was off, those two couldn't warm up to each other if they were cremated together,' she quipped. Arthur 'used to call me at home and say, 'I just ran into that c' — meaning White, using the c-word — 'at the grocery store. I'm gonna write her a letter,' and I said, 'Bea, just get over it for crying out loud. Just get past it.'' In fact, the panelists shared that Arthur called White the c-word more than once. 'I remember, my husband and I went over to Bea's house a couple of times for dinner. Within 30 seconds of walking in the door, the c-word came out,' Williams said, and Thurm noted that he heard Arthur call White that word as well while sitting next to her on a flight. It's a story he shared a few years ago on a podcast and then got surprised at the internet's response over his revelation. The panelists differed on their theories about why the two didn't get along. Co-producer Jim Vallely thought it was because White got a lot more applause during cast introductions ahead of tapings, but Williams shot that down, noting that Arthur hated doing publicity and came from a different background (theatrical) than White (television). 'The show would have continued after seven years,' she shared. 'Their contracts were up and … the executives went to the ladies, and Estelle said, 'Yes, let's keep going,' and Rue said, 'Yes let's keep going,' and Betty said, 'Yes, let's keep going.' And Bea said 'no fucking way,' and that's why that show didn't continue. … And Betty would break character in the middle of the show [and talk to the live audience], and Bea hated that.' Script supervisor Isabel Omero remembered it differently, noting that the two used to walk 'arm in arm' to get notes together after the first of two tapings. Williams joked that was in case they were walking across the lot and a golf cart got out of control, suggesting that one of them might push the other in front of it. Casting director Joel Thurm was there from the beginning for the casting of all four leading ladies. He shared that Brandon Tartikoff, then-head of NBC Entertainment, originally did not want Arthur in the show, but Harris was dead-set on her, having previously worked with the actress on Maude (she wrote several episodes, including the legendary abortion episode). Thurm said Tartikoff's resistance to casting Arthur had to do with her low Q scores in likability. '[This] created a big problem, but I never knew how dug in Susan was, because I just wasn't in the room where those kind of discussions happened,' he shared. 'So my job, according to Brandon, was to find someone that Susan would be happy with instead of Bea Arthur. I should have realized that she wouldn't have been happy with anybody besides Bea, but I was too naive, and I thought, 'Oh, I have someone. Her name is Elaine Stritch. She has the same acidic quality, you know, stare at you and give you the same thing that Bea does.'' Thurm shared that when Stritch came in for her audition, 'None of the people associated with Golden Girls wanted her. So this woman had to walk into a freezer of an office and try to make it funny. Stritch asked Susan one thing, it was something like, 'Is it OK if I change something?' And Susan said, 'Yes, only the punctuation.' There was no love in that room. I felt so sorry for poor Stritch because she wasn't her fault. She didn't do anything. And had I known that, that Susan was immovable on this, I wouldn't have done what I did and then try to find somebody else.' Williams, however, shared a different view of Stritch. 'I want to just say that I worked on a pilot, and Elaine Stritch was a guest star for one day,' she chimed in. 'Before the day was half over, we were calling her 'Elaine Bitch.'' Meanwhile, Getty, who was then an unknown actress, came in to her audition and nailed it: 'She did her homework and prepared for the part,' Thurm said, noting she was the first one of the four leads to be cast. Incidentally, Cher was supposed to guest-star in the episode focusing on the death of Sophia's son, playing his wife, but she never replied to the offer, and Brenda Vaccaro was cast instead. The event kicked off with a highlights reel of some of the show's LGBTQ moments, including Blanche's brother coming out as gay, Sophia's coming to terms with her cross-dressing son and a politician's revelation that he was transgender. But behind the scenes, things weren't so progressive, shared writer Stan Zimmerman. 'People have to remember back then, we were told by a representatives to stay in the closet, so nobody knew we were gay,' he shared. 'Our first day on the set, we noticed Estelle come running towards us, and she's like … 'I know. Your secret's safe with me. You're one of us.' I thought she meant Jewish,' he quipped. 'But she meant gay. She wasn't gay, but she was probably the first ally ever.' Zimmerman added that he was telling his co-workers how he had bought some vintage sweaters at a garage sale one day, and they told him to 'go home and burn those sweaters because it was probably somebody that died of AIDS. … That was the climate then.' I know you see all these progressive scenes and you think, 'Oh, it was one big gay party there,' but we couldn't be who we really were.' Omero, who came out as transgender in 2019, shared that she was in the closet for all seven seasons of the show. She said that one day, Arthur offered to give her an Indian sari that she had picked up on a trip. 'In my closeted, panicked, paranoid brain, all I knew is that at that moment Bea Arthur was offering me a dress to wear around the house, and I wish I had been in a place where I could have said something, to even accept the gift without ever using it, just so I could express something to someone. But fear and shame is a big thing,' Omero said. Asked why The Golden Girls tackled so many different LGBTQ issues, Vallely replied: 'I think it's because we knew … we had a gay audience. They would play [the show] in [gay] bars across the country. … It was a big deal for middle America to see these women embrace the gay culture.' The panel, which also featured story editor Rick Copp and was moderated by New York Times bestselling author Jim Colucci (Golden Girls Forever), ended with a highlights package of cut scenes from the pilot, which originally featured a live-in gay housekeeper and cook named Coco, who was played by Charles Levin. The character was cut from the show because Sophia — initially meant to be a recurring character — was so popular that they made Getty a regular; unfortunately for Levin, that meant another character had to be cut. Among those in the audience were actress Deena Freeman, who played Dorothy's daughter Kate in an episode of the show, and production designer Michael Hynes. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Golden Girls' Creatives Spill the Tea on Bitter Feud Between Betty White and Bea Arthur — and Making a Classic Anyway
Creatives behind The Golden Girls shared funny and, at times, very candid behind-the-scenes stories — namely, among the long-rumored feud between stars Betty White and Bea Arthur — during a 40th-anniversary celebration of the long-running hit show on Wednesday night. The sold-out event, held at NeueHouse Hollywood as part of the monthlong Pride LIVE! Hollywood festival, featured a panel of writers, producers and others who worked on the show, which ran for seven seasons on NBC, from 1985-92. The series, created by Susan Harris, starred Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak, Betty White as Rose Nylund, Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux and Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo. (The Hollywood Reporter is the presenting media sponsor of Pride LIVE! Hollywood.) More from The Hollywood Reporter K-pop Star Bain is Ready to Open a New Chapter Following Historic Coming Out: "I Can Finally Be Free" The 'Wizard of Oz' of Gay Erotica OUTtv: They're Here, They're Queer, They're Canadian! Co-producer Marsha Posner Williams brought up a topic that has been much-discussed and speculated on: whether Arthur and White got along in real life. 'When that red light was on [and the show was filming], there were no more professional people than those women, but when the red light was off, those two couldn't warm up to each other if they were cremated together,' she quipped. Arthur 'used to call me at home and say, 'I just ran into that c' — meaning White, using the c-word — 'at the grocery store. I'm gonna write her a letter,' and I said, 'Bea, just get over it for crying out loud. Just get past it.'' In fact, the panelists shared that Arthur called White the c-word more than once. 'I remember, my husband and I went over to Bea's house a couple of times for dinner. Within 30 seconds of walking in the door, the c-word came out,' Williams said, and Thurm noted that he heard Arthur call White that word as well while sitting next to her on a flight. It's a story he shared a few years ago on a podcast and then got surprised at the internet's response over his revelation. The panelists differed on their theories about why the two didn't get along. Co-producer Jim Vallely thought it was because White got a lot more applause during cast introductions ahead of tapings, but Williams shot that down, noting that Arthur hated doing publicity and came from a different background (theatrical) than White (television). 'The show would have continued after seven years,' she shared. 'Their contracts were up and … the executives went to the ladies, and Estelle said, 'Yes, let's keep going,' and Rue said, 'Yes let's keep going,' and Betty said, 'Yes, let's keep going.' And Bea said 'no fucking way,' and that's why that show didn't continue. … And Betty would break character in the middle of the show [and talk to the live audience], and Bea hated that.' Script supervisor Isabel Omero remembered it differently, noting that the two used to walk 'arm in arm' to get notes together after the first of two tapings. Williams joked that was in case they were walking across the lot and a golf cart got out of control, suggesting that one of them might push the other in front of it. Casting director Joel Thurm was there from the beginning for the casting of all four leading ladies. He shared that Brandon Tartikoff, then-head of NBC Entertainment, originally did not want Arthur in the show, but Harris was dead-set on her, having previously worked with the actress on Maude (she wrote several episodes, including the legendary abortion episode). Thurm said Tartikoff's resistance to casting Arthur had to do with her low Q scores in likability. '[This] created a big problem, but I never knew how dug in Susan was, because I just wasn't in the room where those kind of discussions happened,' he shared. 'So my job, according to Brandon, was to find someone that Susan would be happy with instead of Bea Arthur. I should have realized that she wouldn't have been happy with anybody besides Bea, but I was too naive, and I thought, 'Oh, I have someone. Her name is Elaine Stritch. She has the same acidic quality, you know, stare at you and give you the same thing that Bea does.'' Thurm shared that when Stritch came in for her audition, 'None of the people associated with Golden Girls wanted her. So this woman had to walk into a freezer of an office and try to make it funny. Stritch asked Susan one thing, it was something like, 'Is it OK if I change something?' And Susan said, 'Yes, only the punctuation.' There was no love in that room. I felt so sorry for poor Stritch because she wasn't her fault. She didn't do anything. And had I known that, that Susan was immovable on this, I wouldn't have done what I did and then try to find somebody else.' Williams, however, shared a different view of Stritch. 'I want to just say that I worked on a pilot, and Elaine Stritch was a guest star for one day,' she chimed in. 'Before the day was half over, we were calling her 'Elaine Bitch.'' Meanwhile, Getty, who was then an unknown actress, came in to her audition and nailed it: 'She did her homework and prepared for the part,' Thurm said, noting she was the first one of the four leads to be cast. Incidentally, Cher was supposed to guest-star in the episode focusing on the death of Sophia's son, playing his wife, but she never replied to the offer, and Brenda Vaccaro was cast instead. The event kicked off with a highlights reel of some of the show's LGBTQ moments, including Blanche's brother coming out as gay, Sophia's coming to terms with her cross-dressing son and a politician's revelation that he was transgender. But behind the scenes, things weren't so progressive, shared writer Stan Zimmerman. 'People have to remember back then, we were told by a representatives to stay in the closet, so nobody knew we were gay,' he shared. 'Our first day on the set, we noticed Estelle come running towards us, and she's like … 'I know. Your secret's safe with me. You're one of us.' I thought she meant Jewish,' he quipped. 'But she meant gay. She wasn't gay, but she was probably the first ally ever.' Zimmerman added that he was telling his co-workers how he had bought some vintage sweaters at a garage sale one day, and they told him to 'go home and burn those sweaters because it was probably somebody that died of AIDS. … That was the climate then.' I know you see all these progressive scenes and you think, 'Oh, it was one big gay party there,' but we couldn't be who we really were.' Omero, who came out as transgender in 2019, shared that she was in the closet for all seven seasons of the show. She said that one day, Arthur offered to give her an Indian sari that she had picked up on a trip. 'In my closeted, panicked, paranoid brain, all I knew is that at that moment Bea Arthur was offering me a dress to wear around the house, and I wish I had been in a place where I could have said something, to even accept the gift without ever using it, just so I could express something to someone. But fear and shame is a big thing,' Omero said. Asked why The Golden Girls tackled so many different LGBTQ issues, Vallely replied: 'I think it's because we knew … we had a gay audience. They would play [the show] in [gay] bars across the country. … It was a big deal for middle America to see these women embrace the gay culture.' The panel, which also featured story editor Rick Copp and was moderated by New York Times bestselling author Jim Colucci (Golden Girls Forever), ended with a highlights package of cut scenes from the pilot, which originally featured a live-in gay housekeeper and cook named Coco, who was played by Charles Levin. The character was cut from the show because Sophia — initially meant to be a recurring character — was so popular that they made Getty a regular; unfortunately for Levin, that meant another character had to be cut. Among those in the audience were actress Deena Freeman, who played Dorothy's daughter Kate in an episode of the show, and production designer Michael Hynes. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
