“In reality, there is no right way to be masculine, there is no right or wrong way to be gay and there is no right or wrong way to be a human being.” “There is definitely more pressure on people who are LGBTQ+ in the Latinx community, where there’s this stereotype of being machismo and strong and masculine,” he says of how he hopes the show might break barriers. The show’s Latinx representation was an appealing part of the role for Cimino, too. “So, I think it’s really cool that they made it the mom: she loves her son more than anything on the planet, but she has this complex that she thinks he’s going to go to hell and that he’s a sinner.” There is more pressure on LGBTQ+ Latinx people – there’s this stereotype of being machismo and strong and masculine That’s very true in our culture the Latinx culture is very ‘machismo’ and it’s still taboo to be different. It’s always going to be the disappointing father who doesn’t think that homosexuality is OK. “Usually, especially in a Latinx family, the intolerance is going to come from the dad.
“Most of my characters, when I get to play the mom of a gay son, have been their champions – that’s a much more familiar road for me,” she says. Victor’s mother, Isabel, is played by Ana Ortiz, who many will recognise from her role as Hilda in Ugly Betty. I just thought that was such a brilliant take: here was someone who had a certain amount of anger and frustration about this representation of a coming-out experience when he knew in his heart that his would not be so easy.”
In fact, Victor was calling bullshit on it, because his life was so much harder.
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“This idealised, happy ending that Simon had gone through in the movie was not everyone’s experience. “The very first thing that pitched to me was that this new character would reach out to Simon from the film and basically say to him that Simon’s experience was not like his own,” says Brian Tanen, a writer on the show who has been involved since its genesis. His parents are also deeply religious and unlikely to give him the support received by Simon. Victor comes from a Latinx background and his family is working class, unlike Simon, who is wealthy and white. Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, the creators and showrunners who also wrote the script for the film, have attempted to fix some of the problems with the original, most notably the criticisms of Simon’s privilege. That said, it is not simply a rehash of Love, Simon. ‘It’s really important for young gay audiences to see themselves as the centre of the story’. This meant that Love, Victor was also missing when Disney+ launched in the UK. According to a report by Variety, Disney, always fearful of controversy, felt that “many issues explored on the show, including alcohol use and sexual exploration, would not fit in with the family-friendly content on Disney+”. It was later announced that the show had moved to another Disney-owned streaming service, Hulu. Yet when Disney+ launched in the US in 2019, Love, Victor was missing. After hearing about Simon’s story, Victor reaches out to him via social media and the two strike up a pen-pal relationship, with Simon guiding his younger charge through the highs and lows of high school. Unlike Simon, however, Victor’s coming out does not prove simple. Victor, like Simon, is unsure about his sexual identity. Telling a new story set in the same universe as the film, it focuses on a teenager, Victor, played by the newcomer Michael Cimino.
The show – a spin-off of Love, Simon, a quietly groundbreaking film about a closeted gay teenager, based on a bestselling young adult novel by Becky Albertalli – was originally meant to be a part of the Disney+ slate of original programming. T he road to Love, Victor’s release has not been smooth sailing.