When 17-year-old Lawrence Poirier told his parents in April 1993 that he was gay, it was not an especially remarkable event (although it is always a significant moment when a teenager comes out to his or her parents). Neither was the outcome all that unusual: Lawrence’s parents threw him out of the house, then relented and decided to accept his homosexuality. But Lawrence Poirier is not a typical teenager; he is a character in a comic strip, For Better or For Worse, that was then running in over 1,400 newspapers in the United States and Canada. Canadian artist Lynn Johnston had been drawing the daily strip for thirteen years when she decided to include the five-week story line about Lawrence’s coming out. She based her story in part on the experience of her own family when her brother-in-law came out.
For Better or For Worse is a notable success story among syndicated newspaper comic strips, having grown from 250 papers in 1981. Widely praised in her field, Lynn Johnston is the first woman cartoonist to win the Reuben, the National Cartoonist Society’s Cartoonist of the Year award. Working within the genre of domestic comedy, Johnston was credited with combining gentle humor and sharp observation as she chronicled the lives of a suburban Toronto family and their friends and neighbors. For Better or For Worse is unusual in that its characters have aged more or less in real time as the series continues, including the mother’s pregnancy and birth of another child since the strip began. Introduced as a little boy in 1981, Lawrence Poirer became a close friend of Michael, the son of the central Patterson family, and regularly appeared as he, Michael, and their other friends grew into teenagers. Thus, when Lawrence came out to Michael, and then to his parents, readers were learning something new about a young man they had come to know and, presumably, feel kindly toward.
The story line about Lawrence hit the comic pages with the force of a small earthquake, sending shockwaves through many normally placid newsrooms. Approximately forty papers suspended the strip for the duration of the sequence and sixteen canceled for good. Many newspapers ran editorials or articles, warning readers of what was about to break loose on the comics page—the newspaper equivalent of a “parental advisory” before a TV program—and explaining why they decided to run, or not run, the “coming out” episodes. The editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal explained his refusal to run the story: “It’s not offensive at all, but it was condoning homosexuality almost to the point of advocacy.” Others went farther: Nackey Loeb, publisher of the Union Leader, New Hampshire’s notoriously far-right newspaper, ran a front-page editorial denouncing the comic strip as “political propaganda … to promote homosexuality as a normal, acceptable and morally justified lifestyle.”
On the other hand, there was also an unprecedented growth in new newspapers subscribing to the strip, and a flood of mail: nearly two thousand letters sent to Johnston and hundreds more to the newspapers. Approximately one-third of the letters were hostile, with many readers threatening to cancel their subscriptions to the offending newspaper. Some expressed themselves more forcefully, like the writer who asked, “When are you and your lying perverts going to quit your bullshit?” Another writer, seemingly under the impression that the strip featured explicit sexual depictions, wrote that “the comics page is no place for homosexual relations!” Repeatedly, letter writers objected to the episodes’ presumed departure from the comics’ previous “value neutrality” in order to “send a message” and provide “a political forum for a liberal agenda.”1 The large majority of the writers were favorable, thanking Lynn Johnston for the story line and often recounting experiences of their own. One man wrote, “Last week I had a call from a cousin of mine in Toronto. We were very close friends but had not spoken in many years. When he found out I was gay he just would have nothing to do with me. He has been reading your strip and felt the need to call me to re-establish, if possible, our friendship.”
Lawrence disappeared from For Better or For Worse after the five-week story line and returned briefly for two days the following June, when he showed up at his high school prom with his boyfriend. When his friend Mike expressed surprise, he declared, “I decided … No matter what anybody says, you gotta stand up for yourself, stand up for your freedom, stand up for …” Mike interrupts, “Lawrence—sit down and eat!!”
In the summer of 1997 Johnston brought Lawrence back for another brief gay-related appearance (he had been seen from time to time in episodes that did not touch on sexuality). Over four days Lawrence confided in Mrs. Patterson that his “partner, Ben, is moving to Paris” to take up a piano scholarship. Mrs. Patterson comforts Lawrence, assuring him that “Ben isn’t leaving forever,” and besides, “you have to be prepared to feel pain if you’re going to fall in love.” The week ends with Lawrence expressing his gratitude to Michael that “being gay has never changed our friendship.” Once again the opposing forces lined up. After the Universal Press Syndicate warned the 1,700 papers carrying the strip about the impending episodes, at least thirty papers requested past strips to run instead, and the Christian Family Network called on its members to decline the papers during that week. In response, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) suggested that gay-friendly readers buy three copies of their local paper and mail the extras to the Christian Family Network and the American Family Association.2
But Lawrence wasn’t the first gay character in a newspaper comic strip. That honor goes to Andy Lippincott, referred to disparagingly by columnist Nicholas von Hoffman in 1976 as a “presentable gay” on Doonesbury, Gary Trudeau’s politically oriented strip. Andy Lippincott first appeared as a fellow law school student of series regular Joanie Caucus. In a variant of the familiar “all the good men are married or gay” trope, Joanie falls in love with the handsome, intelligent and, above all, sensitive, Andy—their first conversation is about sexual harassment law. When Andy tells her that he loves her, but that he’s gay, she is flummoxed: “I mean, I know I still have a good friend in Andy, but it’s kind of a setback when your boyfriend tells you he’s gay.” Andy then disappeared from Doonesbury for six years, reappearing for a brief moment in 1982 as “one of the organizers of the Bay Area Gay Alliance” hosting Joanie’s boss, Congresswoman Lacey Davenport. Andy Lippincott’s most extensive presence on Doonesbury was as the series’ Person With AIDS, once again paired with Joanie Caucus, who discovers Andy’s condition in April 1989. For the next year Andy made many appearances, in gradually worsening health but never losing his sense of humor. After his death in May 1990, readers saw his memorial service, featuring a video-taped Andy as Master of Ceremonies—“No words of pity, OK? I’m doing fine now. It’s a little hard to tell from the décor, but I think I made it into heaven!”—and visited the AIDS Memorial Quilt with Joanie and Lacey Davenport.
In fall 1993 Andy made an appearance—this time in a dream—to help another Doonesbury character, Mark Slackmeyer, the antiwar activist turned NPR radio talk show DJ, realize that he is gay. Subsequently, Mark comes out to his friends (who take it well) and his parents (who take it badly), and then comes out on his NPR radio show. In a brief June 1994 sequence, Mark tries unsuccessfully to pick up another man—who turns out to be a “deeply religious married man”—and ends up explaining the thesis of Yale historian John Boswell’s book about the existence of the Catholic Church’s rites for same-sex ceremonies in the early Christian era. Because Mark is one of the series’ central characters, his frequent appearances are not necessarily related to his sexuality. However, in keeping with Doonesbury’s political focus (some papers carry it on the editorial page for this reason), Mark’s gayness intersects with his politics. In a June 1994 radio interview with former Vice President Dan Quayle (represented on Doonesbury by a feather), Mark continued his discussion of Boswell’s book on early Catholic gay marriages. The Quayle feather responds to Mark’s question about same-sex marriages: “If you have a man, and then you have another man, well then you have two men and no women that are married to these men. So right off the bat, they don’t have family-style values. Also, what if they then produce children?” To which Mark replied, “Well, I imagine there’d be a Nobel in it for them.” Eventually Mark finds true love with conservative commentator Chase Talbott III (his father approves of his choice in this instance), and they decide to get married. This gave them—and us—the opportunity to learn how uneasy the prospect of a gay marriage makes Doonesbury’s liberal minister character, and so, in the summer of 1999, they flew to Pago Pago to exchange wedding vows on the beach.
The stormy response to Lawrence’s coming out in the comic pages pales, however, in comparison with the public panic over comic books that raged in the late 1940s and early 1950s, culminating in hearings before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency. Comic books had become a lucrative business by the mid-1930s, and they became even more popular in the 1940s. In 1941, 10 million copies sold each month; by 1947 that figure had risen to 60 million. Contributing to the astounding success of the comic books were the action, crime, and horror genres, featuring superheroes (Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman most prominent among them), as well as gory depictions of blood and guts. Critics of the comics were quick to attack, raising the sorts of arguments now more familiar in debates about the effects of television and video games. Comics were accused of instigating violent and criminal behavior by children—a classic instance being that of a young boy in a “Superman” cape, who supposedly jumped to his death from a window—as well as undermining literacy and good taste. By far the most prominent and influential of the critics was psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, whose 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent captured public attention and helped prod the Senate into holding hearings on comic books. The hearings resulted in the comic book industry adopting a “voluntary” Code, similar to the Motion Picture Production Code introduced in the 1930s, and spelled the doom of the worst offenders in the crime and horror genres.
Among the charges leveled against comic books was that they contributed to homosexuality. Wertham wrote that “only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize a subtle atmosphere of homoerotism which pervades the adventures of the mature Batman and his young friend Robin.”3 Similarly, Wonder Woman and her “Holiday Girl” followers were “anti-masculine” and likely to encourage lesbianism among girls. The comic book industry responded to such accusations much as the movie industry did, by scrupulously avoiding any acknowledgment of homosexuality, and vigorously defending “truth, justice, and the American way.” The Motion Picture Code was swept away by the 1960s, but comic books took decades longer to recognize changing cultural conditions.
“The Comics Break New Ground Again” was the surprising headline of an editorial in the New York Times in January 1992. The staid establishment newspaper demonstrated its newfound awareness of gay issues by proclaiming that “comic book hero Northstar has revealed to the 100,000 or so people who follow his exploits that he is gay.” Northstar, the Times helpfully informed its readers, appears in Alpha Flight, a series produced by Marvel Comics. Northstar revealed his sexual orientation in a story about his adoption of an HIV-infected baby.4 Noting that Marvel Comics had long been a pioneer in diversifying popular culture, having introduced female and disabled superheroes, the Times welcomed these revelations as an indicator of social change, evidence that “gay Americans are gradually being accepted in mainstream popular culture.”5
The Times also noted that DC Comics had introduced a gay character and AIDS-related themes in its Flash series. In 1995 DC Comics published a four-book miniseries, Metropolis S.C.U. (Special Crimes Unit), in which the main character, Capt. Maggie Sawyer, is a lesbian superhero with a lover. Sawyer had previously appeared as a supporting character in Superman comics, but in the Metropolis S.C.U. series she protects the planet herself, fighting off a variety of supervillains as well as facing the “real-life” challenges of juggling a career, a relationship, and motherhood. As media activist Al Kielwasser put it, the miniseries, which earned the Comics Code Authority’s Seal of Approval, struck an admirable blow against one of reality’s deadlier supervillains.
Also in 1995, Shadowhawk, a heroic African American crime fighter from Image Comics, dies of AIDS. Bad guys had injected the superhero with HIV earlier in the series. “Why did it have to be me?” ShadowHawk wonders, between the THUKS and CRAKS of bashing evil perpetrators. “I wasn’t at risk … I don’t DESERVE this!!” “Who does?” asks the next panel.
One step beyond DC Comics sits Vertigo, a line of comics labeled “For Mature Readers” because of its adult themes, sci-fi, horror, and occult titles. When the Vertigo line spun off from DC in the early 1990s, what it intended was a place for comic book fans to find complex fiction told in comic-book form. Vertigo is one of the most critically acclaimed lines of comic books, and nearly every Vertigo title has had either a gay character or had one gay story. Vertigo’s most ambitious gay story is Seven Miles a Second, a 60-page comic published in 1996, chronicling the life of controversial artist and writer David Wojnarowicz. Taken from Wojnarowicz’s own writing, the work portrays Wojnarowicz’s adolescence as a hustler and his death from AIDS. Elizabeth Hess of the Village Voice said it “is destined to become one of the major autobiographical works from the decade.”
In March 2000 the DC Comics series The Authority broke new ground by revealing that two of its 21st-century superheroes, Apollo and Midnighter, were lovers. Mark Miller, author of the series, told the London Times, “The whole idea of a superhero is that he or she fights for the underdog, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t have superheroes who are gay.”
The more unconventional comics of the 1980s and 1990s have often been willing and able to include lesbian and gay characters, and with much less fanfare and controversy than either the conventional newspaper comic strips or the comic books’ superhero series. Matt Groening’s Life in Hell strip, appearing in dozens rather than hundreds of (mostly alternative) papers, has long featured Akbar and Jeff, the identical gay couple whose love-hate relationship has beguiled many readers and offended others. Groening says he is particularly pleased when people with homophobic attitudes start to like the characters and then realize they’re a gay couple: “They feel upset. How can they reconcile liking these characters with knowing their sexual orientation?” Groening’s TV animated series The Simpsons has frequently included gay themes and characters, winning an Emmy for an episode in which openly gay movie director John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Serial Mom, Polyester) teaches Homer and Bart a lesson about homophobia.
The envelope The Simpsons pushed was ripped open in 1997 when cable channel’s Comedy Central began running South Park. The show centers on four foul-mouthed third-graders, their families and neighbors in the mythical small town of South Park, Colorado, a cold, snowy place where the elementary school cafeteria cook is a soul-crooning African American and their teacher talks to them through a hand-puppet. Among South Park’s most notorious episodes was one in which Stan, one of the kids, learns that his pet dog is gay (don’t ask). The dog runs away because everyone is making fun of him, and Stan goes searching, finding him at Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Animal Retreat. Big Gay Al—flouncily lovable with a heart of gold—takes Stan on “Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boatride,” where dioramas of gay people through the ages are depicted as benign and their oppressors, mainly the religious right, are the ride’s scary parts. Stan learns his lesson, and when he returns to South Park he announces that “Gay is OK!” and brings his neighbors to Big Gay Al’s, where many find pets they thought they had lost forever. Big Gay Al was among the milder of South Park’s forays into territory previously off-limits to “family” entertainment. In the spring of 1998 another of the main characters, Cartman, discovers that his father is actually his mother: she’s a “hermaphrodite” who fathered Cartman with an unknown woman. Before that, when Cartman and his friends tried to become lesbians in order to be attractive to their substitute teacher, Ms. Ellen, they tried licking his carpet and eating cardboard because his mother told him lesbians “lick carpet” and “eat box.” Predictably, South Park occasioned much editorial concern and pundit hand-wringing, and Comedy Central was careful to schedule the program in later prime-time. However, the creators of South Park went on to produce a movie version in 1999 that featured a sexual relationship between Satan and Sadam Hussein.6
In the late 1990s many cartoonists who flourished in the confines of the lesbian and gay press, such as Howard Cruse, whose Wendel series ran for years in the Advocate, and Alison Bechdel, creator of the widely syndicated Dykes to Watch Out For, have also found a home on the Internet. Self-publishing on the Internet is rapid and inexpensive and also provides opportunities to sell book collections (Bechdel’s books are steady best-sellers in lesbian/gay and feminist bookstores).
In January 1999 Chris Cooper, a former Marvel writer and editor, launched Queer Nation, an online gay comic strip, featuring gay and lesbian superheroes doing battle with the newly elected fundamentalist President Pat, and his league of Patzis.7 Reflecting on his years at Marvel, Cooper said, “I became exasperated with the [X-Men’s] premise that there’s a group of people who look like everybody else but have this secret they discover at adolescence about themselves.” Cooper’s impatience with seeing the experiences of gay teens—coming out yet having to remain hidden—mined so thoroughly, yet never seeing a gay X-Man, motivated him to create Queer Nation. “There isn’t a lot of mythmaking in our culture these days,” Cooper noted. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to give our community some archetypes that encapsulate all the things we aspire to.”
August 31, 1992
Dear Ryan,
First of all, I want to thank you for the courage you have shown playing the part of a homosexual teenager. Especially in this day and age when discrimination and violence against gays is on the rise.
As you act on One Life to Live as a gay teenager, I also act. I act as a straight, normal twenty one year old. It has become routine to act like the perfect son or brother. You are the first person I have ever told and may be the last, that I am gay. I don’t think I will ever be able to tell anyone the truth. Had not your portrayal and this story line of a gay teen hit me so deeply, I probably would not be telling you. Your character is so realistic and you do such a great job portraying how gay teens really feel.
Recently, I saw phone numbers for gay youth. For those who are troubled about their sexuality. I honestly don’t feel I have enough courage to call any of these places. For some reason, I think somehow, someone will find out. If my family or friends find out, I’m afraid they wouldn’t look at me the same or would never love me as much as they do now.
I feel that way because of things I hear my family say about homosexuals. Until recently, I would laugh at jokes about gays or would pretend to dislike the way they were. I cannot and will not do that anymore. Now I just stay silent and try to ignore things that are said about gays and even AIDS itself. I overheard my father say that faggots started AIDS and normal people like Magic Johnson have to suffer for what gays have done. Well do you think I could ever tell him that I am one of those who he thinks have caused normal people to suffer and die from AIDS. It’s something I could never foresee.
I know this is just your job and I’m sorry for throwing all of my problems at you like this. I certainly don’t expect you to solve any of them but it feels good just to tell someone. … Thank you for your time.
In the summer of 1992 the daytime TV serial One Life to Live began what was to be one of the longest and most complex television narratives to deal with a lesbian or gay character. Billy Douglas is a high school student who has recently moved to Llanview (the fictional small town outside Philadelphia where One Life takes place), and becomes a star athlete and class president. When Billy confides, first to his best friends and then to his minister, that he is gay, he sets off a series of plot twists that differ from the usual soap opera complications in that they expose homophobia and AIDS-phobia among the residents of Llanview and thus offer the characters—and the audience—an opportunity to address topics that soap operas have generally preferred to ignore.
Earlier, in the fall of 1983, ABC’s All My Children had included Lynn, a lesbian psychologist played by Donna Pescow, for an eight-week plotline in which she helps her friend Devon, who needs a place to stay, thus providing many opportunities for Devon (as the audience’s surrogate) to ask questions and to learn that, “It’s not a disease; it’s not contagious.” The show’s producer boasted, “It’s a small miracle that we got as far as we did,” predicting that viewers would see gay characters on other soaps. But it proved to be a long wait.
Eighteen months before “The Accusation” appeared on One Life to Live, an article in Soap Opera Weekly explained “Why Daytime Isn’t Gaytime,” concluding that “homosexuals seem forever doomed to reside in the daytime’s dark and lonely off-screen closet, deprived of light by narrow-mindedness and bigotry, kept there by ignorance and intolerance.” The article may have been excessively pessimistic about the willingness of a soap’s producers and network to introduce a gay character, but it was accurate on another score: the difficulty of having a regular character turn out gay. A writer for One Life is quoted, “It’s difficult to maintain a homosexual character as a hero over a period of time”—certainly true as long as such a character is not permitted to engage in numerous romantic couplings with other characters. As One Life’s head writer Michael Malone explained at a University of Pennsylvania symposium in 1993, they decided to introduce a new character—Billy Douglas—to be the centerpiece of “The Accusation” because they didn’t want to have a regular long-term teenage character turn out to be gay.
The plotline featuring Billy Douglas was the dominant thread of One Life to Live from July through early September 1992, after which Billy appeared less frequently until he left Llanview for Yale the following spring. Billy Douglas was played by Ryan Phillippe, in his first professional role, and he found himself at the center of a great deal of media and audience attention. He received an unusually large amount of mail even for a good-looking young soap opera actor. Even more unusual was the fact that the majority of the nearly five hundred letters he received during the months that he appeared on One Life came from young men, most of whom identified themselves as gay. Many of the young gay men—and several of the older men—wrote that they were particularly moved by and grateful for Ryan’s sensitive portrayal of an experience much like their own, being isolated and vulnerable in a society that would prefer not to know they existed.
For many of the fans who wrote to Ryan Phillippe, just as for thousands of lesbians and gay youth growing up today, the lesbian/gay movement appears unknown, or perhaps irrelevant or unreachable—the fear of exposure is so great. And so, in 1992, after nearly a quarter century of lesbian and gay activism, a straight actor playing a gay teenager on TV seemed their best hope for support, advice, and sometimes even friendship. For many, he was also their first confidante for stories of isolation and terror.
While it is not difficult to imagine that an African American, Asian American, Latina or Latino actor would get letters from teenagers who identify with and appreciate any appearance of their underrepresented group on the public media stage, it is hard to imagine that they would receive letters like the one quoted above, let alone similar letters from adults:
Dear Ryan:
Your performance has been “right on.” I am a happily married, successful father of two teenagers (one, your age, equally good looking as you). I am fifty-five years old, and have kept my sexual preference (gay) a secret, except for a few very close friends, all my life. … Have I been successful? Yes. Has my life been a torture chamber of lies and deceit? Yes …
You see, I lived the character you are playing, and still live it, although in the “closet.” I’ve never been a victim of homophobia, because no one knows I’m a life-long, born-that-way homosexual, comfortable with who I am, but not comfortable with living as a gay person. Still your character has created an empathy in me, because I can relate so well to your character.
You are doing a service to millions of people, whether you know it or not, just by bringing the subject to a mass audience. Keep up the good work.
Sorry, I can’t sign this letter.
Somewhat surprisingly, there were literally no negative or hostile letters received by Phillippe or the show’s producers in response to the gay teenager or the other elements of the plotline focusing on homophobia and AIDS-phobia. It was only later, in December 1992, when Billy Douglas (who by then had a much smaller role overall) met and began a friendship with another gay youth, that the program began to receive negative letters. The relationship between Billy and his friend was never developed, however, and by the time Billy “left for Yale,” the viewers—and the producers—had been spared the question of whether soap opera’s first gay teenagers would be allowed to kiss.
How can we understand the nature of the relationships these letter-writers feel that they had with Ryan Phillippe, an actor they had seen in a single role and, possibly, in TV and magazine interviews; or did Billy Douglas, the troubled but courageous gay teenager, seem so real he reminded them of themselves or of a friend or relative? Most of the writers seemed well aware that Ryan Phillippe is an actor and that Billy Douglas is a character. Why, then, did these writers, both the isolated and fearful gay teens as well as the adults haunted by unhappy memories, feel that a young actor known to be straight, but portraying a confused and troubled youth, was an appropriate target for their confessions, their overtures, and their pleas for help?
Back in the 1950s, psychiatrists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl introduced the term “para-social interaction” to describe an audience’s unrealistic sense of pseudo-familiarity with media celebrities. They defined such responses as pathological only when they are a “substitute for autonomous social participation, when [they proceed] in absolute defiance of objective reality.” As Joli Jensen (critically) summarized their view, “Para-social interaction is an attempt by the socially excluded (and thus psychologically needy) to compensate for the absence of ‘authentic’ relationships in their lives.” Apparently in the 1990s many teenagers and even adults who confronted the choice between the stifling agony of the closet and the possibility—even certainty—of familial and societal rejection did not have the option of authentic relationships with anyone to help them deal with their emotional crises. Thus an inexperienced but sincere young heterosexual actor found himself playing not only role model but also confessor and phantom friend to people in great pain and need.
After Billy Douglas left for Yale in 1993, soap-land was devoid of gay characters until November 1995 when Michael Delaney (Chris Bruno), the popular high school history teacher in All My Children’s Pine Valley, came out to his class during a lesson on the Holocaust and soon found himself at the center of a firestorm.8 The parents of some of his students go ballistic and demand that the school board fire the teacher, which they do. His students rally to his defense, and he ultimately is victorious in a lawsuit and is reinstated.9 At this point the focus shifts to the travails of his gay student, Kevin (Ben Jorgenson), whom his parents try to save through “conversion therapy.” Kevin’s struggle with his parents, and the quack psychiatrist they employ, played out over many months, along with his friend Kelsey’s attempts to seduce him into heterosexuality. Although Kevin continued to maintain a gay identity, the show’s producers didn’t give him any friends, let alone a boyfriend.10 Michael Delaney did find a boyfriend, but neither appeared very often—and certainly they were not shown engaged in physical contact. Chris Bruno did not renew his contract as Michael Delaney, and Kevin gradually drifted out of sight by the end of 1997, leaving Pine Valley, like the rest of soap opera land, without any queer inhabitants. But it didn’t stay that way.
In the middle of 2000 a new actress, Eden Riegel, was hired to play Bianca Montgomery, the teenaged daughter of soap legend Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) in All My Children, and soon viewers noticed that Bianca had a secret. Over the next few months Bianca gradually revealed to several other characters that she is gay, culminating in a tearful coming out to her mother just before Christmas. Fans of the soap had filled Web chatrooms for months with speculation about how Erica Kane would take the news, although few doubted that eventually a mother’s love would endure. Whatever the outcome, new ground had been broken, because, as Riegel put it, “The audience has watched Bianca grow up and they’ve learned to love her. The character is integral to the show. … They’re in it for the long haul.”