On May 12, Disney delighted LGBTQ+ fans by announcing a pair of gay dads as part of its Proud Family reboot.

The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder launches in 2022 on Disney Plus, and will feature Barry and Randall Leibowitz-Jenkins as the parents to Maya, a fourteen-year old activist.

What’s more, both Barry and Randall will be voiced by gay actors Zachary Quinto and Billy Porter.

The reboot will feature many of the same characters from the original show, as well as a return of most of the same actors to voice them. Kyla Pratt will return as the main character, Penny Proud, Tommy Davidson returns as Oscar Proud, JoMarie Payton returns as Suga Mama, Paula Jai Parker as Trudy Proud, and the list goes on.

In an emotional essay in Them, longtime Proud Family fan Michael Cuby expressed what this more inclusive version of the show means.

“The Proud Family would have always held a special place in my heart,” Cuby wrote. “But with the 2021 version of the animated series taking great strides to reflect more real-world diversity, the Disney sitcom seems poised to blow even my expectations out the water.  The Proud Family reboot is everything I would have wanted as a kid. But I’ll settle for tucking in to watch it as an adult.”

Bringing even more joy to LGBTQ+ fans, the character of Michael Collins, Penny’s best friend, will return to the show, this time as unapologetically non-conforming. The first time around, Cuby writes, Collins “was coded as queer though his sexuality was never explicitly addressed.”

In an Instagram post, Ej Johnson, the gender fluid actor who will voice Michael, wrote that the character is “witty fabulous glamorous and a force to be reckoned as well as unapologetically themselves.”

We can’t wait to see what else this inclusive show brings!

 

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