What are we loving in these last weeks of 2015? Golden Globe nominations that center LGBT stories and actors in those stories. CBS' Sinatra 100, with Lady Gaga doing the best imitation of Judy Garland since, well, Judy Garland (forgive us, Liza). A new season of Transparent to give us something queer to watch over the holidays.
But there's nothing we are loving more as this crappy year winds down than the affaire de coeur between Emmy-winner Holland Taylor and Emmy and Oscar nominee Sarah Paulson. We don't usually dish in this column, but this being the season of giving, and TV actors coming out being newsy, we can't resist. We have long loved Taylor as the acerbic pansexual killer mom in CBS' Two and a Half Men, and we loved her as the sexually provocative patrician judge on ABC's The Practice, and we really truly loved her as the rich lesbian cougar on The L Word.
For her part, Paulson is one of the best actresses on both the big and small screens, and we have long been thrilled she's one of us. She's currently co-starring in Todd Haynes' brilliantly evocative Golden Globe nominee Carol, which is one of the must-see films of the year. Paulson has been one of Ryan Murphy's stable of brilliant actors in American Horror Story for several seasons, and was an Emmy nominee for last season's American Horror Story: Freak Show, for her amazing work as the woman with two heads. There is nothing she can't do as an actress, which anyone who saw her in 12 Years a Slave �" and immediately hated her for so perfectly portraying a slave-owning woman �" can attest.
Paulson will be seen on the small screen in Murphy's next vehicle, FX's American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, starting Feb. 2. Paulson plays lead prosecutor Marcia Clark, and the promos look fantastic. This will obviously be a star-studded, watch-for-the-fireworks-and-scenery-chewing drama. David Schwimmer plays Robert Kardashian, John Travolta plays Robert Shapiro. Selma Blair plays Kris Jenner. Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays Simpson. In addition to the critics focusing on Paulson, they will also likely be riveted by Courtney B. Vance, who seems to be getting better and better as an actor. Vance plays Johnnie Cochran, without whose "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit" legerdemain Simpson would have gone to prison for the two murders pretty much everyone believes he committed.
But we digress. We were talking about Paulson and how incredible she is. Apparently Taylor, who just came out publicly at 72, saying, "I am out, I live out," is in total agreement. The couple is rumored (by Taylor) to be getting married (because Paulson wants to, and Taylor thinks that would be a plighting of troth �" aren't they sweet?), which would make us positively giddy. To anyone commenting on the age difference, all we can say is, if it's okay for men, it's okay for women. Jeffrey Tambor's wife, actress Kasia Ostlun, is 34 years younger than he is and gave birth to the couple's twins when Tambor was 64. A similar age difference exists between Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Just saying. We look forward to seeing Taylor and Paulson acting together, which is also rumored to be sometime soon. What a time to be alive.
Speaking of acting, we were pleased with some of the Golden Globe nods to particular favorites, but we were horrified by the official Golden Globes Twitter account repeatedly noting that Golden Globe-nominated actress Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin) was presenting the nominations when it was actually Golden Globe-winner America Ferrera (Ugly Betty, Superstore). The two women are both 31, both Latina, both philanthropists. That's where the similarities end. For goodness sakes, people, it's 2015. "They all look alike" is so 1950. The tweets identifying Ferrera as Rodriguez have since been deleted, but the Internet is forever, and pretty much every news service has the screen grabs, which show pics of Ferrera with Rodriguez's name.
As for the (too white, too male, what's new?) Golden Globes, we do have LGBT nods to be pleased about outside of Carol and lesbian writer Emma Donoghue's Room. In the Best Drama category, Empire strikes back against both the whiteness and the straightness. So does Mr. Robot. In Best Comedy/Musical there's Orange Is the New Black and Transparent. Best Limited Series has American Crime and American Horror Story: Hotel.
Among actors, Lady Gaga and Felicity Huffman vie with each other in Best Performance by an Actress in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, but if Queen Latifah doesn't sweep that category for her stunning portrayal of bisexual Bessie Smith in lesbian filmmaker Dee Rees' brilliant biopic Bessie, then there's no justice. Much as we loved the Queen as a butch lesbian Wiz in The Wiz, last week, we swooned over her in Bessie . (And we'll just say, if it's not too late for Holland Taylor to come out at 72 or Robin Roberts at 53, it's not too late for you, Queen, at 45.)
We are hoping for a three-way �" tie, that is �" in the Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series, Drama category between Viola Davis, How to Get Away With Murder; Eva Green, Penny Dreadful; and Taraji P. Henson, Empire. Davis delivered the year's best lesbian love scene, and Henson �" well, Cookie is everything. And what lesbian doesn't want an Eva Green poster on the inside of her bedroom closet door?
Our vote for Best Actor in a drama series has to go to Rami Malek for his omnisexual portrayal in Mr. Robot, which got the FCC's boxers in a bunch back in September over a risqué gay sex scene.
Our money is on Jeffrey Tambor winning Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series, Comedy or Musical for his role in Transparent, although Patrick Stewart is trés fabulous in Blunt Talk. We'll be surprised if Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't win for Scream Queens in the Best Actress division. Very surprised.
Another set of excellent choices presents itself in Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, where Judith Light's extraordinary performance in Transparent as Maura's ex-wife Shelley is against Uzo Aduba's "Crazy Eyes" in OITNB and the phenomenal Regina King for American Crime. A very tough category.
We are so wanting Alan Cumming to win for The Good Wife in the corresponding actor category. He's been brilliant for several years as the cunning politico Eli Gold (based on Rahm Emmanuel, pre-current scandals), and he's one of our fave gay actors. But his competition is quite stiff and includes Christian Slater's Mr. Robot.
The Golden Globe Awards will be broadcast on Jan. 10 on NBC. The always-controversial comedian Ricky Gervais will host, so expect to laugh at things you don't want anyone to know you laughed at.
Zero hour
If you missed HBO's documentary in cooperation with Vice Countdown to Zero about AIDS, you can still see it on demand, and it is well worth a look. The documentary was first aired on World AIDS Day, but got regrettably little media attention. Since AIDS actually isn't over, it's important we know how we might end it in our respective lifetimes.
Countdown to Zero suggests it's doable. Examining a range of medical breakthroughs in recent years that include the DNA of HIV-positive patients being edited to resist HIV in American laboratories, as well as South African clinics participating in the largest vaccine trial in medical history, the documentary focuses on what is being done to end HIV/AIDS in the next few decades.
For those of us who have been charting the epidemic since the beginning, it's exciting news. HIV/AIDS is still out there, still killing, still plaguing the LGBT community. San Francisco is the locus of the film's attention on what's being done in America.
We admit, we weren't keen on seeing former Pres. George W. Bush in this film, but he's there at the Bush Institute on Southern Methodist University's campus in Dallas talking about the success of the American-led PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) initiative, which the film then follows to Rwanda. (It's good to know Bush is doing penance somewhere for his sins over eight years as the worst president in U.S. history.)
Something else you might want to catch up on over the holidays while there's a lot of TV downtime is MTV's True Life: I'm Genderqueer, in which facial hair and high heels don't clash �" and also don't mean gay or trans, but something altogether different.
Meanwhile, I Am Jazz, TLC's reality series about trans teen Jazz Jennings, has been picked up for a second season that will begin airing in 2016. The eight new episodes will feature the 15-year-old living her life: school, sports, family and lots and lots of hair and make-up. In addition to Jazz, the show features other members of her family, including her parents, older sister and twin brothers, also known as the people cashing in on this kid's complex life. Yes, we are ambivalent about this show, because Jazz is 15, and we resist kids as moneymakers for adults.
Inexplicably, I Am Cait, the incredibly tedious reality series featuring Caitlyn Jenner and lots and lots of make-up and hair and clothes, with a soupcon of misogyny and a big dollop of racism, has been renewed by E! We can't imagine watching a second season, especially not after Jenner's pronouncement that the hardest thing in every woman's life is figuring out what to wear (and here we thought it was rape and violence against women, and the pay gap and the discrimination) followed by a denouncement of same-sex marriage. And did we mention the racism that pervades the show? We have Donald Trump for that kind of right-wing stuff.
Speaking of which, shocker of stunners, as we were going to press, this Washington Post headline caught our eye: "Donald Trump has gotten more nightly network news coverage than the entire Democratic field combined." How many months have we been saying this? How many months have we been saying that Trump's numbers are in fact media-driven? According to the Tyndall Report, which tracks the airtime of all news programs on NBC, CBS and ABC, the 2016 election has received 857 minutes of combined coverage, through Nov. 30. If that number seems exhausting, it is: it's the second largest total of any pre-election year in the last seven presidential cycles, with 2007 being the highest.
So in all that time, it's been a Trump-fest. You know, like it still is. Trump says something outrageous, and everyone rushes to interview him. Or they say he's the frontrunner, ignoring the fact that Hillary Clinton's numbers are far higher than his, while she has gotten the least amount of airtime. Barbara Walters popped up on Dec. 9 to interview him especially for ABC, in an exclusive in which Trump told her he was the least bigoted person on earth. His earth, not our earth.
That "liberal media" we keep hearing about seems pretty fixated on the right: the GOP candidates have received more than twice as much coverage as the Democratic candidates. Tyndall said, "Besides the fact that there are many more Republican candidates than Democratic ones, the GOP debates have made much more news than the Democrats." Because crazy sells; actual ideas, not so much.
And then there's Trump. He's gotten a full 234 minutes of airtime all by himself. Whereas all the Democratic contenders have only gotten a total of 222 minutes, with Joe Biden, who was never a candidate, receiving nearly an hour of that time. The time Hillary Clinton has received (remember, she's always been the frontrunner in the entire race) has been devoted to her emails and the Benghazi Committee hearings, not her policy issues. So when people ask how Trump got to be frontrunner, at least part of the answer is, "The media drove the narrative."
The media is also driving the narrative that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, he of the Dr. Seuss filibuster and shutting down the government, is the "rational" option to Trump. Only if anti-gay, anti-choice and pro-gun is your idea of rational. We liked Trevor Noah on The Daily Show slamming Cruz for thinking going to a gun rally was the best response to the San Bernardino terrorist massacre. Noah said, "Yeah, 14 people just lost their lives in a shooting, and Ted Cruz's first thought is, 'Oh, that reminds me, got to send out my invites to my gun party.' That seems like something you would only do if you were an asshole, which it turns out is exactly what voters are looking for." He's not wrong.
Noah, who is biracial, also noted, "There's another man, half-black, half-white, who has to speak out every time this happens. He has had to do this for six years, speaking in the aftermath of mass shootings. And you can really see the toll it has taken on him." This comment was followed by a gut-grinding montage of Pres. Obama's comments after mass shootings. We have not been the only ones to notice how each successive one has flattened the President's affect more. Dec. 14 was the third anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting. We still can't believe that shooting 20 first-graders to death in their classroom 10 days before Christmas wasn't a game-changer in American politics, but that shows how little we understand about the gun nuttery.
Noah said, "I have to say, I feel bad for Barack Obama. He has been begging for gun control for six years, and the only major change in the gun debate since he's got into office has been to his face. You've got to feel for him, but at least we have found the answer to the amount of pressure under which black does crack." Yikes.
We would add that Dick Cheney's comment that Trump's plan to ban all Muslims is "un-American" is being lauded as the GOP fighting back against Trump. When Cruz and Cheney are your WMDs against Trump, you are in deep.
Since we'd like to end on an upbeat note, set your DVRs now for NBC's gayer-than-gay new sitcom, Telenovela. We saw the sneak premiere on Dec. 7, and we were howling. Lots of ab-flashing, too.
So for more Trump whether you want him or not (not!), more Paulson, more shirtless men, and more Latinos who are not Cruz, you know you really must stay tuned.