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NBC will soon premiere TV’s first-ever sitcom featuring a bi female lead played by a queer actress

NBC will soon premiere TV’s first-ever sitcom featuring a bi female lead played by a queer actress

On Thursday, March 28, NBC will premiere Abby’s, a sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience that will feature TV’s first openly bisexual sitcom lead.

The character will be played by queer-identified actress Natalie Morales who has previously appeared in the comedies Parks and Recreation, Santa Clarita Diet and Bojack Horseman.

Abby’s will follow the titular character as she runs an outdoor neighborhood bar that’s literally in her own backyard. The show describes the bar as “the perfect gathering place for locals to find camaraderie and sanctuary.”

However, “[In order] to maintain the perfect bar ecosystem, all patrons must abide by a specific set of rules. This includes no cell phones (not even to look something up), understanding that earning a seat at the bar takes time to rise through the hierarchy and knowing that losing a challenge may have some unpleasant and unpalatable drink-related repercussions.”

Combine this with the fact that the unlicensed bar may is totally illegal—violating zoning and structural codes—and you have a cocktail for comedic antics.

From the look of the show’s trailer, Abby may not be the only LGBTQ character either:

https://youtu.be/AQ6LmX6wPfM

This news comes on the heels of the CW TV network greenlighting a pilot episode for a Batwoman superhero drama series. That series will be the first-ever TV drama led by an openly lesbian comic book superhero.

Batwoman will be played by the openly gender-fluid and lesbian actress Ruby Rose. Rose is perhaps best known for playing a lesbian inmate in the Netflix women’s prison drama Orange is the New Black.

Related: Ellen is the second highest paid TV star… but guess who earned a lot more

We originally thought Abby’s would be the first major broadcast TV sitcom to feature an openly bisexual female lead, but it seems like that honor might actually fall to the character of Eleanor Shellstrop on the NBC comedy series The Good Place. However, Shellstrop is played by a heterosexual actress Kristen Bell.

Abby’s will help continue the trend of bi women on TV. A GLAAD study of LGBTQ characters on 2018 broadcast television found that bisexual characters only accounted for 29% of all the LGBTQ characters on broadcast networks — that’s 33 out of 113 characters. Surprisingly, 25 of those characters were women.

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