With four more days to go, one man’s hopes of creating a new gay tv series are in need of support.
Actor and writer Aj Knight is trying to give us more LGBTQ representation but is looking for financial backing to make it a reality. He thus created a Kickstarter campaign to create a pilot worth pitching to Hollywood big wigs.
“It’s like Lizzie McGuire but gay,” Knight explains in the creative campaign ad found below.
“What Daisy Boy adds to [LGBTQ entertainment] is a show about a gay boy who could just as easily be a bi girl, or a non-binary femme, or a jock who’s been thinking about trying butt stuff,” Knight says. “Learning to love all the different parts of yourself and figuring out how to share yourself with the world are struggles that people in every community go through. We all hide inside ourselves at some point. Daisy Boy shows what happens when the side of you that’s terrified, and the side of you that is so fucking unapologetically you, bloom together.”
To be even more specific, the coming-of-age story would follow a closeted teen in a Southern suburban town. While his everyday persona is of the shy and quiet type, he has an inner persona named Daisey Boy who is the cabaret-dancing gay man he wishes to become.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ajknight/daisy-boy-a-new-queer-tv-show/comments
In addition, Knight recently spoke to OutSmart Magazine about the Kickstarter campaign and the project. Through that interview, Knight expanded on his list of influences to beyond Disney Channel’s former flagship series Lizzie McGuire.
“Wes Anderson is a huge influence to me. Everything he does is stunning. The show is going to look a lot like Napoleon Dynamite. I love things that are almost realistic, but they’re really stylized in a certain way. Even if it’s bland, it’s stylized bland. And heightened. I think that’s so gorgeous,” he shared.
But Wes Anderson wasn’t his only inspiration. Aj Knight also shared titles like Big Fish and Hulu’s original series PEN15 as projects that helped to bring Daisy Boy to life.
“I had been working on writing this show for the last two years. This is the first thing I’ve ever written. I had to go through that process. It started out as me not knowing how to write out a scene. I sat down at Starbucks and tried to type out the conversation that I had with my parents when I came out, because I remember it so vividly. I’d been working on it for a long time, and then I saw PEN15 and I was just like, ‘Holy shit, we’re on the right track, this is what’s happening right now on TV, and this is the world that Daisy Boy exists in as well.’”
Hopefully, we’ll get to see Daisy Boy become a reality. But, the Kickstarter needs help in order to do that. Over $30K has been raised toward the $50K goal, but there are only four days left in the campaign. If you wish to donate, you can do so by clicking this link.
