Andi Mack (2017-19) was the first Disney teencom with an identified gay character: Cyrus (Joshua Rush), originally dating Iris, comes out in Episode 3.11 (2019). He befriends TJ Kippen (Luke Mullen), a sarcastic, mean-spirited basketball star, teaches him to be nicer, and admits him to the friend group. Everyone assumes that TJ is straight, so they are just good buddies.
Then, in the last scene of the series finale, Episode 3.20 (2019), they hold hands. In close up, partially obscured by the slats of a bench. Can you even tell what they're doing? It seems rather tepid, but caused widespread celebration in LGBTQ communities as a milestone, the first canonical gay couple in a Disney tv series.
And if that's all it takes, Craig and Eric of Drake and Josh held hands in 2008.
But we'll go with "the first," and conduct some research to see if either Cyrus or TJ is gay in real life. (And look for other gay characters and nude photos, of course).
Joshua Rush (Cyrus) went on to voice the titular character in Where's Waldo (2019-21), based on the book series where you have to find the red-striped guy in a crowd, then got his degree from Penn State and moved into politics. As of this writing, he is the Communications Director of the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee. In my day you would never dream of limping your wrist like that.
I found a potential bulge pic. Notice that the watch tracks.
Luke Mullen: After Andi Mack, Luke played a straight guy in four episodes of the teencom Side Hustle, a fratboy playing volleyball on the beach in the Barbie movie, and other straight or not-identified characters.
Here he prepares to be splattered in an episode of the anthology series American Horror Stories.
More after the break



.jpg)










.jpg)


