Born in 2007, actor and model Braxton Alexander had a busy child star career. Strangely, although of course he had no control over the scripts at age eight or nine, his movies and tv shows seem overwhelmingly heteronormative, if not downright homophobic.
Four episodes of Mr. Mercedes (2017) as the young Brady Hartsfield, living through the horrific childhood that would turn him into a homophobic mass murderer with psychic powers.
(Left: Harry Treadaway, who plays the adult Brady)
The young Callahan in Tag (2018), about a group of friends who play an elaborate game of tag every year, while not making homophobic jokes and fielding gay panic.
The young Callahan kisses a girl. So you can have boys and girls sparking at each other from the womb, but heaven forbid depicting a gay kid.
(Left: Jon Hamm, who playes the adult Callahan).
Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square (2020) is intensely heteronormative: the meaning of life is boys and girls gazing at each other forever. Brax plays a singer.
The Black Phone (2021) is about a gay predator who kidnaps young boys (I'm not kidding). Brax plays a bully, not one of the victims.
In I Want You Back (2022), a dumped boyfriend and girlfriend try to sabotage their exes' new relationships and get them back. Brax plays a "middle school boyfriend."
Left: Scott Eastwood, who plays one of the targets.
The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022-4) features two brothers in love with a girl named Belly. Brax plays the young Conrad, falling for Belly at the age of 13.
(Left: Brax)
In Black Bird (2022), not to be confused with Blackbird, Jimmy Keane (Taron Egerton, left) is given the task of befriending a suspected serial killer to get a confession out of him. No gay subtext: the guys both display an incessant interest in ladies.
Brax plays the teenage Jimmy.
More Braxton after the break