Azriel Dalman: Young Percy Jackson, Mr. Martin, and Garrett Graham celebrates Pride, tells gay kids "It gets better." With nude costars

 

In August 2024, 10 year old actor/model Azriel Dalman posted a photo on his social media wearing a Pride shirt.  A fan wrote that he shouldn't post anything "political" or "controversial," or people wouldn't want him in their projects.  He responded with a photo standing beneath a giant Pride flag, and wrote that if you think supporting LGBTQ people is political or controversial, he doesn't want to be in your project. 

 He (or his Mom) continued, thanking Disney and Hallmark for producing inclusive shows, and telling queer kids "You matter!" and "Things will get better!"

Being pro-gay hasn't hurt the career of the Vancouver boy.  Born in December 2013, he already has 57 on-screen acting credits, plus modeling and theater.  I'm not going to go through all of them looking for gay content, just the ones that stand out.

2021:

Foragers, the pilot for a post-Apocalyptic tv series.  Azi plays the child version of Malakai (gay actor Kaden Connors, left).  No information on whether his character is gay.

2022:

Moonfall: Aliens knock the moon out of orbit!  Azi plays the child version of Sonny (Charlie Plummer), the gay-coded teenage son of the focus astronaut. 

2023:

In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, on the Disney Channel (2023-24), demigod Percy (Walker Scobell, left), modern-day son of the God Poseidon, fights monsters and tries to prevent a war among the gods, with the help of his Camp Halfblood buddies.  He's straight, but there are LGBT characters throughout, including Nico, son of Hades, who has a crush on Percy, and the god Ganymede.

I have an idea that Walker Scobell is gay, but a brief internet search doesn't reveal anything.  

Azi plays Young Percy.  Fun fact: he has brown eyes, but when he auditioned, he wore blue contact lenses to look more like Scobell.  His resume now states that he can put the lenses in and take them out "all by himself."  

2024:

Azi stars in Miracle on 34th Street at the Arts Club.

He appeared in an episode of Shogun, starring Cosmo Jarvis  (left) as a British sailor shipwrecked in Tokugawa Japan. He plays the grandson in a fantasy sequence.  

He models an androgynous outfit at the International Kids Runway.  A fan writes: "things got better."  Did he lose a job because of his commitment to LGBTQ rights?.

He appears in three episodes of Holidazed, about families interacting on a cul-de-sac at Christmastime. In one family, Ted (Osric Chau) just got engaged to his boyfriend Marcus (Shawn Ahmad).  Then his old-fashioned, traditional Grandma comes for a visit, and he isn't out to her!

2025:

Azi has a recurring role in Good American Family, about the life of Natalie Grace, a woman with dwarfism who was adopted by "a good American" family but abandoned three years later, when they suspected that she was really an adult.  He and Saul Thomson play her adopted brother Ethan, whom she tries to kill. No indication of gay content.

In the short Our Monsters, two boys (Azi, Xander Wilson) team up to fight the monster in the closet.  I couldn't find a clip to see if there is gay content, but Azi tells us that Xander is "so cute we could just die."  

Is that "we" Azi using they/them pronouns, or Mom and Azi together?  Either way, the boy is definitely demonstrating an interest in boys 

More after the break

Björn Mosten: His "Love and Anarchy" nude hugeness made him a star, but he's also played a gay boarding school bully and Oddgeir's buddy.

 

In the Swedish comedy Kärlek och anarki (Love and Anarchy, 2020-22), middle aged publishing house consultant Sofia (Ida Engvoll) and young IT guy Max (Björn Mosten) fight a flirtatious "dare war,"  trying to one-up each other with increasingly drastic dares:

Dress like pop singer Cyndi Lauper.

Walk backwards for a day.

Get too drunk

Mimic people

Walk into a restaurant and pretend that you work there.

Dribble

Do everything as fast as you can

And:  Get naked in front of your family.

Whew, our boy is huge.

Frontside and back.

This was the 23-year old actor's only nude scene in the series (he takes off his shirt a few times), but it was enough to seal his popularity among gay men in Sweden and abroad.

His cuteness and his acting ability too, of course.

The cover story of Kupe tells us that he is "An Overnight Star."  

Björn wasn't planning to become a star.  He was a small town boy, from Dvärsätt in central Sweden (the nearest big city is Trondheim, Norway, three hours away).  In the summer of 2019, he was just finishing up his degree in engineering at Uppsala University, and enrolled in the master's program in Computer and Information Engineering.  Lisa Langseth was casting an IT guy for her new comedy drama.  He had done some modeling, so why not audition?

After Love and Anarchy, Bjorn starred in the theatrical play Jakten (2022), at the Stockholms Stadsteaterat.  

It means "The Hunt," as in "Witch Hunt": a grade school teacher (Henrik Norlén) s falsely accused of sexually assaulting a child in his class.  Bjorn plays Marcus, his teenage son.

Next came the tv series Ondskan ("Evil," 2023): Erik (Isac Calmroth) is expelled from public school due to being a violent thug, enrolls in an exclusive private school, becomes a bullying victim, and commences an affair with the lunch lady. 

More after the break

Not Suitable for Work: A 2020s "Friends" with two breakups, two meet-cutes, three cocks (two visible), fashion, finance, and a gay guy turned straight.

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The top 16 gay-positive science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal movies, plus two with egregious queerbaiting.

Who wants to spend two hours watching people falling in love, saving Christmas, facing injustice, or dying of cancer?  If I'm going to commit to a fictional world, it should have something you don't often see in everyday life: spaceships, aliens, ghosts, time travel, magic swords, werewolves, zombies...anything but endless conversations.  

There aren't a lot of gay characters in these movies, so most don't get reviewed here, or the review consists of  "yet another heteronormative mess."  I managed to find sixteen with gay characters and or strong subtexts from 2016-2026, and two that deserve inclusion as a warning: the queerbaiting was amazingly blatant.

Boys in the Trees. (2016).  Boy walks his ex-boyfriend home.  It's a long walk, with a downer ending, usually a turn-off for me.  But in this case I'll make an exception

The Little Vampire 3D,  (2017).  The vampire and human boys come within an inch of an open romance. All they left out was the kiss.

Get Out (2017).  A young black man meets the family of his white girlfriend, and uncovers a disturbing secret about white people.  And still manages a gay subtext.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (2018). The spineless producers came within an inch of having this spider-boy come out, but lost their nerve.  At least he doesn't get a girlfriend.

The Dead Don't Die (2019): Zombies invade a small town, with two guys who seem to be gay, but fail to actually come out due to the director's cowardice or homophobia.

Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020). The most excellent time-traveling duo, who started their career with blatant homophobia, atone for their past mistakes.  Not only are they involved in a four-way romance, they have a nonbinary daughter.

Onward (2020): A 16-year old Elf boy and his older brother, a Troll, never express any heterosexual interest.  Plus there's no bullying and a lesbian couple.  

Suicide Squad (2021). Supervillains are recruited to go on a "suicide" mission. No one actually says The Word, but there are two gay hints and only minimal heterosexual romance, and John Cena's Peacemaker would come out as bi on his tv spin-off.

The Eternals (2021).  The first open gay character in a Marvel movie, plus conversations in ancient Babylonian.  But Gilgamesh is portrayed as straight.  Sorry, Enkidu.

More after the break