The cast of Queer Eye can’t speak enough about Angel Flores.
When the Fab 5 went to Austin for Season 6 of the Netflix series, they introduced Flores, a 22-year-old powerlifter and weightlifting coach who is trans. Her episode, titled “Angel Gets Her Wings,” included the requisite makeovers but with a few unexpected surprises.
Contenders TV Docs + Unscripted — Deadline’s Complete Coverage
“Angel’s episode is so important,” said Jonathan Van Ness, who was joined at Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted event by his co-stars Karamo Brown, Antoni Porowski, Tan France and Bobby Berk. “That was an example of trans and queer joy that is unapologetic. We so seldom get to see trans women of color, really winning and having their family accept them and be fully integrated and loved in their community. It’s so so often about strife or the hardship.
“I think to see such an example of unapologetic, queer joy is so moving to queer people and to LGBTQI+ people. Angel is such an incredible person and I’m just so honored that we got to be able to tell her story.”
The cast is typically sent to towns where they would seem like fish out of water, but that never really is the case, insists France.
“It doesn’t really matter where we go. I think the beauty of our show, especially the Japanese season [in 2019], it resonates with people globally,” he said. “I’m not trying to big ourselves up, but I think it’s been incredibly difficult to do that. The fact that we’ve done it for six seasons plus a Japanese season shows that it doesn’t matter where we are in the world. We can encourage people to be kinder to each other. I think that says a lot for the work we do.”
Check out the panel video above.
