Following backlash to his comment about Lightyear‘s representation, including a response from one of the movie’s writers, Snoop Dogg is expressing his support for the LGBTQ community.
The 16x Grammy nominee recently declared that “all my gay friends” know that he’s an ally, despite his recent statement that a moment in the 2022 Disney/Pixar film between Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) and her wife “f**ked me up” and made him “scared to go to the movies.”
“I was just caught off guard and had no answer for my grandsons. All my gay friends [know] what’s up, they been calling me with love. My bad for not knowing the answers for a 6-yr-old. Teach me how to learn. I’m not perfect,” Snoop commented on a Hollywood Unlocked clip of T.S. Madison calling him out.
Meanwhile, screenwriter Lauren Gunderson defended her idea to include Alisha’s wife and son in the movie. “So. I created the LIGHTYEAR lesbians,” she prefaced a statement on Instagram.
“In 2018, I was a writer at Pixar – such a cool place, grateful to work there, learned a ton from kind and impressive creatives,” Gunderson continued. “As we wrote early versions of what became LIGHTYEAR, a key character needed a partner, and it was so natural to write ‘she’ instead of ‘he.’ As small as that detail is in the film, I knew the representational effect it could have. Small line, big deal. I was elated that they kept it.
“I’m proud of it. To infinity. Love is love. I was one of a few writers they had on it over the years, which is very common for screenwriting of course. I had very little to do with the final script. But I was proud to see a happy queer couple (even for a few seconds) onscreen. I know they got a lot of shit for this inclusion, but stuff like this matters because beautiful love like this exists.”
Gunderson wrote, “It’s *not* fiction. What IS fiction is Zurg and lightspeed space travel and murderous aliens and a talking robot cat (long live Sox).”
During his appearance on the It’s Giving podcast, Snoop previously declared that he “didn’t come in for this shit,” ranting, “Y’all throwing me in the middle of shit that I don’t have an answer for… It threw me for a loop. I’m like, ‘What part of the movie was this?’ These are kids. We have to show that at this age? They’re going to ask questions. I don’t have the answer.”
A Toy Story spin-off featuring the voice of Chris Evans as the titular space explorer, Lightyear features a same-sex kiss between Alisha and wife Kiko, which resulted in the movie being banned from theaters in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.
