Valerie Anne

Entertainment Journalism

I've written for Autostraddle for almost nine years now, writing anything and everything from TV recaps to movie reviews and a few random things in between. Here's a selection of pieces I published over the past few years.

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Alexandra Shipp Plays Reneé Rapp’s Girlfriend in Music Video

Reneé Rapp has dropped another single from her upcoming album Bite Me and with it, a music video in which Barbie Movie’s Alexandra Shipp plays her girlfriend who is the embodiment of the song title: mad. In the music video, Reneé is dressed like an Old Hollywood diva in furs, a scarf, and sunglasses, while her girlfriend (played by Shipp, who is dressed in a very fashionable suit) brushes off her attention, obviously pissed off at her gal pal. Reneé seems more annoyed at her girlfriend’s anger t...
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My Favorite Deviant Queers From Television

When I learned Autostraddle’s Pride theme this year would be Deviant Behavior, it immediately evoked images of all my favorite fictional deviants. From classic high school mean girls to literal cartoon villains, we have been gifted with some deliciously complicated queer characters over the years. Now, this isn’t to be confused with Hollywood’s long, sordid history with purposefully queer coded villains like Ursula, Scar, and Captain Hook, intended to vilify these traits. Nor should it be confus...
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Actually, Freida Pinto Is Playing a Lesbian in "My Mother's Wedding"

In case you, like me, glossed over the news of the new Scarlett Johansson movie trailer dropping today, because it’s called My Mother’s Wedding and looks like every other straight person family wedding dramedy that has ever existed, please allow me to alert you to this fact I originally overlooked: there are lesbians. The story revolves around three sisters (Scarlett Johansson as Katherine, Sienna Miller as Victoria, and Emily Beecham as Georgina) who are gathered for their mother’s third weddin...
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Queer Books To Read if You Miss ‘The Last of Us’

Do you miss The Last of Us as much as I miss The Last of Us? I miss the show, I miss writing overly detailed recap discussions with Nic, I miss being punched in the feelings week after week. And we have to wait SO LONG for the next season. So, to tide us over, I have some queer books to recommend to you that will scratch some of the same itches. I admittedly haven’t read that many actual zombie apocalypse books, as it turns out, and I am ashamed and will be changing that as soon as possible. How...
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Lesbehonest, (Nearly) All of the Barden Bellas are Gay Now

When Rebel Wilson’s character made the joke in Pitch Perfect about how, statistically, at least one of the Barden Bellas was gay, she thought she was the only one who was secretly queer. Now, all these years later, she has a wife, Anna Kendrick and Ester Dean have expressed queer leanings, and, most recently, Anna Camp has come out by showing off her super cute relationship with her girlfriend. Plus, some of the other women from that movie are undetermined; I found no proof of their sexuality on...
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Hunter Schafer Won’t Be Zelda, but She Might Be Joining the MCU

feature image photo by Dimitrios Kambouris / Staff via Getty Images If you’ve been in the same internet nerd circles as me in the past few days, you might have seen rumors floating around that Hunter Schafer was potentially going to be the titular role in a live-action version of The Legend of Zelda. One of the most common types of comment I saw was that since Hunter Schafer so closely resembles the video game character, unlike with race- or gender-swapped characters who are sometimes called out...
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'Ginny & Georgia' is Back with Its Best and Gayest Season

Ginny & Georgia is back with more high-stakes drama, more emotional moments, and, perhaps most excitingly, more queer characters. Maybe it’s because it’s been more than two years and I really missed this show, or maybe it’s just that good, but I think the third season of Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia is its best one yet. It has all the things we’ve come to know and love about the show, and then some. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and it made me giggle and kick my feet at all the extra queer cont...
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I'm Finally Living the Friend-Filled Summers of 1990s Films

This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now. There are a lot of things about my adult life that would blow my pre-teen self’s entire mind, but one of the biggest is finally having the kinds of friendships I always admired in the fictional stories I watched and read. I was always...
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George A. Romero’s Daughter Is Making a Gay Zombie Movie Inspired by Real-Life Queer Party Drama

As a queer person who loves all kinds of horror movies, perhaps especially post-apocalyptic survival tales, I was thrilled to hear about the upcoming film, Queens of the Dead, which is being described as a “big gay zombie movie.” If you, too, are a fan of zombie apocalypse movies, you may have heard of George A. Romero, creator of such classics as Night of the Living Dead. This queer spin on the genre has been taken on by his daughter, Tina Romero. Tina (who wrote this movie with Erin Judge) was...
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Towa Bird Wooed Reneé Rapp With a Pegging Joke

feature image photo by Christopher Polk / Contributor via Getty Images Reneé Rapp was on Amy Poehler’s podcast Good Hang this week, and let me tell you, it was a delightful listen. For one thing, I love that Amy Poehler isn’t one of those straight people who sound like they’re afraid if they say the word “gay” too many times in a row they’ll catch it, she was very open with her questions for Reneé about things like her girlfriend and coming out, and took all of Reneé’s very gay jokes in stride....
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‘The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy’ Is Back in All Its Quirky, Queer Glory

The latest season of The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy might just be the First Best of the two seasons so far. And they set a high bar in season one! This season, our favorite queer bundle of alien anxiety — Dr. Klak (Keke Palmer) and her best friend in all the universe Dr. Sleech (Stephanie Hsu) — find themselves in the spotlight. For better or worse, this dynamic duo caught public attention last season with their ability to break every single known rule (in a fairly rule-less world) in or...
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'The Last of Us' Episode 207 Recap: The End Is the Beginning

This recap will have spoilers for Season 2, Episode 7 of The Last of Us, “Convergence” Hello and welcome to this recap of the finale of Season 2 of The Last of Us, where Nic and I (Valerie Anne) will discuss the chaotic and stressful goings-on of this episode, plus give our overall thoughts on the season. What a ride it’s been! And thank you for going on it with us. One last time: While we will compare/contrast what happened in the game, we will not spoil what happens further ahead in the game t...
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Praise the Wilderness! Yellowjackets Has Finally Been Renewed for a Fourth Season

BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ! Good news, gays, gals, and cannibal pals, our favorite twisted teen drama Yellowjackets has officially been renewed for a fourth season! Chris McCarthy, Co-CEO of Paramount Global and President of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios recognizes the brilliance of this show, calling it, “a perfect alchemy of psychological horror, survival thriller and coming-of-age drama that continues to captivate audiences worldwide, brought to life by our extraordinarily talented and beloved cas...
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'Murderbot' Is About a Relatable Robot and His Gaggle of Queer Hippies

Well, I have good news and bad news about Apple TV+’s new show, Murderbot. The good news is, everyone is gay!! The titular Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård) is assigned to a group of humans he calls “hippie scientists” from a planetary commune and every last one of them is queer. We have nonbinary Pin-Lee (played by nonbinary actor Sabrina Wu), their wife Arada (Tattiawna Jones), another point in their triangle Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), and the rest of their crew who are also revealed to be queer (o...
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'The Last of Us' Episode 206 Recap: It's Her Party (And We'll Cry if We Want To)

This recap will have spoilers for Season 2, Episode 6 of The Last of Us, “The Price” Hello and welcome to the penultimate episode recap of The Last of Us season two, where Nic and I (Valerie Anne) hope you’ll join us in shouting about our many feelings. As always, we’ll talk about the video game, but not spoil anything that happened in the game that hasn’t happened in the show yet, and we ask you do the same. In this episode, we do a little time traveling. Which is actually convenient for the fo...
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Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Features First Out Lesbian Cover Model

Lauren Chan says her entire career is based around inclusion and representation, because she’s a plus-size, queer, Asian model. This career — which has won her Canadian fashion awards and a spot on Marie Claire’s 2023 Power List — has led her to be the first out lesbian (and she thinks possibly the first Chinese person) to have a solo cover in Sports Illustrated’s famous swimsuit issue. As exciting as this is, to borrow a term Ziwe Fumudoh coined on the podcast Hysteria, it feels a little “sadgr...
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'The Last of Us' Episode 205 Recap: In the Air Tonight

This recap will have spoilers for Season 2, Episode 5 of The Last of Us, “Feel Her Love” Hello and welcome to this The Last of Us recap, in which Nic and I (Valerie Anne) discuss the most recent episode through a queer, nerdy lens as lovers of both the original games and television in general. As always, we will compare/contrast the game to the show, but we won’t spoil future aspects of the game, and we ask that you do the same in the comments! Last week on The Last of Us, Ellie and Dina made it...
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Isabela Merced and Bella Ramsey's Real Life Queerness Deepened 'The Last of Us'

If you thought that just because I write a weekly recap of The Last of Us with Nic means I don’t have anything more to say about it, you’d be mistaken. FOR EXAMPLE, this week, Isabela Merced did an interview where she talked about the love scene between Ellie and Dina, and she said it felt as tender as it looked to us as an audience. She said, “Bella and I were just so comfortable with each other. And also, we both have experience in queer relationships — you can just tell when a girl hasn’t kis...
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'The Last of Us' Episode 204 Recap: Take On Me (Take Me On)

This recap will have spoilers for Season 2, Episode 4 of The Last of Us, “Day One” Welcome to this recap of The Last of Us where Nic and I (Valerie Anne) talk about our favorite post-apocalyptic queer drama! Blah blah blah, proper name, place name, backstory stuff, don’t spoil the show by talking about things that happen later in the game, okay LET’S GET RIGHT INTO THIS VERY GAY EPISODE. We open with a flashback from eleven years ago — some FEDRA agents and a little political lore. Let’s break t...
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Airyn De Niro (Yes, Robert's Daughter) is Coming Out Trans, Telling Her Own Story, Has Great Hair

Technically Airyn De Niro has been out for a while and started hormone therapy back in November, but she’s here now with Them to tell her own story without the speculation of paparazzi-fueled sites like Daily Mail trying (and failing) to do it for her. Last month, paparazzi caught snaps of Airyn while she was visiting her father and went wild with headlines and speculations. In the interview with Them, Airyn said, “Not only did they get information wrong about me… They just sort of reminded me t...
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