Gay and Here to Stay

ATX, a new series about four gay men navigating life in Austin, Texas, started like most things do – with a song.

Co-creator Addison Roush was listening to M83’s “Raconte-Moi Une Historie,” which fittingly translates to “tell me a story,” when he became determined to tell his own.

“I decided then that I’m not going to try to placate and do what everyone else wants to do or what they want to see,” Roush, 32, said. “I’m going to tell a story that I want to tell.”

The show, coming this fall, focuses on four friends dealing with life, love and friendship within and outside of the LGBTQ+ community.

Roush and co-creator Steven Chambers, 38, say that growing representation of the queer community is not enough in film and television: The type of representation matters, and they made sure ATX delivers a real, relatable look into the life of a gay man.

“We want people to understand that gay men are people too, and we go through the exact same things as everybody else,” Roush said. “Previous gay shows have missed the mark on accurately portraying gay men and accurately portraying gay life, but we’re telling it in what we hope to be the most honest, genuine, funny and captivating way.”

Chambers and Roush made sure to pull from real-life experiences to maintain their character’s relatability on screen.

“Something that we discussed early, early on is how do we want to tell these stories about these guys and make them real people,” Chambers said. “We just take things that have happened to us and expound on them and make them funnier because that’s what’s real. We’re what’s real.”

They’re not the only ones that see the importance in shows like ATX. Curran Nault, lecturer of radio-television-film at The University of Texas at Austin, believes queerness in film deserves the spotlight it’s slowly gaining.

“Film and media are extremely influential in shaping our identities and ideologies,” Nault said. “There is so much queer media left to be discovered and unpacked and we are learning new things about our identities and communities every day. The possibilities are endless.”

That’s what everyone at ATX believes: They have the potential to do something truly different with this series. The pilot, airing in November, is the beginning of their story.

“We’re just now getting to the point that we, as gay men, aren’t afraid to tell the stories of normal, gay men,” Roush said. “We want everyone to watch this show because they see something in the show that they see in themselves.”

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