Hulu and CBC Kids to air the first season of one of the first kids’ TV shows with an openly gay main character

Daniel Errico of Mount Washington has written and published dozens of children’s books on his website, freechildrenstories.com. But for one of his latest stories featuring uncommon main characters, he felt the format needed to be different.

Completed in 2013, his take on a classic fairy tale is a battle of good versus evil that Errico cashed in all of his savings to turn into an animated story.

The most difficult step, however, was finding someone to “put it out there.”

“I hit a wall for a long time,” he said. “Nobody seemed to want kids’ content that had gay protagonists.”

That was until he connected with Hulu.

Now, Errico’s story is now a fully realized animated show entitled “The Bravest Knight” that released its first 13-episode season in 2019. And there’s a second season on the way, with the first six new episodes releasing on Hulu and CBC Kids on Dec. 13.

The show stars T.R. Knight as “Sir Cedric,” Wilson Cruz as “Prince Andrew,” Teri Polo as “Saylor” and Margaret Cho as “Cho.”

In 2020, the show received a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Kids & Family Programming and is praised for being one of the first children’s shows to star openly gay main characters. Those characters are Sir Cedric and husband, Prince Andrew. Cedric shares the story of how he became a knight with his daughter, Nia (Millie Davis and Storm Reid), and recounts his adventures as a young “Not-Yet-Knight” alongside his friends.

Bobby Moynihan, who plays Grunt, said in a press release that Errico and director Shabnam Rezaei have done an “amazing job” bringing those characters to life and “giving kids today something they can see themselves in.”

Originally, Errico was trying to find a home for a short animation entitled “The Bravest Knight Who Ever Lived” and another called “Rosaline.” During this process, he also turned “The Bravest Knight Who Ever Lived” into a book, which tells the story of how Cedric and Andrew meet. Once Errico partnered with Hulu to make a show based on the short animation and the book, they asked for more content.

Errico, who lives on Mount Washington, said Hulu has been “wonderful” to both him and “The Bravest Knight,” supporting the show’s messaging from their first conversation.

“I feel like other people in companies, they weren’t as focused on whether or not this was important for kids to see or whether its good for children’s development, whether it’s good for the world,” Errico said. “They seemed more focused on whether or not there’d be backlash.”

“I think kids media has been part of the problem because we’ve been creating what is considered social norms — because it starts with kids. And we’ve decided that LGBTQ+ content shouldn’t be in front of kids, which has such detrimental consequences for children, no matter who they grow up to be.

“It has detrimental consequences for all of us. When it comes time for people who start making this content, I think there’s a tendency to tiptoe, which is still treating it like it’s age inappropriate when it’s not. It’s just a beautiful fact of life, and there’s all different kinds of love.”

The characters in “The Bravest Knight” are often based on existing fairy tale tropes that the actors “imbue” their personalities into, Errico explained, which helps bring life, nuance and representation to the show.

Character design goes a long way toward telling a story, said Rezaei, who also owns the animation company behind “The Bravest Knight.”

“I immediately fell in love with the larger goal of normalizing, for example, a protagonist who is gay,” Rezaei said. “But there’s so much going on in the series that is commendable and all of those things are reasons why I wanted to do this project really badly.”

She loves and identifies with Nia, who presents as a strong female character — something that struck a chord with Rezaei.

“The show, in a way, is trying to allow freedoms,” she said. “So many things are not allowed in our society to this day and the show is trying to make people less judgy, allow you to dress how you want, allow you to be who you are and to use your voice to better the world. Those, to me, are fundamental, strong messages that I can really stand behind.”

Rezaei was born in Iran, grew up in Austria and watched people from the Middle East be labeled as terrorists after the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Her goal is to create content that shows the humanity of people who have been “othered.” In fact, it’s the reason she started Big Bad Boo Studios, the lead animation studio on “The Bravest Knight.”

“I thought, if we tell really wonderful stories, the cultural side and the human side of a country like Iran will come out,” she said. “It’s a very personal journey for me, whether it was trying to put a human face to an Iranian like myself, or the LGBTQ+ community.”

Samuel Long is a Post-Gazette features reporter, covering a wide array of cultural interests around Western Pennsylvania. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he has covered a range of topics, from the environment to the arts.