The second season of ABC Family’s “The Fosters” concluded Monday evening with buzz to spare, thanks to a recent same-sex kiss between two thirteen-year-old characters that sparked a social media debate.
TheWrap caught up with the team at the center of the controversy, actors Hayden Byerly and Gavin MacIntosh, along with producers Brad Bredeweg and Peter Paige at Saturday’s GLAAD Media Awards.
“It took a very long time for them to be comfortable and for us to be comfortable doing this, and comfortable with ourselves and our own sexuality before trying to experiment with someone else’s,” said Byerly.
The actors said the hate speech that the storyline sparked on social media was difficult to process, but the outpouring of support was comforting.
“The majority has really been positive, we’ve only gotten a little bit of flack,” said MacIntosh.
Paige, a former star of the groundbreaking Showtime drama “Queer as Folk,” was also surprised by the support around the plot. “In hindsight, you look back at it and it was 99 percent overwhelmingly positive,” said Paige.
The season finale also advanced the romance between the two actors, according to Bredeweg and Paige.
“There’s a big one coming… the next evolution of ‘Jonnor,’” Paige said, using the couple’s mashup nickname for Jude and Connor.