How Laci Mosley Brings Black Queer Authenticity to iCarly
iCarly reboot’s first season on Paramount+ where Laci Mosley’s bisexual character, Harper, and her crush, Poppy Liu’s Double Dutch, kiss.
It’s a moment that LGBTQ+ folks and people of color who were fans of the original 2007 Nickelodeon show about a girl who becomes internet famous in the early days of web videos could only have imagined.
The scene features two queer actors, one who is Black and one who is Asian, playing queer characters and acting on their attraction.
For Mosley, who’s known for A Black Lady Sketch Show on HBO and for her podcast, Scam Goddess, about — you guessed it — famous grifters, iCarly’s inclusion of various kinds of people offers a space where marginalized folks can see themselves free of trauma and stereotypes.As a kid, Mosley watched the original iCarly, which starred Miranda Cosgrove in the lead role, as does the reboot, which brings back several of the show’s original stars.“It was a nice little kind of escapist weird cool world where there were no parents and no one to make you live a responsible life, which was fun because that’s certainly not what I was ever tasked to be,” Mosley says.“What’s cool about it being a sealed, hermetic world…is that by infusing that world [in the reboot] with real people who exist who are not really depicted in the original — queer people, more people of color…people in the disabled community…it makes the world more rich and full.”“It also gives people this perspective that I don’t think you see a lot in television when you see diverse stories, which is usually [that] they’re surrounded by the trauma and the pain,” Mosley adds.
