The Prom. It’s a simple love song in a scene that feels as though it were plucked from the heyday of the American musical film.
Except, rather than featuring a white heterosexual couple, it centers an interracial teen queer girl couple. What makes the scene and the characters even richer for LGBTQ+ viewers is that both rising star Jo Ellen Pellman, who plays Emma in her first major role, and Ariana DeBose, who plays Alyssa and stars in the upcoming West Side Story, are queer.“I don’t want to start a riot / I don’t want to blaze a trail,” the song begins.