Butch Pal for the Straight Gal had a humble but oh-so-relateable beginning. “[It] wasn’t a pandemic project, but it was definitely a project that came out of having way too much time on my hands,” series writer, creator, and star Ally Johnson recalled to The Advocate. “I had just been fired from my job at a radio station, and I started watching the new Queer Eye reboot while crying over my Fruit Loops.
Then I thought to myself, ‘why has a female version of this show never existed? What would it be like? Would it just be a bunch of lesbians telling straight women to adopt a pit bull and go hiking?’ Then I thought, ‘that’s exactly what it would be, and that’s awesome.’”Inspired, Johnson set about writing and securing funding for the series through Kickstarter.
Three years and a successful campaign later, the pilot has finally premiered on Roku. “What I didn’t anticipate was how many people were dying for a show like this to exist.
Queer women are vastly underrepresented in the industry, especially in the comedy genre, and we were able to raise $30,000 just by crowdfunding the IDEA of Butch Pal.