‘Mozart in the Jungle’ Actor Sandro Isaack is Working to Create a Cartoon That Represents LGBT Families

Via Sandro Isaack Kickstarter

If you’re a fan of the award-winning Amazon Prime show, “Mozart in the Jungle,” you may be familiar with openly gay actor Sandro Isaack who plays Pavel, the Slavik stagehand and lover of Bernadette Peters.

However, beyond acting, Isaack is doing some amazing things in the background for LGBT families. For one, he published a children’s book called Stork M.I.A., a story of two dads who aren’t married and go in search of a stork so as to create their family.

And now, he’s working on a new project, one that involves creating a 2-D cartoon called “Ava — The Lucky Girl With Two Dads.” This new animation series is based off Isaack’s children’s book but fast forwards six years into the future when Dad and Dad are living happily with their daughter Ava, a second-grader, as a two-dad, adoptive family.

Within the series, we will get to meet Dad and Dad and the determined Ava who wants to be president of the United States one day, but will first take on the challenge of President of Second Grade. Other characters in the cartoon series will include Dolores the Stork who brought her to her dads and has the fun position of campaign manager. And then there’s also Paco, her best friend, and the son of a two-mom household. From the pictures of the characters, this is also a very multiracial-friendly world that Ava lives in — an added perk to this cartoon!

On a Kickstarter page, Isaack wrote: “Too many children of same-gender couples are watching cartoons from a borrowed universe, or a universe that doesn’t fully embrace their reality.”

“I think it’s time to introduce kids to a cartoon that features same gender couples and their kids as a natural part of life. Not as something special or different. That’s why this cartoon is mostly about Ava, a cool little girl, who just happens to have two awesome dads. Like her BFF, Paco, happens to have two awesome moms.”

Isaack also wanted to add a feminist element to the show with Ava having dreams to be president.

He wrote, “It’s very important to me that little girls see and understand that they can be anything they want to be. From princesses and ballerinas, to astronauts and presidents. And more important, it’s necessary that little boys understand and accept that because little boys and little girls are the men and women of tomorrow.”

With so few cartoons, films, and even children’s books that represent LGBT families, Isaack’s project is more important than ever for not only LGBT children but society as a whole — to show that modern families come in all shapes and sizes, and each one is as beautiful and important as the next.

And as Isaack wrote in an interview with San Diego Gay & Lesbian News, “The kids of today will be the adults of tomorrow and if they can learn acceptance at any early age it will benefit everyone.”

You can help Isaack create and launch the pilot for this series, and hopefully make this cartoon series a reality in the near future, by donating to his Kickstarter fund today. Click here to learn more and donate.