Actor’s Mother Bemoans “Setback To The LGBTQ+ Community” After Disney Pulls Controversial Transgender Storyline From Pixar’s ‘Win or Lose’
Pixar’s Win or Lose will finally premiere on Disney + on February 19th, 2025, after being pushed back for over a year. However, the series has already made headlines after Disney announced that it will no longer include the transgender storyline of one character. Despite the character not being dropped from the show, the family of the actor who plays the role and a group of Pixar employees have come out to condemn Disney.
Win or Lose follows members of a middle school softball team called the Pickles through the week before their big championship game. The series features Will Forte in the lead role as the voice of Coach Dan. Another key character is Rochelle, the team’s best catcher, who is having a bad day, voiced by Milan Ray. However, the character making the headlines is Kai, the character to have a transgender storyline.
In unverified scenes of the removed storyline leaked online, Kai is seen standing outside a public toilet confused about whether to enter the men’s or women’s restroom. One character goes on to help Kai into the women’s bathroom. Kai also feels unaccepted in the team, but her father and their coach reassure her. The storyline would clearly be controversial considering the raging political discussion over biological men in women’s and girls’ private spaces such as toilets and locker rooms.
While announcing the removal of the transgender dialogue, Disney said, “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.” The announcement seems like a step towards moderation after the company’s woke agenda was blamed for its $100 billion loss in market cap since 2021.
According to inside sources that spoke to THR, a complete version of the affected episode of Win or Lose was ready to air. The changes meant that Disney had to invest in a complete remake. According to THR’s insider sources, the remade episode now has no mention of the character’s sexuality. The source also told THR that the new version of the episode had “significantly changed” from the original version.
Disney’s decision has also come at the expense of the ambition of one California family. Chanel Stewart, the actor who landed the role, also identifies as a transgender woman, a subject that was important to her selection for the role in the first place. Her character, Kai, will now simply be another straight girl on the team. Stewart still retains her role as the voice actor, but the removal of the transgender script has offended her family, as they expressed their comments in an interview.
“I was very disheartened,” Chanel told Deadline. “From the moment I got the script, I was excited to share my journey to help empower other trans youth. I knew this would be a very important conversation. Trans stories matter, and they deserve to be heard . . . It’s just that my character would now be a cis girl, a straight cis girl.”
Chanel had noted, “I wanted to make this for transgender kids like me.”
More dissent came from Chanel’s mother, Keisha. “It was upsetting because my daughter is transgender, and this is her life. I felt like it was very important that we not hide that fact,” she said.
Chanel, now 18, was just 14 when she landed the role. Keisha insisted that she wanted her daughter to become the shining light of other transgender teens. “There may be some parents out there who are not ready to have that conversation, but this is the world that we live in, and everyone should be represented. Everyone deserves to be recognized. And it felt like it was just another setback for the LGBTQ community because it’s very hard on transgender teenagers,” she added.
Sarah Ligatich, Pixar’s former transgender employee who was laid off in May, also stood in solidarity with Chanel. “I can’t tell you how much I cried yesterday thinking about that conversation that David (Win or Lose producer) had to have with [Chanel]. Not only are you asking someone to play someone they’re not, but also to get them to wrap their mind around a political conversation that is just so beyond them . . . They had this story in the can for two years so that they could have released it in a Biden presidency, and they chose not to,” Ligatich told THR.
This announcement comes just a few months after Disney was heavily criticized by its own employees for scrapping an episode of its animated series, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, which centered around a transgender character. Pixar’s vocal segment of employees has also condemned the Win or Lose decision with one former employee linking it to Disney bending to the pressure from the right.
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“The episode in its final form was so beautiful — and beautifully illustrated some of the experiences of being trans — and it was literally going to save lives by showing those who feel alone and unloved, that there are people out there who understand . . . So it’s just very frustrating that Disney has decided to spend money to not save lives,” another former Pixar employee who saw the episode said.
However, most of the criticism ignores the losses that have hit Disney films and shows with LGBTQ+ content in recent years. One of Disney’s biggest losses is linked to Elemental, which introduced a non-binary character. Pixar is known for producing family-friendly content, and it has also come under fire for pushing the woke agenda in its programming, starting with its 2020 short film, Out. Other Pixar family programs openly displaying LGBTQ+ characters include Onward, which was banned in four Middle-Eastern countries, and Strange World, which became one of Disney’s biggest box office bombs of all time.
While it is not clear whether Disney’s decision has something to do with the financial woes linked to similar content in the past, Pixar’s financial struggles are clearly a major concern. The company had to cut its workforce by 14% in May 2024 with any of the now-dissenting former employees, including Ligatich, getting affected.
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