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Say howdy to the handsome gay cowboy in Hallmark’s new Western drama
Don't tell Candace Cameron Bure, but The Hallmark Channel keeps getting gayer.
Hallmark, you’ve come along way, baby!
After finally acknowledging that queer people exist and putting LGBTQ+ folks in its holiday movies—thereby scaring Candace Cameron Bure off to the Great American Family network—The Hallmark Channel is proving it’s 100%. committed to The Gay Agenda
.
Case in point: We’re not only showing up in the network’s one-off Christmas movies; now we’re series regulars, too! In a rough-and-tumble Western drama about a family of bull riders, no less!
(Look out, Yellowstone, Hallmark’s coming for your bag.)
We’re talking about Ride, one of Hallmark’s first scripted original series, which concerns itself with the McMurrays, a tight-knit ranch family in Colorado coping with the loss of their son and rodeo star, Austin.
The youngest McMurray is a sweetie named Tuff (Jake Foy), an out and proud gay man who works on his family’s ranch, putting his bull-riding days behind him after his brother’s death. And, like so many gays, Tuff loves his mama, Isabel (Three Men And A Baby‘s Nancy Travis).
Only one episode of Ride has aired thus far, but it’s wonderful to see a character like Tuff so naturally play into the narrative. He’s gay, yes, but his story doesn’t appear to be solely defined by his queerness—his family accepts him, no questions asked, as does the rodeo-obsessed community around him.
We even get to see Tuff engage in some heavy flirting with a man named Julian played by hunky actor Vasilios Filippakis, who happens to be credited for multiple episodes in Ride‘s first season. Could a little gay romance be headed to the McMurray ranch?
And though the crux of the story seems to be if middle-child Cash (Beau Mirchoff) will take over his older brother’s rodeo star mantle—and whether or not matriarch Isabel will let him—Tuff still gets his fair share of the spotlight, like when his band performs at the local saloon (apparently that’s Jake Foy’s real singing voice).
Actually, let’s take a moment to shout out Foy—a queer actor playing a gay role in the main ensemble of a Hallmark series! That’s pretty incredible!
If Foy looks familiar, that’s because he’s got a handful of TV credits to his name, popping in up from everything from Batwoman to Designated Survivor to, yes, a couple of Hallmark Channel romance movies.
We’ll wrap things up with a few choice photos from Foy’s Instagram page, which includes plenty of cute photos of him with his partner. We simply love to see it!
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