The first season of Freeform's Everything's Gonna Be Okay was just ending when creator and star Josh Thomas began sheltering in place like people all over the country. But a few weeks into his quarantine, he found a way to keep busy by adopting a sweet puppy he named Bilby (named for a desert-dwelling marsupial found in his native Australia).
He says that a lot of his time at home has been spent finding weird things to cook and potty-training Bilby by repeating "toilet" over and over.
While Freeform has yet to announce a second season for Everything's Gonna Be Okay, there's no denying that it is a changemaker in terms of visibility for teens on the autism spectrum.
In the series, Thomas plays Nicholas, who grew up with his mom in Australia and chooses to raise his high school-age half-sisters Matilda (played by Kayla Cromer who is on the autism spectrum) and Genevieve (Maeve Press) in their home in Southern California when their father suddenly dies.
But Thomas first caught the eye of TV viewers with his semiautobiographical series Please Like Me, which premiered on Australian TV in 2013.
On a Zoom interview for Inside With the Advocate, Thomas shares quarantine life and his travails training Bilby, being an out content creator and centering queer people in his work, and how he identified as straight when he wrote the pilot for Please Like Me. He also jokes about "discovering" Hannah Gadsby, who costars in Please Like Me. However, he admits that the comic, who rose to fame in the United States with her Netflix special Nanette, had a long career before he came along.
Watch the full interview with Thomas and meet Bilby above.
Check out other episodes of Inside With the Advocate, which features an array of virtual stories with LGBTQ+ artists, trailblazers, and allies including Rosie O'Donnell, Emily Hampshire, Harvey Guillen, Ross Mathews, Kalen Allen, Sherry Cola, Fortune Feimster, Brandy Norwood, Bruce Richman, Tonatiuh, the Indigo Girls, and Mary Lambert.
