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Jul 13, 2015 · The Fosters S03E04 Still - S 2015. Eric McCandless/ABC Family. Since its start, ABC Family’s The Fosters hasn’t been shy about exploring taboo issues. The Peter Paige drama in season one...
Feb 17, 2014 · 17-year old trans teen Tom Phelan was picked to play Cole and has brought a great level of depth (and great, curly hair!) to the role. We can only hope that once Callie gets her issues figured out and returns to the Foster's home, we will continue to see Cole’s journey.
Oct 24, 2018 · 334. 19K views 5 years ago. In this episode of 'Broadly Hotline,' host Bunny Michaels meets with 'The Fosters' break-out start and trans actor Tom Phelan to talk about preferred gender...
- 5 min
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- VICE Life
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- Stef and Lena Were A New Kind of TV Couple
- Casting Lena and Stef
- The Story of Jude
- A Powerful Jude-Lena Scene Was Inspired by Johnson's Son
- Brandon's Relationship with His Dad Hit Close to Home
- Two Steps Forward For Trans Representation
- There Was Almost An Early Spin-Off
- Lena's Journey Into Politics
- Tackling The Realities of The Foster Care System
- Noah Centineo Gets His Start
Paige and Bredeweg wanted to fill the void of LGBTQ representation within the world of family drama. They initially thought gay dads could work, but that was seen on shows like Modern Family and Glee. "Then it hit us like a ton of bricks. Almost every lesbian couple we know has kids," Paige explains. In addition to that, Bredeweg and Paige wanted t...
Bredeweg looks back on the long casting process fondly after all these years, but has a vivid picture of when they saw the spark between Teri and Sherri as the show's matriarchs. "When they read for the network, I remember seeing the instant chemistry within the first two lines and I grabbed Peter's knee," he recalls. He kept a look at the executiv...
Initially the character of Jude Adams Foster (Hayden Byerly) was conceived as trans, but the network floated the idea of him being gay, and that opened the door for both Paige and Bredeweg to tap into their lived experiences. "We got to tell a lot of stories about growing up as a sweet, sensitive gay boy," Paige explains. (The touching moment when ...
The Fostersco-showrunner shares that she once saw her son in the bathroom taking off nail polish because someone told him "boys don't wear nail polish," which inspired a storyline for Jude. In a season 1 episode, Jude gets his nail painted by Mariana Adams Foster (Cierra Ramirez) after he says that he likes the color she's wearing, but he gets flac...
A big part of Brandon Foster's (David Lambert) story was his relationship with his own father, who was Stef's ex-husband and an alcoholic. "I grew up with my father, not my stepfather who I call my father, but my birth father struggled with alcohol his whole life," Bredeweg shares. As a result, Brandon figuring out how to care of himself while find...
Johnson broached the idea of introducing a trans character into the world after the character of Jude was redeveloped. That's where the character of Cole (Tom Phelan) came into the picture. He was a trans teenager who was in the group home Girls United as he was transitioning, which is where he met Callie Adams Foster (Maia Mitchell). "We found som...
Season 2 of the show introduced Girls United, the group home where Callie was sent as a result of running away, which introduced Tom Phelan's Cole, brought Rosie O'Donnell to the show as Rita Hendricks who ran the place, and nearly sparked a spin-off. "Rosie brought such an interesting layer to the show," Bredeweg says. "There was something about t...
Paige and Bredeweg initially envisioned The Fosters as a six-season show, and one of the stories that could have continued was Lena's foray into politics. "We were interested in following her story as a state assembly person, but the show ended so we never got to fully explore her going from principal of a school to something new," Johnson shares. ...
"This was the sanitized TV version of what kids in the system go through," Paige shares. He remembers a powerful exchange when Karen Bass (who was a congresswoman at the time) brought a group of kids who aged out of the foster system to set to learn about careers in the entertainment industry during the show's first season. "It was this incredible ...
It took some convincing to get Jesus back on the show after Jake T. Austin left the series. "The network didn't want us to bring him back and I was very upset about that because you can't take him away from his twin Mariana and this show is about family," Johnson recalls. So, Johnson, Paige and Bredeweg pushed to have someone new play the character...
- Alamin Yohannes
- 69 min
Jun 6, 2018 · And the benchmark piece of his story, which centered on his being placed in a home that didn't match his gender identity, was that Tom Phelan, the actor who portrayed him, was also...
- Tracy E. Gilchrist
Feb 27, 2014 · Transgender Teen Actor Tom Phelan Is Breaking Barriers, One Brooding Look at a Time. Impact. By Mitch Kellaway. Feb. 27, 2014. My heart leapt when I heard a transgender actor would be...
Oct 27, 2016 · Tom Phelan made headlines becoming the first transgender teen actor to portray a transgender teen on a major network show, ABC Family’s groundbreaking series “The Fosters.” Credits with Pasadena’s Theatre 360 include Hair, Spring Awakening, The Authors’ Voice and School for Scandal .
