While some students only complain about what GW lacks and do nothing about it, Henry Morillo noticed a void and filled it. Henry was involved in GWTV, GW’s television station, and realized that there were no scripted shows. So, Henry spent his junior year creating, writing, filming and producing a sitcom for GWTV as an independent study.
“The premise of the show [Gender Neutral] is that GW housing accidentally places Alex, who’s a girl, and Sam, who’s a boy in the same room through gender neutral housing because they both checked it off on their application unwittingly,” Henry explains.
Problems brew when Sam’s best friend Chance convinces Sam to tell Alex that he is gay so she would feel comfortable living with him.
“It really is a satire of people who are so ignorant about LGBT culture that they would think it would even be possible to play this charade,” Henry says. “The irony is that the main gay character, Chance, doesn’t conform to any of the stereotypes he tells Sam to follow.”
Freshman Jon Hering plays Sam, sophomore Madeline Louden plays Alex and freshman Jon Weigell plays Chance.
Henry was inspired to create Gender Neutral because of a summer internship with ABC. “I was interning for the people who develop new shows so it was really fascinating being in that environment and reading new pilots all the time and seeing the new shows that were going to come out. The experience inspired me to go out and create my own show.”
The idea for the show came to Henry from personal experience. “Of course, you’re supposed to write about what you know. I was going to live in gender neutral housing this year and I realized there’s a lot of funny stuff that I could do with that.”
Henry also says that the show is an homage to Three’s Company, a sitcom from the late 1970s in which a man pretended to be gay to everyone but his roommates because it was unacceptable for a man to be living with two single women at this time. “It’s like Three’s Company but flipped,” he explains.
Now that the cast and crew of Gender Neutral have been working for months, they are finally ready to premiere the show at a red carpet event on-campus.
“The red carpet premiere is going to be unlike anything you’ve done here at GW. It’s going to be really fun,” Henry promises.
The event will debut the first two episodes of Gender Neutral. “That second episode is actually a sneak peek,” Henry says. “That night we’ll release the first episode online, but you’ll have to wait another two weeks to see the second one.”
Before guests watch the show, they will witness a press conference with campus news outlets. Representatives from WRGW and GWeek, GWTV’s news program, will be asking Henry, the other writers and the actors about the sitcom.
The event will also feature a hors d’oeuvres reception, a red carpet with paparazzi taking your picture and a performance from GW’s comedy group receSs.
The red carpet premiere will take place on Wednesday, April 10 from 7-10 p.m. in the Marvin Center’s Continental Ballroom. Tickets are free and can be reserved at gwtvevent.eventbrite.com.