The newly-announced reboot to the classic Nickelodeon children’s series “Rugrats” will change a prominent character from a married heterosexual woman to a single lesbian mother.
The change was announced by Natalie Morales, who voices the character, Betty DeVille, in the Nickelodeon series during a Wednesday interview with The A.V. Club.
“Anyone who watched the original show may have had an inkling Betty was a member of the alphabet mafia,” Morales said. “Betty is a fictional cartoon, but even cartoons were hugely influential for me as a kid and if I’d been watching Rugrats and seen Betty casually talking about her ex-girlfriend, I think at least a part of me would have felt like things might be okay in the future.”
Betty DeVille, the mom to twin Rugrats Phil and Lil, is openly gay in Paramount+’s 3D reboot series. While many fans had assumed this was the case in the original show, it is now canon. ♀ pic.twitter.com/M3C8UMGrsM
— IGN (@IGN) May 28, 2021
Aside from being openly lesbian, Betty — who was originally married to a husband named Howard — will now be a single mother to main characters Phil and Lil, according to People. (RELATED: Marvel Comics To Introduce LGBTQ Captain America)
Other changes introduced to Betty in the revival series include the replacement of the female symbol on her sweatshirt with the Gemini astrological sign, according to Sky News.
The original series were launched in 1991 on Nickelodeon and concluded after running for 9 seasons in 2004, People reported.
The revival series that premiered Thursday on Paramount+ follows three films: “The Rugrats Movie” (1998), “Rugrats in Paris: The Movie” (2000), “Rugrats Go Wild” (2003) and a spinoff series called “All Grown Up!” (2003-08).