The four "Golden Girls" were originally supposed to be accompanied by a live-in gay housekeeper named Coco who would have been in charge of the cooking, the cleaning, and his share of the sassy comebacks. The addition of an LGBTQ core character to an ensemble comedy in 1985 - right in the midst of the AIDS epidemic - would have been essentially unprecedented, and powerful in terms of representation, notes Decider. Such a move would also have propelled the already-groundbreaking show - about a group of older women, played by TV comedy veterans that included Bea Arthur, Betty White, and Rue McClanahan - even further into daring new TV territory. As The Atlantic put it in 2015, looking back at the show in its 30th anniversary year, "if you imagine Hank Azaria in 'The Birdcage,' only slightly less flamboyant and slightly more amenable to the bathrobe-with-shoulder pads look, then you have a pretty good idea about Coco." So what happened? Tap link in bio to continue on @EDGEmedianetwork ?⁠ ⁠ ?️: Kilian Melloy / @dragelruairi ⁠ ?: The Golden Girls / NBC

The four "Golden Girls" were originally supposed to be accompanied by a live-in gay housekeeper named Coco who would have been in charge of the cooking, the cleaning, and his share of the sassy comebacks. The addition of an LGBTQ core character to an ensemble comedy in 1985 - right in the midst of the AIDS epidemic - would have been essentially unprecedented, and powerful in terms of representation, notes Decider. Such a move would also have propelled the already-groundbreaking show - about a group of older women, played by TV comedy veterans that included Bea Arthur, Betty White, and Rue McClanahan - even further into daring new TV territory. As The Atlantic put it in 2015, looking back at the show in its 30th anniversary year, "if you imagine Hank Azaria in 'The Birdcage,' only slightly less flamboyant and slightly more amenable to the bathrobe-with-shoulder pads look, then you have a pretty good idea about Coco." So what happened? Tap link in bio to continue on @EDGEmedianetwork ?⁠
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?️: Kilian Melloy / @dragelruairi ⁠
?: The Golden Girls / NBC