Chanel Stewart speaks out after Disney cuts trans storyline from 'Win or Lose'

Pixar Animation Studios, owned by Walt Disney Studios, has reportedly cut a transgender storyline from the upcoming Disney+ series Win or Lose. It is one of many cases where Disney made the choice to remove certain storylines and/or characters that could represent LGBTQ+ youth in mainstream animated films and TV shows.

Win or Lose, which will premiere on Disney+ on February 19, 2025, follows a co-ed middle school softball team called The Pickles. Each of its eight episodes focuses on a character's life off the field life — following a particular player, coach, and/or parent.

One episode featured a character discussing their gender identity. However, those lines have all been removed. "When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline," a spokesperson for Disney told The Hollywood Reporter.

The trans actress who was going to play this character on Win or Lose, Chanel Stewart, is now speaking up about that storyline being removed.

"Oh my God, it was crazy,” the 17-year-old actress told Deadline. “I wore it as a badge. I wore it with pride. I wore it with honor because it meant so much to me. The thought of authentically portraying a transgender teenage girl made me really happy. I wanted to make this for transgender kids like me."

Stewart's mother, Keisha, also shared a statement with the publication:

"It was upsetting because my daughter is transgender and this is her life. I felt like it was very important that we not hide that fact. There may be some parents out there who are not ready to have that conversation, but this is the world that we live in and everyone should be represented. Everyone deserves to be recognized. And it felt like it was just another setback for the LGBTQ community, because it's very hard on transgender teenagers (…) transgender people, period. Especially when you're young and you're trying to figure out how to navigate this world that you live in and be able to grow into your own person."

"I was very disheartened," Stewart added in the exclusive Deadline report. "From the moment I got the script, I was excited to share my journey to help empower other trans youth. I knew this would be a very important conversation. Trans stories matter, and they deserve to be heard."

According to Disney, Stewart's character is "still a part of the show heavily."

Stewart countered that statement, saying: "It's just that my character would now be a cis girl, a straight cis girl. So, yeah, that's all they really told me, and that I was still a part of the show."

In the past few years, Disney's record with queer representation in children's media has been criticized.

In 2022, a group of "LGBTQ+ employees of Pixar and their allies" released a statement alleging that corporate executives at Disney demanded they cut "nearly every moment of overtly gay affection" from all Pixar projects, "regardless of when there is protest from both the creative teams and executive leadership at Pixar," which was reported by Variety.

That same year, a same-sex kiss in the film Lightyear was initially removed. As reported by Variety, the kiss was subsequently restored by the studio.

In 2024, IGN released a comprehensive article noting that following the box-office disappointment that Lightyear turned out to be — which was reportedly blamed on the same-sex kiss controversy among leadership — Disney execs are now "uncomfortable" with queer themes overall.

Regarding a central character in Inside Out 2, there were "continuous notes to make Riley… come across as 'less gay,'" including changing the lighting of certain scenes. Special care was also put into making the relationship between Riley and Val, a supporting character introduced in the film seem as platonic as possible.

Also in 2024, Disney reportedly declined to release a completed episode of the series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur that featured a trans storyline, as reported by PRIDE. The story notes that the trans storyline was the reason this particular episode got pulled.

In the episode, the main character's basketball team is locked in the locker room after the opposing coach overhears that one of the girls, Brooklyn, used to "play on the boy's team." The team, which also includes a nonbinary player, supports Brooklyn. United, they get out of the trap.

The queer community has long loved Disney, but there's growing concern about the erasure of LGBTQ+ storylines when so many anti-LGBTQ+ bills — many of which are aimed at trans youth, as reported by The Advocate — are proliferating across the country.