Rugrats mainstay Betty DeVille, the mother of twins Phil and Lil DeVille, is confirmed to be openly gay in Paramount+'s new CG-animated revival series.
While Betty was married to Howard DeVille in the original Rugrats cartoon, a number of fans have long considered her to be something of a gay icon. As confirmed by The A.V. Club, this is now canon to the reboot. Openly queer actor Natalie Morales, known for her roles in The Middleman and White Collar, voices Betty in Paramount+'s Rugrats. "Anyone who watched the original show may have had an inkling Betty was a member of the alphabet mafia," Morales said in a statement.
Morales also explained what it means to her to be able to play the character and bring queer representation to the nostalgic show. "Betty is a single mom with her own business who has twins and still has time to hang out with her friends and her community, and I think it's just so great because examples of living your life happily and healthily as an out queer person is just such a beacon for young queer people who may not have examples of that," she said. "And yeah, 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."
The updated character is Latina and has traded her traditional "female" symbol sweater for one with a Gemini symbol on it, along with a few other minor appearance changes. In the revival series, Betty loves football, cracks jokes about her ex-girlfriends and owns a café named Betty's Beans (which is in line with her working at Finster family's Java Lava café in the mid-2000s Rugrats sequel series All Grown Up!). There is currently no word regarding whether or not Howard will factor into Paramount+'s Rugrats reboot in some capacity.
Rugrats originally ran on Nickelodeon from 1991 to 2004, with three theatrical films -- The Rugrats Movie, Rugrats in Paris: The Movie and Rugrats Go Wild -- releasing in 1998, 2000 and 2003, respectively. The aged-up sequel series All Grown Up! ran from 2003 to 2008. The surviving voice cast of the original Rugrats all reprise their roles as the babies in Paramount+'s reboot, though all of the adults have been recast. A revival series had been in discussion since 2015, but wasn't greenlit until 2018.
Produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studio, Paramount+'s Rugrats is based on the series created by Arlene Klasky, Gabor Csupo and Paul Germain. Rugrats stars E.G. Daily, Nancy Cartwright, Cheryl Chase, Cree Summer, Kath Soucie, Ashley Rae Spillers, Tommy Dewey, Tony Hale, Natalie Morales, Anna Chlumsky, Timothy Simons, Nicole Byer, Omar Miller and Michael McKean. The seriesis streaming now on Paramount+.
Source: The A.V. Club
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