Brooklyn-native artists and engaged couple Amanda Kelly (she/her) and Bree Sepulveda (she/her), advanced toward a $50,000 prize on HGTV’s latest holiday competition mini-series The Biggest Little Christmas Showdown hosted by Tony-Award winning actor James Monroe Iglehart
When asked about the experience collaborating with her fiancee (Sepulveda) in miniature making and their shared success, Kelly responded, “Openly gay couples, especially lesbian couples, working together isn’t something that’s televised very often. Bree and I make a great team naturally, and I feel as though our chemistry is what helped us create the winning miniature. We hope to inspire young LGBTQ+ artists to consider miniature crafting and increase lesbian visibility.”
In 2019, LGBTQ+ organization GLAAD reported that lesbian characters are still underrepresented in broadcast television.
GLAAD’s Summary of Broadcast Findings includes the following statistics:
- Lesbian representation is again up year over year to 25 percent (28) of regular and recurring LGBTQ characters. This is a one percentage point increase from the previous year, but still down from the 2015-16 season when 33 percent of LGBTQ regular and recurring characters on broadcast were lesbians.
- Many of those characters were killed off their respective shows as part of the decades-long “Bury Your Gays” trend, and we hope to see the networks focus on increasing and improving representation for lesbians and queer women as they look ahead to what they’ll order next year.
Kelly and Sepulveda are one of three teams challenged to construct miniature structures under the theme of “Mele Kalikimaka”, A Tropical Christmas. Kelly and Sepulveda’s 1:12th scale Christmas Pontoon diorama won the hearts of the show’s judges featuring HGTV’s interior designer Genevieve Gorder and miniatures experts June Clinkscales and Dave Asling.
The Biggest Little Christmas Showdown will continue to air on HGTV on Fridays at 9PM|8PMc, concluding Friday December 18th 2020. Each episode will provide contestants with Christmas-themed challenges, including “Dickens Christmas” and “Retro Christmas”.
The winning team will be rewarded a $50,000 cash prize and brought to a life-sized interior of their miniature structure.