This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Hi, everyone. It's Sophia.

Welcome to Work in Progress.

Welcome to this week's work in progress, friends.

It is June.

It is pride.

Ooh, and we have some queer joy on the show today.

Our guest is none other than Haley Kiyoko, one of my favorite voices, one of my fellow Angel City FC, lifelong supporters, and one of the coolest

artists that I know. Long before she became a defining voice for queer storytelling, she was

navigating incredibly early career success as a Disney Channel star.

But like so many of us, fear of scrutiny made her shrink herself, even with all of those

amazing achievements.

But that changed when she turned 24.

Haley released a song, Girls Like Girls, that centered on, celebrated, and championed queer love.

And instead of judgment, she found an audience that accepted her and saw themselves in her.

And it marked a point where her identity shifted from something private and complicated to something public and powerful.

And what has followed is an incredibly

beautiful and rare kind of creative evolution. The same story from the song has grown into a number

one New York Times bestselling novel and now a feature film that Haley co-wrote and directed. What many people

don't know is that it took 10 years to get this movie to the stage of being made. But along the

way, she never gave up. She went from feeling pressure to tone herself down to being absolutely embraced.

...