Two years ago, Tracy E. Gilchrist told Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande that people were “holding space with the lyrics of Defying Gravity” — and the internet never let it go. What the memes missed: she’d written Erivo’s Out100 cover that year, Erivo recognized her walking in, and, as Tracy puts it, “the room was warm.” The former editor-in-chief of The Advocate and Out is now building Holding Space with Tracy as an independent weekly video podcast — shot in person, six interviews in two days at the Stonewall Inn, with Peppermint, Harvey Guillén, Michael James Scott, Lena Hall and more. We talked about 20 years of orbiting each other in LGBTQ+ media, why she refuses to make the interview about herself, and what it actually costs to insist on being in the room.
“The room was warm.”
That’s how Tracy E. Gilchrist explains the four minutes that turned her into a pop-culture phrase — and it’s also, if you listen closely, a pretty complete theory of how good media gets made.
We’re relaunching #ILoveGay Today with a sharper focus on LGBTQ+ media, marketing and advertising — the conversations happening behind the content, not just the content itself. There was really only one person to kick that off with.
Twenty years of orbiting each other
Tracy and I have been circling the same industry since 2006, when she was freelance editing for Lesbian Nation before coming on full-time and relaunching it as SheWired. I was on the sales and marketing side. We kept just missing each other — same team, same alumni, same twenty-year Rolodex — and we finally met in person in New York last month.
“It’s only been since 2006,” she laughed. “We’ve been orbiting each other for 20 years.”
In that time she went from SheWired to feminism editor of The Advocate in 2017, to co-editor-in-chief in 2020 — weeks before lockdown — to sole editor-in-chief of The Advocate and Out by the end of that summer. GLAAD has called her “the Queen of Queer Media,” and the résumé earns it.
She learned print production alone in a West LA apartment during a pandemic, with a five-month-old kitten “literally eating my homework.” No photo shoots. No studio. Covers still shipped. “We had to get really creative,” she said. “Really proud of that.”
And she took the top job with one condition: “I only want it if I can continue to interview people and storytell, because that is my favorite thing to do. At my core, that is what I do.”
What actually happened in that Wicked junket
Most people know Tracy from one moment in 2024 — the Wicked press junket where she told Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande that people were “holding space with the lyrics of ‘Defying Gravity.’” The clip went everywhere. The finger-hold became a meme. The phrase became instant queer-camp canon.
Here’s the part the memes left out. Tracy had written Erivo’s Out 100 cover story that year. When she walked in, Erivo recognized her.
“As soon as she recognized me, Ariana perked up — and it was kind of like, ooh, this is the friend of my friend,” Tracy said. “Then Ariana complimented my outfit, and there was warmth in the room.”
That moment wasn’t luck and it wasn’t a stunt. It was the payoff on relationship-building she’d done long before the cameras rolled — which is the single most underrated thing in this business.
“I’ve never been someone who goes for the easy ‘let’s try to go viral,’” she said. “I don’t try to be controversial. I try to just ask real questions about art and advocacy, and I usually get some really beautiful answers.”
The interviewer who gets out of the way
Something I noticed watching her episodes, and told her when we met: Tracy makes herself secondary. She guides, she shepherds, and then she gets out of the way so the guest can shine. Not every video-podcast host works that way — and that’s exactly why the moments happen for her.
“Some people love when the podcast hosts make it about themselves,” she said. “I come from a more traditional media space. I ask a question, I really try to give them the room to answer… I’m not going to ask you what are you wearing, what products are you really into. It’s just not what I’m interested in.”
What she is interested in is themes. Even in something deliberately silly — she brought up Stop That Train, a disaster-movie spoof stacked with Drag Race queens — she finds the argument underneath.
“On its face, it’s not political,” she said. “But the mere fact that it exists with drag queens and all kinds of queer people is a radical act. And they’re just making people laugh. That is so important right now.”
Holding Space with Tracy, season two
Holding Space with Tracy is a weekly video podcast built on long-form conversation with people in entertainment, politics and beyond. Recent episodes include Mark Indelicato (Hacks, Ugly Betty) and Valorie Curry, who plays the MAGA-coded Firecracker on The Boys — a queer actor playing an evangelical superhero on one of the few series willing to interrogate this political moment head-on. Earlier guests include Michael Urie and Frankie Grande.
Season two launched with Peppermint during NYC Pride week, when Peppermint was a grand marshal — symmetry Tracy clearly enjoyed. Still coming: Harvey Guillén, Michael James Scott (the Genie in Broadway’s Aladdin), Stacy Lentz of the Stonewall Inn, drag artist and political organizer Marti Cummings, Plasma, and a bonus episode with Tony winner Lena Hall.
Most of season two was shot in person in New York, including a run of six interviews over two days at Stonewall — booked with her co-producer and publicist Tony Morrison, who she calls her fairy godmother.
Why she insists on being in the room
Here’s the part that matters most if you work in this industry.
At her former company, the podcast conversation kept drifting toward virtual. Cheaper. Easier to schedule. Perfectly reasonable on a spreadsheet.
Tracy pushed back — and she pushed back with the receipt. The reason the Wicked moment happened at all is that she was physically in the room.
“Yes, we can do it virtually,” she said. “But to be in the presence of another person — and not to be too woo-woo — to take in that aura and really connect with someone… there’s nothing like that.”
The production values follow from the same conviction: real cameras, real rooms, real setup. It costs more. It also produces the thing everyone else is trying to manufacture with a thumbnail and a hook.
We spend a lot of time in LGBTQ+ marketing talking about authenticity as a deliverable. This is what it actually looks like as a line item — someone deciding that presence is worth paying for.
An independent business, out in the open
Tracy is building this as an independent operation, and she’s refreshingly plain about what that takes.
“I should stop saying try,” she said, correcting herself mid-sentence. “We both are getting a business off the ground. It’s just a challenge, and we need support — we need people to watch our podcasts and to support in whatever way possible. I love doing this work. I want to keep putting it out into the world.”
That’s the state of independent queer media in 2026, said out loud. The institutional jobs are fewer. The people who built those institutions are now building their own. And the audience — the one that stops her on the street to hold her finger like Ariana did — is already there waiting.
If you’re a brand, a destination, or an agency looking for LGBTQ+ media partners who bring craft, credibility and a real audience, this is exactly where to be looking.
Watch, subscribe, follow
Our full conversation with Tracy is up now on the Pink Media / #ILoveGay YouTube channel. Watch it here.
Holding Space with Tracy is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and iHeart. Find Tracy at tracyegilchrist.com and on Substack.
And Tracy — if anyone reading this has a New York lead, she’s putting it out into the world. Consider it amplified.
