Actress Ellen Barkin started a fire on Twitter over the weekend when she blasted a Utah TV station decision not to air NBC’s opcoming comedy “The New Normal,” about a gay couple who adopts a baby.
“Shame on u @kslcom,” read the first in a series of angry tweets, for “not airing @NBCTheNewNormal.
“So L&O SVU (rape & child murder) is ok? But loving gay couple having a baby is inappropriate?,” it read.
KSL is the NBC station in Salt Lake City that said last Friday it was dropping the new show from its primetime schedule.
“After viewing the pilot episode of ‘The New Normal,’ we have made the decision to keep it off our fall schedule,” the station.,said in a prepared statement.
The outspoken actress started a wave of protest with the hashtag #KSLBigots for a series of tweets that ended with Barkin urging protestors in Utah to “please clog up @ksl5tv feed 4 their blatantly homophic decision 2 not air the show.”
NBC’s own Web site was the first to carry the news of Barkin’s angry Twitter barrage — which is unusual since networks are traditionally careful to avoid controversy with their own affiliates.
No one else from the show or the network weighed in over the weekend over the decision to pull the show in Utah, an indicator of how politically delicate the situation is for NBC.
In the series, a gay couple in LA enlists a surrogate mother — who already had an 8-year-old daughter — to have a baby for them. The two families become enmeshed in the process.
Barkin plays the surrogate mom’s buttinsky mother in the series.