Acclaimed playwrights and filmmakers Daniel Talbott (The Conners, Midday Black Midnight Blue) and Stephen Laughton (The Call, Hiraeth) have started production on their latest collaboration, a limited series titled Born Again.
The series is a raw and intimate exploration of grief, friendship, desire, and survival within the queer communities of Los Angeles and Palm Springs.
This project marks the third collaboration for the duo, who previously worked together on the feature film Soft Animal and Laughton’s satirical play, The Enabler Monologues.
Created by Laughton and Talbott, Born Again weaves together the fractured lives of six characters united by the sudden death of their friend, Al. Through overlapping stories of heartbreak, memory, and connection, the series creates a searing portrait of queer love and loss, and how chosen family provides support when everything else is falling apart.
MEET THE CAST
The series features an ensemble cast, including:
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Elissa Middleton (Hereafter) as Taryn
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Lovell Holder (Peak Season) as August
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Neil Redfield (The Gilded Age) as Micah
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Tyler Woehl (Lavender Men) as Justin
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Sharae Foxie (I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore) as Imani
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Legendary house diva Pepper Mashay(Under Siege 2: Dark Territory) as Pearl
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Zvi Landsman (Jacob de Haan: A Voice Out of Time) as Nico
A STORY OF GRIEF AND RESILIENCE
Moving between the cityscapes of Los Angeles and the desert landscapes of Palm Springs, Born Again follows Justin’s grief-soaked spiral after Al’s suicide. The story also explores August and Micah’s tentative, fragile first love; the unexpected cross-generational companionship between Pearl and Taryn; and Keeley’s anarchic reckoning with loss. What starts as a memorial evolves into a kaleidoscope of queer intimacy, capturing both the beauty and brutality of how we survive each other.
A NOTE FROM THE CREATORS
Daniel Talbott, Co-creator & Executive Producer:
“Now more than ever I want to tell radical, vulnerable, complicated, emotional, scary, physical, feral, singular queer stories. Not queer stories that fall into a category, but queer stories that surprise, challenge, and ask questions of me as a queer person. That blow my sense of what I know about the world. I want to see queer spirits and bodies, ages, colors, and prisms that I feel I haven’t seen. I want to see them eat and dance and f*ck, cry, take in the world, and stare up at the sky. I feel beyond lucky to be making this TV show with some of my favorite people on earth, but also to put voice and story out into the world in some small way as a very proud and happy queer person. I hope folks sit with this story, sit with these people, and love them as much as Stephen and Noel and I do.”
Stephen Laughton, Co-creator & Executive Producer:
“Born Again lives inside its characters… their messiness, their hunger. There’s a fcked-up tenderness in this story that I’m really excited about. These people are raw and radiant all at the same time. And they’re dealing with the messiness of grief and sex and love and how those things get mashed up inside and out when we’re dealing with something that might just break us. I also want to create a love letter to the films, music, and the stories that made me. I was (still am?) a weird, alternative gay boy, so queercore movies and the rage, sexiness, and fck-you attitude of alternative music made being gay not just okay for me, but totally f*cking electric. I haven’t seen real counterculture for a very long time, so I’m excited to make a TV show that’s a little more offbeat.”
Noel Do-Murakami, Executive Producer:
“Born Again deals with the complexities of how queer people have learned to cope with lost love, seek connection, and make sense of themselves in a world where they are ‘othered.’ These stories offer unique perspectives into their lives where many are constantly feeling stuck in the in-between state, the gray. For queer people, our only modeled relationships are the ones that are set in tragedy, we don’t often get the ‘happily ever after’ reflected in media, which means we get to live life without the confines of black and white and the arbitrary timelines that society has set for most. It’s messy, it’s real, it’s love and all the things that come with trying to understand your place in a world that tells you that there isn’t a place for you.”
PRODUCTION DETAILS
Stephen Laughton and Daniel Talbott are serving as Executive Producers and Showrunners, with Noel Do-Murakami also executive producing and Andrew Klaus-Vineyard co-producing. Talbott is also leading the cinematography, and editing is handled by Johannes Moe (Lyset i Mørket).
The Director of Photography is Brook Lee Karner and the sound person is David L. Minard.
Production is currently underway in Los Angeles and Palm Springs. The series is expected to premiere in 2026.
