Busy Philipps' Child Birdie Lands Non-Binary Acting Role on Streaming Series

Busy Philipps' oldest child is following in her acting footsteps. On Thursday, it was announced [...]

Busy Philipps' oldest child is following in her acting footsteps. On Thursday, it was announced that the Girls5eva star's 12-year-old child Birdie Silverstein has been cast in Gloria Calderón Kellett's upcoming Amazon series With Love. The series, which follows the Diaz siblings as they embark on a mission to find love and purpose, will mark Birdie's first major acting credit. Birdie previously appeared in a handful of episodes of Cougar Town. They also appeared in Tomberlin's 2020 music video for "Wasted."

The casting news was first shared by Calderón Kellett, who wrote on Twitter that the young actor, who prefers they/them pronouns, had been "cast in [a] non-binary recurring role" in the romantic comedy. The series is set to launch on Amazon Prime later this year and will also star Constance Marie, Benito Martinez, Vincent Rodriguez III, Emeraude Tobia, and Mark Indelicato. In the Thursday tweet, Calderón Kellett added, "more casting news. I first met Birdie when they were a baby. It is thrilling that I now get to have them on my little show." Phillipps, who shares Birdie and 8-year-old daughter Cricket Pearl with husband Marc Silverstein, couldn't hold back her excitement, writing, "this just made me cry."

Birdie's casting in a non-binary role comes just months after Phillips, with her 12-year-old's permission, shared on her Busy Philipps Is Doing Her Best podcast in December that Birdie is gay and prefers they/them pronouns. The actress revealed her child came out to her and her husband when Birdie was 10. At the time, Philipps said she was "trying my best" to use Birdie's preferred they/them pronouns, though she admitted she was doing a "bad job" at first.

"Because Birdie said that they would like their pronouns to be they/them, and I haven't been doing it, and I said because I have this public persona and I want Birdie to be in control of their own narrative and not have to answer to anybody outside of our friends and family if they don't want to," she explained. "Bird was like, 'I don't give a f—. You can talk about how I'm gay and out; you can talk about my pronouns. That would be cool with me. That's great.' So I said, 'OK, I can talk about it on the podcast.'"

In the months since, Philipps hasn't shied away from further opening up, about parenting a non-binary child. In her cover story for Health Magazine's June 2021 issue, Philipps said she has continued to educate herself and her family on the importance of pronouns, recalling how her own mother "is older and wants to understand the pronoun conversation more" and how she "said to my mother, 'Here's the deal: You don't have to understand it.' That's how I feel about all human rights -- you don't have to understand it. You can choose to believe what you want, but you don't get to have jurisdiction over anyone else's body or belief system."

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