TLC will continue sharing the story of Jazz Jennings in the seventh season of I Am Jazz. The network renewed the hit series for a new season last week, reports Variety. Jennings first attracted media attention as the youngest trans child to ever appear on TV when Barbara Walters interviewed her in 2007. The show’s sixth season ended in March 2020, with Jennings graduating high school.
Season 6 tracked Jennings’ last year of high school, as well as her efforts to help a friend raise money for her gender confirmation surgery. She also had to decide between going to Harvard University or Pomona College. Season 7 will begin production two years after Season 6 ended filming, the longest gap in the show’s history. Cameras will roll in South Florida, where Jennings and her family live.
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“Alongside viewers and fans, we have watched Jazz grow into a beautiful, young woman and champion for transgender rights all over the world,” Howard Lee, president of TLC Streaming and Network Originals, told Variety in a statement. “Her advocacy and impact have made a significant mark in history, and we are honored to continue following her story in the next chapter of her life.” The series is produced by This Is Just a Test.
I Am Jazz launched in 2015 and has averaged 1.3 million viewers during the show’s run. In 2016, the show won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Reality Program. “I’m always happy to share my story and help as many people as possible,” Jennings, 20, told Variety. “Our goal is always to help people and to share a message of positivity, love, and acceptance, and I think that we’re continuing to do that by sharing our story.”
I Am Jazz remains an important and influential series. In a Variety profile on Jennings and the show, Saved by the Bell, star Josie Totah called the series a “touchpoint and a resource.” Totah knew she was trans when she was 5, but when she finally met Jennings recently, Jennings was the first trans person she ever met. “Trans people sometimes don’t know trans people themselves, and it can be really isolating,” Totah, 19, said. “Meeting Jazz was just reaffirming and so loving. She just felt like family.”
Jennings has also come to understand the impact her series has had on others. “I was learning that there were a lot of other kids like me out there who can relate to me, and who saw me, and learned more about themselves through seeing me and my experience,” she told Variety. “Once I learned about it in that way, I was like, ‘OK, that’s pretty cool.’”
