Welcome to this week’s “Just for Variety.”

Get ready for more LGBTQ+ representation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So says Marvel Studio’s executive vice president of film production Victoria Alonso.

Just days after it was revealed that Loki is fluid on his Disney Plus spinoff series, I asked Alonso if that was a sign of queer things to come. “It takes time, we have so many stories that we can tell,” Alonso said at the “Black Widow” fan premiere in Hollywood, adding, “We will empower those that are. We’re not changing anything. We’re just showing the world who these people are, who these characters are…There’s a lot that we have coming up that I think will be representative of the world of today. We’re not going to nail it in the first movie or the second movie or third movie, or the first show or second show, but we will we will do our best to consistently try to represent.”

Alonso said that the decision to make Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston, fluid wasn’t as complicated as one might think. “I have to be honest with you, it’s not a big deal,” she said. “It is what it is when it suits the character. We’re not going to do it because it’s politically correct or incorrect. It is what it is. Don’t forget, we follow our comics. We try to follow them quite to the tee. So in the comics this is who he was.”

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I also chatted with “Black Widow” screenwriter Eric Pearson at the fan event. He told me that he wrote the screenplay in just 11 days. “We got our good bones down meeting with Kevin [Feige] and [co-producer] Brian Chapek and [director] Cate Shortland and talking to Scarlett [Johansson] a lot,” he said. “She was phoning in and then I was locking it into a document that was just like a blueprint. And once I know what I’m doing, I write fast. …That was the first draft, but we did a lot of rewrites.”

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Thomas Doherty had never kissed a man on camera until he had to for his work as Max in the new “Gossip Girl.” The Scottish actor locks lips with several men in the HBO Max series. “That was definitely interesting…Obviously my character, Max, is pansexual and for me it’s always amazing when you play a part to see what you can kind of draw from that and what you can compare it with in your own life, your own beliefs,” Doherty tells me. “And it definitely did make me question how I was brought up and have been conditioned to think in terms of gender and gender identity and sexual preferences stuff. That kind of threw that all up in the air and it was kind of very liberating. It’s been an amazing experience for me, definitely.”

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SIGHTINGS: Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes having breakfast with friends at Dialog Café in West Hollywood… “Queer Eye” star Antoni Porowski and his boyfriend Kevin Harrington enjoying lunch at L’Avenue at Saks in NYC.

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I stopped by the press preview of Tyra Banks’ newest endeavor, the Smize Cream shop at Santa Monica Place. Yes, Banks is now in the ice cream business. While she has big plans for the brand, Banks says she has no fighting words for Ben & Jerry’s. “I bow down to them,” she told me as I sampled several flavors, including Salted Sweet Cream featuring salted caramel butter and butter-roasted pecans along with a ball of caramel pecan cookie dough covered in yellow sprinkles at the bottom of the cup. I’ll have a lot more from my chat with Banks tomorrow on Variety.com.

You can contact me and “Just for Variety” at [email protected].

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